the.com/promise
a debt your future self never agreed to pay.
means A spoken or written commitment to do (or not do) something, binding you to a future action others may hold you to.
from From Latin 'promissum,' the neuter past participle of 'promittere' — to send forth, to let go ahead — built from 'pro-' (forward) plus 'mittere' (to send, the same root that fires off 'missile' and 'mission'). So a promise is literally something you've sent ahead of yourself into the future. It reached English through Latin, settling into the language by the late medieval period as both noun and verb.
- word root
- From Latin promittere, to send forth.
- legal weight
- Spoken promises can bind contracts in court.
- brain cost
- Broken promises trigger trust circuits like physical pain.
- pinky power
- Pinky swears trace to 17th-century Japanese yubikiri.
for instance
the treaty of versailles — 1919 promise to end world war i and prevent future wars, created league of nations