The Arabic word hadith spans both newness and tradition’s present reencounter.

Evidence

The Arabic word hadi¯th, incidentally, captures nicely the double sense of temporality usually separated in English: on the one hand it denotes anything that is new or modern, and on the other hand a tradition that makes the past—and future—reencountered in the present. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1069

Categorization

• DEFINE: A compact etymological gem: hadith simultaneously means ‘new/modern’ and ‘tradition,’ collapsing the past/future distinction into the present.
• CANDY: A fun linguistic fact about Arabic to share — one word folded into it the whole conceptual problem of tradition’s temporality.
• SEED: Could open an essay on how languages encode temporal concepts (hadith) that English separates, and what that means for translating modern vs. traditional.