Today’s lesson is brought to you
by the fact that potent is not related to any other word that ends in -tent, and that fact just really bugs me.
Potent showed up in the early fifteenth century, a little after the
word potential and before potency.
All three words are from the same origin, the classical Latin potens which means powerful and is from… posse. Which means to be able,
and is actually traced to the Proto Indo European poti-,
powerful or lord.
And yeah, that’s where posse is
from, though it didn’t show up until the seventeenth century,
and that’s actually short for the Latin phrase posse comitatus, to be accompanied.
Comitatus means company or a body of men, meaning the phrase roughly means a force of men. The modern
slang of it is taken from Westerns.
Add another S to the end of that
word and you have possess, which is also related, but I looked at that word not
too many years ago. In any case, it’s just the first half of the word that’s related, and through a slightly
different way than from posse. It’s from the verb possidere, to possess,
where the front half is related to potis,
to be able (the word is related to posse) and the back half from sedere, to sit.
I guess that means to possess is to be able to sit.
The next posse word? Possible,
which showed up in the mid fourteenth century from the Old
French possible and classical Latin possibilis, to be possible.
Something possible is something able to be done. There’s also despot, which
does sound like pot- with a des- on the front. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Italian dispotto,
from the Medieval
Latin despota, and before that, the Greek despotes, all which pretty much had the same meaning. The word is actually from the PIE dems-pota,
with dem- meaning house and the
rest from poti. I guess the head of a house is supposed to be powerful.
Speaking of power, it showed up
in the fourteenth century from the Anglo
French pouair and Old French povoir, which is from the verb podir,
which is from the Vulgar
Latin potere, and doesn’t that look familiar.
Potere is from potis, which means power is from the same place, it just lost
the T.
The final word we’re looking at,
related to all of these, is… Host. Really. It showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French oste/hoste,
from the classical Latin hospitem, guest.
Yeah, host came from guest. The word is
thought to be from the PIE ghos-pot-, the first part from ghos-ti,
stranger or guest, and the pot-
part from poti-. A host is a lord of guests.
Sources
How to get from potential to host in just a few steps... The English language baffles me sometimes...
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