Prefixed

Today’s etymology lesson is a quick rundown on the history of some prefixes. I did a few of them before and since they always seem to show up, it’s worth knowing about them.

Okay, I think it’s worth knowing about them. Here are some more for your learning pleasure:

Ex- Usually outside of or from, like in excite, where the -cite means to call forth and the ex- indicates that it calls out, like one would rouse an emotion. Ex- can also mean former (as in ex-wife), away (export), upwards (extol), and completely (exaggerate). From the Latin ex, out of or from within. Can be traced even further back to the Proto Indo European eghs, which of course means out.

Dis- Can also be di- (note: different from di- as in twice) and dif- before f. Can mean not—a computer program that is disabled is not functioning. Can mean opposite of—for instance, discharge. Can mean apart or away—when you dislocate your arm, it is away from its proper location. In classical Latin (the Latin of scholars), dis- was the same as de-. This passed on to French as des-. Most English words turned it back to dis- but there are still a few des- words, like descant. Yes, it’s a word!

De- This one is a bit confusing because of the above note. De- is like some of the uses for dis-, but it’s more “separation of space”. In Latin, it was an “undo” prefix, like we use in defrost. It can also be like off, as in decapitate. Or an intensive, as in declare (–clare means clear, so it’s definitely clear) . De- can also mean from, like decline (the –cline means lean) is like from an angle. It can be used as “completely”, as in define, where –fine means limit (finite) so by defining it, you are completely limiting what it is. But that’s a philosophical discussion for another day.

The Language of Confusion: -sume

Prefixes are fascinating. Attaching different ones can make a word for continue into a word for taking something upon oneself. Or the act of devouring. There’s also presume, which is a synonym for assume that is attached to what the person actually believes rather than based on evidence (as in, I assume this is a cat because it has four legs and meows; I presume this is a horse because despite looking like a cat, she gallops through the house). There’s also a great list of –sume words that I’ve never heard of, including desume, introsume, transume, subsume, absume and insume. Awesome points for anyone who can work one of those into a sentence that doesn’t seem contrived.

First on the list of –sume words that we’ve heard of is assume, which showed up in the early fifteenth century as assumpten and meant being taken up into heaven. Strange? Actually, not so much. Assume comes from the classical Latin assumere, a combination of a—from the prefix ad-, meaning towards—and sumere—take up. Together, that’s “to take up or towards oneself.” The “suppose” meaning of the word evolved in the sixteenth century, with the “take on” meaning coming a little later. When you assume, you could say you take it upon yourself to analyze the available evidence and answer a question. It’s still quite different from the original meaning, though.

Resume appeared around the same time, taken from the classical Latin resumere. The prefix re- of course means again. With –sumere, you have “to take up again,” which is pretty much what it means now. By the way, yes, résumé does come from resumere, however the French word was taken to mean a career summary much later, in the 1940s.

It’s worth noting that sumere itself is a prefixed word. It is su- (from sub-, as in under) + -emere, Latin for “purchase or take” and the origin word of exempt, among others. The sub- prefix was probably added to distinguish the meanings of the words. Like, say, assume from presume. (Segue, ho!)

Presume showed up a little after the first two (although presumption showed up two centuries earlier, along with assumption). Its original meaning was “to take upon oneself,” usually with an air of overconfidence. The overconfidence bit comes from presumption’s origin word, the late Latin praesumptionem, which meant confidence. Presume can be distinguished from assume because the former is grounded in belief. You are confident this is so, but you may not have the evidence to back it up. In classical Latin, the word is praesumere, with the prae- prefix meaning before. You take it up before. Before what? Before you really know.

Finally for -sume words we've actually heard of, we have consume, also from the late fourteenth century. It comes from the classical Latin consumere, with the con- prefix from com-, in this case used as an intensifier. The literal meaning would be “to take up” but consume has always meant “to use up.” This slight difference is probably more do to how we in English use the word take. When you take something up, it’s considered still in existence. Using something up, however, is eliminating it. By turning it into something else, but it’s still gone. So we are taking it, but in doing so are eliminating it from existence.

This is the kind of stuff that happens when you take words from other languages. Each language uses them in their own way and they become completely different from their original meaning. In five hundred years, words like tsunami and poltergeist will be unrecognizable (along with the rest of the English language, for that matter, but that's a story for another day).

Thanks to:

Online Etymology Dictionary and Dictionary.com.

Language of Confusion: Fer Crying Out Loud

I chose ‘fer’ as this week’s word because it’s one of the ones that’s meaningless without its prefix. You can prefer something, defer, refer, transfer or infer it. Or offer, confer, differ, suffer…But you can’t fer it.

It doesn’t take much to amuse me.

-Fer comes from the classical Latin ferre, which means to carry. The earliest –fer word to show up was suffer in the early thirteenth century. The su- comes from the prefix sub-, Latin for under or beneath. Combined with ferre, sufferre meant to undergo or endure (undertake a burden) rather than the to be in pain definition we have today.

