Language Of Confusion: Acting!, Part V

Even more words from the Proto Indo European root ag-, to drive, draw out, or move. You ever noticed how that word sounds like you’re hawking something up from the back of your throat?
 
Anyway, the first word we’re looking at today is litigate—really! It showed up in the early seventeenth century from the classical Latin litigates, quarreled. That’s from the verb litigare, to argue, which is actually from the phrase litem agere, to sue or bring suit, with litem literally meaning suit and agere, as we’ve discussed in previous weeks, meaning to act. To litigate is to act on a suit.
 
And then there’s mitigate. It showed up in the early fifteenth century, from the classical Latin mitigates, just mitigated, from the verb mitigare, also just to mitigate. So yeah, it’s pretty much the same as litigate. It’s just that the front part is from mitis, gentle, meaning mitigate is to act gentle. Which I suppose can mitigate things.
 
Next, coagulate, because things weren’t weird enough. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin coagulatus, coagulated. That’s from the verb coagulare, to coagulate, which is from cogere, to force, the origin word of cogent, as we learned just last week. That means that yes, coagulate is from the word cogent. No idea how it got there, and that’s one explanation I’d really like.
 
Fumigate is also related, having shown up in the sixteenth century, which is two centuries after fumigation. That word is from the classical Latin fumigationem, smoking, from the verb fumigare, to smoke. That’s a mix of fumus, smoke, and of course agere. Fumigate is to smoke act? Act smoke? An act of smoking? That seems to make the most sense.
 
There’s one more word we’re going to look at today: castigate. It showed up in the seventeenth century, though much like the above word, castigation showed up much earlier, in the late fourteenth century. It’s from the Latin castigationem, punishment, from the verb castigare, to punish. The first part of the word comes from castus, chaste or pure (the origin word of caste, unsurprisingly), and the rest of course is agere, to act. To castigate is to act with chasteness, to punish.
 
I wonder if we can top these ones next week.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language