Stuck in a Body?

There aren't enough fingers and toes to count all the things I should be doing, but I've been puzzling about the word embodied recently. I thought I may as well puzzle in the company of my three or so readers as alone. Thanks for joining me...

Embodiment is one of those words/phrases--like critical theory--often heard but seldom, at least by me, understood. (Of course, I'm frightfully adept at complicating everything, so I'm inclined here to throw up my hands before I start, mumble about the limits of epistemology, and say 'who can know it'? But how does that help anything? So, off we go.)

Last semester, playing the role of Enthusiastic Student, I learned that linguists often analyze language at the morphemic level. Morphemes (must not call them words, I learned, even though that's what they often are) are the smallest units of meaning in a language, I think. (If I remember correctly. I will check tonight.) Morphemes can be piled together to make complex meaning. (I paraphrase.) Such is the case with embodiment. Body is the root. em the prefix meaning i-don't-know-precisely-what-but-I'll-look-it-up, and ment the suffix, which I think, in English, makes something a noun.

What a body is is clear enough, I suppose. And roughly, I suppose embodiment means the noun form of being within a body. Embody is to put something within a body, the verb, I suppose. (I stop for a moment to scratch at the surface of how complex the mind is, without the framework or vocabulary to properly form thoughts. How interesting that, in English at least, a person can ponder the state of being within a body and can think about what it means to put something inside a body, or to act out with the body a something.)

I also stop for the present, because I have two projects that need finalized for press, one that requires a significant amount of research before it can go to the designer, three potential freelancers to contact, and as many press releases to write. More soon.