Language Of Confusion: -Press, Redux, Part II

The rest of the words related to press! Some of them actually have the word in them!
 
Oppress first showed up in the late fourteenth century, and it follows the same pattern as last week. It’s from the Old French oppresser, Medieval Latin oppressare, and classical Latin opprimere, to crush. That’s a mix of the prefix ob-, against, and premere, to press, so oppressing something is pressing against them. But, like, really hard.
 
There’s also suppress, which showed up in the late fourteenth century, but meant to be burdensome, not meaning what we know it as until the early sixteenth century. It’s a mix of the prefix sub-, below or under, while the press is of course from premere, so to suppress is to press from below. Kind of weird etymology there.
 
Finally for -press words, repress showed up in the late fourteenth century, meaning to check a sin or error, or to subdue. It’s from the classical Latin repressus, repressed, from the verb reprimere, to check (as in to hold something in check). The re- means back, so to repress something means to press it back.
 
Now it’s time for the more WTF ones, like print (which is even more appropriate with the other definition of press). Print showed up in the fourteenth century as prente, and it meant a mark made by impression, usually by a stamp or a seal. It’s from the Old French preinte and its verb form preindre, which is from premere and its Proto Indo European origin per-, to strike. And imprint is from the same place, having also shown up in the late fourteenth century with pretty much the same definition as print—the only difference is imprint kept that meaning. The in- prefix means into or on, so it’s to print in.
 
And how about reprimand? You can actually kind of see it related to premere from the spelling, more so than any of the press words. It showed up in the early seventeenth century from the French réprimande, from the classical Latin reprimenda, being repressed, which is also from reprimere.
 
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