Back to the continuing series of
words descended from the
Proto
Indo European root
ag-,
to drive, draw out, or move. This week… well, they all have A in
them, but it’s going to get weird.
First, ambassador. Yes, really.
It showed up in the
late fourteenth century from the
Old
French embassator/ambassateor, from the
classical Latin ambactus,
a vassal.
In a shocking twist, that word’s actually from the
Celtic ambiactos, a messenger or servant, which is from the Proto Indo European
ambhi-,
around, and ag-. An ambassador
is to move around. I guess the amba- is the around part, so does that mean the
ass- is actually from ag-???
Similarly, there’s embassy. It
showed up in the
late sixteenth century actually meaning the position of an ambassador (remember, they also used to
spell that with an E), not meaning the place of an ambassador until the mid
eighteenth century. It has pretty much the same origin, just from the French
embassee,
and ultimately the PIE
ambi-ag-to, which like with ambassador, is ambhi-
+ ag-. So yeah, the ass- is the ag-.
Speaking of ass—I mean, kind of—there’s
assay, which showed up in the
fourteenth century as a verb that meant to try and then a noun that meant test of quality. The
words come from the
Anglo
French assai and
Late Latin exagium,
a weighing. No, I don’t get it. Maybe it will make more sense when we look at
its cousin, essay. Yes, that essay. It showed up in the sixteenth century as a
noun meaning trial or attempt, and a century earlier as a verb meaning to test.
It’s from the French word
essai, which means an
essay or a test,
and it’s also from exagium. That’s from the classical Latin verb
exigere,
to
demand, test, or drive out,
with the ex- meaning out [https://www.etymonline.com/word/ex-] and the rest
from
agere, which we talked about last week and the week before as
meaning
to act.
An essay is… to act out. Why did it come to mean writing? Because much like
assaying involves unpolished materials, an essay is supposed to be unpolished
writing. Which means all those revisions to essays they made me do in high
school were incorrect for the format!
Can we make it any weirder? I
think so. Axiom showed up in the
late fifteenth century,
from the French
axiome, and classical Latin
axioma.
That was actually taken from the Greek
axioma, which could mean an
office, authority, or just an
axiom.
That’s from
axios,
worthy,
from the Proto Indo European
ag-ty-o-, weighty, and that ag- of course
is to drive. So it went from weighty, to worthy, to authority, to an axiom.
Sure.
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
Fordham
University
Orbis Latinus