Thursday, October 16, 2014

Language of Confusion: Victorious

Victory showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Anglo French/Old French victorie and classical Latin victoria, which means…victory. Where do these words come from? Anyway, victoria is the past participle of vincere, the origin word for victor (the n is dropped in some tense of the word for some reason). Vincere, to win, can be traced back to the ProtoIndo European word weik, fight or conquer (among other things; it’s a really common word).

This might surprise you, but the word victim does not seem to be related to victory. It showed up in the late fifteenth century specifically meaning a sacrifice (the more general meaning came about fifty years later). It comes from the classical Latin victima, where it had a similar connotation. And that’s it. No vincere, no weik, at least, not that I found. So maybe, maybe not.

The words that are related to victory actually have it in their suffixes. Convince is just vincere with con- in front of it, which makes it “conquer with”. Province is also a vincere word, the pro- meaning before, though no one’s sure exactly how that word’s supposed to make sense. The name Vincent also comes from vincere, and of course, so does the name Victor.

TL;DR: Victory isn’t related to any word that it makes sense for it to be related to.

Sources

7 comments:

  1. Given the way that our provinces are sometimes run, "before victory" doesn't make much sense...

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  2. No, "convince" means I conquered your mind!
    bwah-hah-hah!

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  3. I had never associated convince or province with victory. Makes sense when you think about it, though.

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  4. Interesting that victim has nothing to do with victory. I always assumed it did.

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  5. Hi Jeanne .. I do find etymology so fascinating ... I see in Wiki that Province was around in 1330 and comes from the Latin "provincia" - its connection with magistrate ... and as you said possibly linking it with Pro and Vincere ... a territory or function under a magistrate. So interesting .. cheers Hilary

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  6. I didn't think convince would be related.

    I do like the names Victor and Victoria.

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