In a word... pilates

It is not so very long ago when I used assume the word “pilates” referred to a family dynasty of which the infamous and furiously derided Pontius was but one member.

I have always felt poor old Pontius gets a bad press. He did no more than follow the democratic will of the people of Jerusalem as so vociferously expressed and demanded by them. They made it very clear they preferred to see the criminal Barabbas freed rather than the innocent Jesus.

It is also conveniently forgotten that Pilate made so many efforts to have the crowd agree that Jesus should be freed and that, in offering them the choice between Jesus and Barabbas, he seemed to believe himself Jesus would be the winner. Wrong. Very wrong.

So disgusted was he when it didn’t go that way he famously washed his hands in public, thus declaring himself innocent of the blood of Jesus. To which the crowd responded “His blood be upon us and upon our children!”

Some would say that was the beginnings of a rocky road down the centuries for the Jewish people throughout a hostile Christendom which accused them of deicide and which culminated in the Holocaust.

But the pilates I wish to discuss here had nothing to do with the momentous events in Jerusalem which preceded the death of Jesus or the man most frequently blamed for allowing it to happen.

The pilates I refer to has a different pronounciation too, being “pile-a-tes”rather than “pilats”, and concerns exercises to which I have a serious allergy. I discovered this when it was recommended I might undergo such a regime some years ago. I had knee problems.

Very quickly I learned I was more attached to the knee problems, which eventually went away, you know, anyhow.

But, as so frequently happens, once I came across the word – which I had never noticed before – I suddenly began seeing it everywhere. In newspapers, magazines, near streets where I live.

And it has turned out that indeed Pilates is a family name after all. A fitness system developed in the early 20th century by the Greek-German Joseph Pilates, it is popular in the US, where Pilates lived and taught the system, and in the UK where he also lived and taught. Give me old Pontius anytime. inaword@irishtimes.com