Language Of Confusion: Acting!, Part II

Back to looking at words related to act, which are all descended from the Proto Indo European root ag-, to drive, draw out, or move. This week, all the words start with ag-, too.
 
First, agent showed up in the late fifteenth century, initially meaning one who acts, then a natural force that produces something in the mid sixteenth century, and a deputy or representative at the end of the sixteenth century (it didn’t mean a secret agent until 1916!). Agency showed up in the mid sixteenth century, where it meant an active operation, then a mode of producing effect, and then way later in 1861 it meant a place where business is done. Both words are from the classical Latin agentem, from the verb agere, which we talked about last week as being the origin word for act. It kind of seems like agent replaced what actor used to be. And then it came to mean spy. There’s also agenda, which showed up in the mid seventeenth century, which is directly taken from a Latin word. And it also is from agere, which is from ag-.
 
Next is less obvious. Agility showed up in the early fifteenth century, a little before agile. It’s from the Old French agilité, from the classical Latin agilitatem, which is just agility, which is from agilis (agile), and that’s from agere. It does make sense that the word for movement would also give us the word for nimble and quick.
 
Slightly less sensible is agitate, which showed up in the mid sixteenth century, slightly after agitation. Both are from the classical Latin agitare, to drive (forward), which is from agere, and since ag- does mean to drive, I guess I can see it. To drive, to put in motion, to agitate.
 
How about agony? It showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French agonie/agoine, and Late Latin agonia. That’s from the Greek ag­­onia, which means agony or anguish, from agon, to struggle, to put in motion, which is from ag-. Kind of a journey, but I guess it makes sense.
 
And related to that is antagonist, which showed up in the late sixteenth century, a few decades after antagonize. It’s from the French antagoniste and Late Latin antagonista, which is from the Greek antagonistes, competitors. That’s from antagonizesthai, to compete, where the anti means against and the rest is from agon. To antagonize is to struggle against. And yeah, protagonist is from the same place. The only difference is the prefix is from proto, which is from the Proto Indo European root per-, which means forward. A protagonist is driving the agony forward.
 
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
Orbis Latinus

Language of Confusion: Ant-agony

The hero of our stories is called the protagonist while the villain is referred to as the antagonist. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to wonder what the origins of those words are.

Protagonist showed up in the late seventeenth century, after Middle English started to be replaced by Modern. Shockingly enough, it’s not Latin in origin but Greek, coming from protagonists which basically means main character. The prot- part of the word comes from proto—first—and the -agonist part comes from agonistes, which means actor. So literally, the primary actor.

Antagonist isn’t much of a surprise, although it did show up almost a century earlier in Old French. But the origin is easy: ant-, from anti- and meaning against. More interesting is if you look further back into the suffixes’ history. Agonistes is from the Greek agon, or contest, and it’s related to both agony and act.

Is there something deep and meaningful in that? Perhaps. Words are what we make them to be, what we need them to be.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

English Club’s History of theEnglish Language.

With additional information from Rice University’s Words in English: History.