The next -fer words showed up more than a century later. Prefer originally meant to promote or advance, and that morphed into favor. It’s classical Latin equivalent is praeferre, “place or set before.” It is the combination of prae (pre-), before and carry, so it’s “to carry before.” When you prefer something, you carry it before the others.

In Latin, refer means “to carry back.” Re- “again, back to” and ferre, carry. When you refer to something, you carry back your attention to it. Differ comes from dis- (apart) and ferre, making it “carry or set apart.”  A difference is what sets things apart! This is also where defer comes from. The two words split apart in the sixteenth century, when the latter took on a temporal sense (as in delay). Defer as in “to yield” is, again, from the same de + ferre. It was the Middle French language that started using it as such and we in English used it in the “pass on or yield to another” sense.

A little later, we have transfer showing up—trans-, as in beyond, made “to carry beyond,” which is a good definition for moving something. Infer is another fairly simple origin: in- means in or inside, so it is “to carry inward.” A good, but figurative, way of saying “thought something up.”

If you remember what the con- prefix means, you’ll know that confer means “to carry together,” which makes sense when you think conferring means consulting together (or, dare I say, conferencing). Finally, offer comes from the Latin offere, to present or bring before. The o in offer comes from ob-, which means toward or against. Ob- + -fer means to carry towards and when you get an offer (wink, wink), you’re carried towards an agreement. 

Are you as fascinated with this as I am? No? No one read to the end? Oh, well… 

Thanks goes to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which has more information on words than I could learn in a lifetime.

—ception

“Ception” is another one of those not-words that is part of many words without being one. As anyone who has looked at movie listings in the past year will tell you, it is part of inception, but it is also part of reception, perception, conception and deception. Interesting that those last three words all relate to –ceive (receive, perceive, and deceive) but there is no “inceive.” Instead, there is incept, which means to take in or digest (yeah, I had to look that one up). What brought about this language evolution?

Inception is in fact the last one to form, and it’s worth noting that the –ceive words showed up first in the fourteenth century, while the –ception evolutions showed up in the fifteenth (check the Etymology Online links in the individual words for the sources).

Perceive, conceive, receive and deceive are all of Old French extraction (perçoivre, recoivre and decevoir) and like most of the Old French language, it can be traced to classical Latin—percipere, concipere, recipere, and decipere.

Cipere, the root word, is from the classical Latin capare—to take (interesting side note: it is also the root word for capable). Obviously, this is a case of the prefixes bringing the true definition to the word.

The per- prefix comes from the preposition "per" and means through, thoroughly, by means of, during—well, there are quite a few of them. Looking at percipere’s definition of obtain, gather, one can see it becomes “to thoroughly take” or perhaps “fully take.” While take itself is an easy word (you’ve either taken something or you haven’t), per- reiterates the taking. That’s probably why percipere also means the metaphorical “to grasp with the mind.” If you’ve completely taken something in, you’ve perceived it…at least that’s so in modern English. In modern French, the literal “fully take/collect” meaning is also used with the word.

Likewise, con- has been added to cipere. If you remember last week’s lesson on the con/com prefix, you’ll know that it means “together.” So, it would be “taken together.” Historically, conception was used to mean pregnancy (which requires two people—together), but there has always been a metaphorical meaning of create along with it. One could say an idea is a conception between thoughts.  

Next, if we look at receive, we see that the re- prefix means “back to the original” or “again.” Combined with take, recipere would mean “to take back” or “retake.” I haven’t found a reason for the change from retake to collect. I can only postulate that it evolved over the years from retake to accept because re- is also often simply an intensive, like saying “I really took it.”

De- has different meanings. It can show the “undoing” of a verb, like how we currently use it in deemphasize, or it can mean “from or away” (defend—away from strikes), or “down, completely” as in debate(completely beat—seriously). In deceive, the de- is as in defend, removing from the verb. Literally, it is “from taking,” but perhaps it evolved to mean “keep from taking” and from there, mislead.

As for the –ception words for the above, they evolved in the late fourteenth/early fifteenth centuries as nouns for the verbs. In Latin, the root word they stem from is –ceptionem, which is a from –ceptio, a nominative (basically a way of changing a word depending on what sense it is used in, like when to use I and when to use me; nominatives are rarely used in English but common in Latin).

But we have one more word to look at! Inception showed up in the late fifteenth century, around the same time as the other –ception words but without a –cieve word to compliment it. It is from the classical Latin inceptionem, from incipere (now that should be familiar). In- is another prefix with many meanings. It can mean “without” (like inactive) or upon, into (invoke—into voice). In incipere, it is in the second sense, so it is “taking in” or “in take.” Linguistically, I would say begin and in take aren’t that far of. When you begin something (or incept it), you must mentally take it in, conceive of it. But I can’t say for sure.

