Reading one of Burge’s pieces on the categories of non-religious people, churched vs unchurched, believing vs non-believing, praying vs non-praying, I thought:
I’m a prayer, not a believer. I’m not sure if there are any gods, but I spend a lot of time and effort praying to them.
Oops! Language isn’t logic. When you believe you’re a believer, but when you pray you’re not a prayer. What you say is a prayer.
There’s no word at all for a person who habitually prays.
This semantic category lacks even the slightest pattern or consistency.
A talker is a person who talks. What he says is a talk.
A believer is a person who believes. What he believes is a belief.
A speaker is a person who speaks. What he says is a speech.
An announcer is a person who announces. What he says is an announcement.
A preacher is a person who preaches. What he says is a sermon.
(Occasionally a preachment, but this seems to mean a proverb, not a sermon.)
If pray followed one of these patterns, a prayer would be a person who prays, and what he says would be a pray or a prayment or a preach or an entirely unrelated word like sermon.
Well, does preach come from pray in the same way that speech comes from speak? Seems like it should, but the two words are unrelated. Pray comes from Latin precare meaning pray or ask. (As in Spanish pregunta, question.) Preach comes from pre-dicare, speaking before a crowd. Predict comes from the same combo, but with a temporal pre, not a positional pre.
Polistra's Mill 