Language of Confusion: Whatever The Case May Be, Part V

Happy Fourth of July. It’s part five and, I’m not even kidding, we’re probably only about halfway done. The origin word for container case, the Proto Indo European kap-, has a ridiculous number of descendants.

First, a lot of words with cap in them, which, hey, sounds like kap-. Captive, for example, showed up in the late fourteenth century from the classical Latin captivus, prisoner, from the verb capere, to capture—as we learned last week from the -ceive words. It’s from kap-, which means hold or grasp, which is certainly a good way to capture someone. And that’s how we get capture, captor (Latin for catcher), and captivate, too.

Next, capable, which showed up in the late sixteenth century from the Middle French capable and Late Latin capabilis. That’s from the classical Latin capax, which means capable or capacity, and is from our old friend capere. It’s kind of confusing, but if you have capacity to do something, you’re capable. And speaking of capacity, of course it’s from the same place. It showed up in the early fifteenth century meaning the ability to contain, or just ability. It’s from the sense of the Old French capacité, ability to hold, and classical Latin capacitatem, which just means capacity. I guess if you can mentally grasp something, you have the capacity. While if you don’t, you’re incapable. Fun fact, capacity in the electrical sense is from 1777, with the idea that something can “hold electricity”.

Now things are going to get weird. First, caption. It showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning taking or seizure, from the Old French capcion, capture or arrest, and classical Latin captionem, which meant something like trap or catching. That actually makes sense for coming from capere, to take. But then in the mid seventeenth century it started to come at the head of legal documents involving seizing something—like a “certificate of caption”. From there, people started using it to mean the head of any document, even ones not involving capture, then the heading of a chapter/section, and finally, the description below an illustration. And that morphed into us calling it “closed captioning”.

Recuperate is also related to the above—really, it’s closer to receive, though. Recuperate showed up in the sixteenth century, while recuperation showed up a little earlier, in the fifteenth century. Both are from the classical Latin recuperare, to recover, which is related to recipere, the origin word of receive. That word is re- (back) and capare, take, so it’s to take back. Which is also recovering.

Finally today, cable. Yep, really. It showed up in the thirteenth century as a large, strong chain used on a ship, from the Medieval Latin capulum, lasso or rope used on a cow, and that’s from capere. So because a rope is how you hold a cow, it’s a cable for holding things on a ship, and now a wire used for transmitting. Sure, why not?

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

University of Ottawa, Canada

Orbis Latinus

Language of Confusion: Able

Able is one of those words that’s tacked onto the ends of other words all the time to make them into something else. Now, I won’t be getting into all of them, because there are hundreds, maybe more if you ignore normal grammatical conventions, but I will mention those that aren’t normally seen without able at the end and even those are numerous enough that this needs two parts. Plus the word itself. I mean, duh.

Able

First showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Old French hable/able and classical Latin habilem/habilis, which means something like fit, handy, or adaptable, a different tense of the word habere, have or hold. That h was silent in the Latin and French versions, so it’s no wonder it was dropped from the English spelling. However, that H is still around in another word descended from habere: habit. And what I learned: able and ability are not related to words with the suffix -able. They actually come from the Latin suffices -abilitas and -abilis, which were basically ways to turn verbs into nouns.

Affable

Showed up in the late fifteenth century from the Old French affable and classical Latin affabilis, approachable. The a- comes from the prefix ad-, meaning to in our friend Latin, and the -ffa- comes from fari, to speak, making it a nounizing of “to speak to”.

Amiable/Amicable

Amiable showed up in the mid-fourteenth century while amicable didn’t show up until the early fifteenth century. Both come from the Late Latin amicabilis, friendly, from the classical Latin word amicus, friend, and amare, love. The reason why we have both words is because amiable comes by way of Old French, which dropped the c, while amicable does not.

Capable

This one’s relatively late, not showing up until the mid-sixteenth century. It comes from the Middle French capable and Late Latin capabilis, able to grasp or hold (and totally not related to habere), and the classical Latin capax, with the same meaning we know it as. It can even be traced further back to the Proto Indo European kap, which means to grasp (if you’re capable, you have a grasp of something). In other words, it’s making a noun out of grasp. Kind of like graspable.

Culpable

An early word, coming around in the late thirteenth century as coupable from the Old French…coupable. I guess we weren’t differentiating ourselves enough. Either way, the word comes from the classical Latin culpabilis, blameworthy, and culpare, to blame, both of which stem from culpa, fault.

Despicable

Showed up in the mid-sixteenth century from the Late Latin despicabilis and classical Latin despicari, despise. That word is a combination of de-, down, and spicare (or specere), to look. I guess that makes it to-look-down-upon-able.

Durable

Showed up in the late fourteenth century from the classical Latin durabilis, lasting, and durare, to last. It’s related to endure. Hm, nothing interesting about this one.

Effable/ineffable

Effable, expressible, showed up in the early seventeenth century and is hardly used today, but it was preceded by ineffable, unspeakable, by over two hundred years and that word is still used…well, sometimes. The former comes from the classical Latin effabilis and effari, to utter. Likewise, the latter comes from ineffabilis, literally unutterable. The in- prefix means opposite of. Effabilis is a pieced together word, too; the e- is from ex-, out, and fari, which I mentioned in the affable entry means speak.

Exorable/inexorable

Yep, another one. Exorable, persuadable, showed up in the late sixteenth century, from the classical Latin exorabilis and exorare, to persuade. Inexorable, unpersuadable, showed up earlier, but only by a couple of decades, from (of course) the classical Latin inexorabilis. Like above, the in- means opposite of, and exorare is a mix of ex- (out) and another word (orare, pray).

Whew, that’s a long post, and there’s still more to come. Yay?

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

Google Translate

Orbis Latinus

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language