Yeah, this was a lot longer than the three hundred word limit I wanted to enforce. But while the rules aren’t meant to be broken, these ones are mine to interpret. So : P.

Thanks to the Online Etymology Dictionary.

The French-Linguistics.com dictionary.

Orbilat.com’s section on the French Language.

And Dictionary.com for helping me to figure out just what nominative means. Oh, and incept.

Pre—

The amusing part of the word prefix is that it has its own prefix. That just makes it delightful. But enough about that. I’m sure I’ll get around to its etymology one of these days. This is for the actual etymology of some prefixes.

Prefixes influence the meaning of words, and they tend to do it in the same way. For example, let’s look at a common prefix for two, bi. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s Latin (i.e. Classical Latin) in origin (the same word, even). That bi- stems from the Old Latin dvi-, which is less strange if you know that in Old Latin, the v was used like a w, and dvi- would be pronounced more like dwi-. As for why d switched to b, I haven’t found a specific source on it, but I do know that Old Latin was in large part taken from the Etruscan language, and they did not have a letter b at all. The Old Latin B came from the Greeks and was probably applied to their dwi to become bi. Why? I don’t know. They liked the way it sounded, I guess. And for the record, dwi goes back even further, to the old Proto-Indo-European dwo-, which of course, meant two. But the point is, when you bi is in front of a word, it always indicates two. Sometimes, it is a slightly different variation—biannual means twice a year, bicycle means two wheels, bisexual means dual sexed—but it’s always two.

Maybe something more complex would illustrate it better. Like com-. See what I did there? See it? Okay, I’m getting entirely too pleased with myself. Back to com, and it’s children with similar meanings, con-, and co-. There is also, col-(as in colleague), and cor-(as in correlation), but they only appear in front of l and r, respectively. Like the others, they mean together or with.

Let me use complex to explain that better. The word is from the Classical Latin complexus (surrounding, encompassing), the past participle of complecti, to encircle or embrace. Plecti comes from plectere, to weave, making complecti to weave or twine together, which is a lot like embrace (when you embrace something, you wrap your arms around it…well, a lot of words seem to represent what they seem like). The point is, in literal terms, it goes from weave to weave together. This is what the com- family of prefixes does for their words.

Oh, and because I’m sure you’re curious: com- appears when the root word begins with b, l, m, p, or r. Con- appears in front of c, d, j, n, q, s, t, v. Finally, co- appears before the vowels and letters that can sound like vowels, like h, as well as gn, which is in a lot of words, like cognizance. There are also co- words that were once two parts (costar used to be co-star; codependent used to be co-dependent) but lost the dash along the way.

Ta-daaaaa!


Sources:
The Online Etymology Dictionary
Omniglot.com
Latin Pronunciation Demystified by Michael A. Covington of the University of Georgia.

Language of Confusion: ‘flicted

One of the interesting things about prefixes is that they can change an otherwise meaningless word into something with substance. Flict is not a word, but you put an in- in front of it and suddenly we have something. And let’s not forget con- or a-, other common prefixes.

It’s easy to see the ‘flict’ words are related. One is forcing something on a subject (inflict). One is the physical damage of the subject (afflict). And finally, we have the word that is used when one is torn between opposing actions (conflict). But what, I ask, is this flict?

Captain Etymology to the rescue! [insert catchy theme music]

I enjoy this way too much.

All three of these words are derived from Latin, but they all showed up as we know them at different times. The first was afflict, which showed up in the late fourteenth century as a word for “to cast down.” In Old French it is aflicter, in Latin, afflictare, to damage, harass, torment.

Remember the word frequentative? It means making a verb continuous, like wrestle (an ongoing struggle) from wrest (taking from). And afflictare is the frequentative of affligere, to overthrow or strike down. Instead of one overthrow, it’s a constant challenge. Interesting considering it now means to strike down with illness, which I suppose is a torment. : )

Later, in the early fifteenth century, conflict showed up as a verb (to be in a conflict) and at about the same time, a noun. It comes from the Latin conflictus or confligere, to be in conflict with. Inflict came about a century later, in the 1560s, from similar Latin words: inflictus and infligere, to strike against. So what about the flict?

All three words have the same root: fligere (flictus), to strike. It comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for to strike, bhlig, which is seen in several other languages, in Greek as phlibein (to crush), in Czech as blizna (scar), in Welsh as blif (catapult). In all cases, it is a word for doing damage to something. How interesting that we have no direct translation in English.

The difference is in the prefixes. The in- in the on sense (a strike on one’s home for example), the con- in the with sense (strike/battle with), the a-, from the prefix ad-, in the to sense (a strike directly to someone, which is probably why it is now associated with bodily harm).

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Wait. That was last week, wasn't it?

Sources: As always, the Online Etymology Dictionary.

            Dictionary.com

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