Once again, we’re looking at the
words descended from the
Proto
Indo European per-,
forward.
Now that we have the prefixes out of the way, we can look at some of the words
that grew out of them.
First, protocol. It showed up in
the
mid fifteenth century (also
spelled
prothogol and
prothogall), from the French
prothocole
and
Medieval
Latin protocollum, and guess what? Back then it meant prologue, then
a draft of a document, the minutes of a meeting, rough draft, diplomatic document,
and finally in French, the “formula of diplomatic etiquette”. Which English
picked up for use in 1896, and not really meaning proper conduct until 1952. Anyway,
that protocollum comes from the Greek
protokollon, with the
proto- from
the prefix meaning first, and the rest
from
kolla, which means… glue. Yeah, protocol is “first glue”.
Next, prone showed up in the
fifteenth century, from the
classical Latin pronus,
which figuratively means
prone and literally means bent forward. And that’s believed to be taken from the
pro-
prefix, which means forward. Being prone
is being bent towards something. Sometimes literally!
A little more surprising is
approach. It showed up in the
fourteenth century from the
Anglo
French approcher,
Old French
aprochier, and
Late Latin appropiare.
The a- prefix is from ad,
to, and the
rest is from
propiare, come nearer, related to the classical Latin
prope.
Prope is then from the PIE
propro,
even further,
and that’s from per-, forward. To approach is to get nearer to. Rapprochement
is actually from the same place. It showed up in
1809,
from the French
rapprochement, where the re- means
back or again and the
rest is the abovementioned aprochier. Rapprochement is near again… ment.
Reproach is weirdly different.
It showed up in the
mid fourteenth century from the Anglo French
repruce, Old French
reproche, and its verb
form
reprochier, which looks quite similar to the approach one. One
possibility is that’s from the
Vulgar
Latin repropiare, with the re- meaning opposite of, and the rest
from prope, near, which doesn’t quite make sense (this is etymology after all).
Another theory is that it’s related to the classical Latin
reprobus/reprobare,
to reject,
with the probare being the origin word of
prove. And what word
did we start this whole series with? Yes, so either way, reproach is from per-.
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin
Linguistic Research Center
University
of Texas at San Antonio’s page on
Proto Indo European
language
Dictionary
of Medieval Latin
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Fordham
University
Orbis Latinus