Language of Confusion: Part, Part I

Yes, another multi-part series. And this one focusing on the word part! Considering how often I use it, I’m surprised it took this long to get to it. Buckle in, because this is going to be a long one.

Part itself showed up in the mid thirteenth century from the Old French part, which is from the classical Latin partem, which, you know, means part. Nothing shocking here. It can be traced all the way back to the Proto Indo European pere-, to grant or allot, which makes sense. You can allot a part of something.

Next, we’re going to look at a bunch of words that begin with part. Partial showed up in the late fourteenth century, just meaning not whole at first and then meaning biased towards one side in the early fifteenth century. For some reason. Anyway, it’s from the Medieval Latin partialis, partial, and classical Latin pars, which means part. That’s also where partem comes from, so we’re not looking at any major revelations here.

Participate showed up in the early sixteenth century, possibly from participation, which showed up in the late fourteenth century. Participation comes from the Old French participacion and Late Latin participationem, which means participating. In classical Latin, the verb form is participare, to participate. Now, the part from is from the already mentioned pars, but the -cip- part is from capere, to take, a word we’ve talked about extensively during my posts about case. So participate is “to take an allotment”. I guess if you’re participating, you are taking something…

Particular showed up in the late fourteenth century, from the Old French particuler and Late Latin particularis, from the classical Latin particula, which actually means particle. Yes, that’s where particle comes from. It also showed up in the late fourteenth century, and it’s also from particula. A particle is a particular thing.

How sensible this all was. I’m sure the next few weeks will change that.

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

Orbis Latinus