Exercises for
Textbook
1
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 1
A
Study questions
1. Identify a set of words with the (pseudo)-affix Mac: (e.g., MacBuy,
MacWorld).
2. Identify ten compounds containing the elements net orware as an
element of the compound.
3. Find ten words in your dictionary whose etymology is “unknown.”
4. Explain the difference between “core” and “learned” vocabulary.
5. Here is a list of compounds1
(a) Are any of them likely to be found in a good dictionary as separate entries? If so, which ones and why?
(b) For each of the “transparent” compounds (therefore not likely
to be listed in a dictionary), construct a sentence which shows
the syntactic relation between the two parts of the compound
(e.g., for boy scout, one might suggest “boy who is a scout”).
bug spray
fly paper
mothballs
fashion show
heat shield
windmill
car thief
candle light
ink blot
bedbug
sugar beet
arrowhead
tinfoil
mad house
bank teller
buffalo chips
ground water
ground pepper
silkworm
earthworm
worm drive
footwear
onionskin
potato chips
6. Does it make a difference whether they are printed as one word or
as two? Test a couple of dictionaries: do they agree on all of these
examples as to whether they are one word or two words?
1
These examples are drawn from Robert B. Lees, “Problems in the grammatical analysis of English nominal compounds,” 174–86 in Progress in Linguistics, ed. by Manfred
Bierwisch and Karl Erich Heidolph (Mouton, 1970).
1
2
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 1
7. What is the “belles lettres tradition”?
8. The expression “creation de novo” is not explained in the chapter.
What does it mean? What is the equivalent expression in English?
How does that phrase come to mean “de novo”?
9. What is the difference between an “initialism” and an “acronym”?
Can you think of any examples which seem to be a mix of initialism and acronym?
10. Look up the word okay. It has a complicated history. See if you can
sort it out and be prepared to explain how this most famous of all
Americanisms came into existence.
11. Suppose a fraternity named itself TAU NU TAU. What wordforming process would they be following? (Be careful: the question
is trickier than it looks.)
12. Go to a big library – university or big city – and find your way in
the stacks to the shelves labeled PE 1500 to PE 1700. Jot down the
subjects of at least ten of the dictionaries you find there. How
many topics could you have listed if you had listed all or even most
of them?
13. For words created by shortening, there is a general principle that
usually governs what part of the word is retained and what parts
are thrown away. What is this principle?
14. The words woman, lord, holiday, bonfire, hussy, and nothing are
listed in Chapter 1 as being words that have been derived from
compounds that were once transparent like those in question 5
above. Speculate about the reasons why words like these lose their
identity as compounds – what forces are at work?
15. How many words do you think you know? That is, what do you
think is approximately the size of your active vocabulary? What are
some of the problems you might encounter in trying to calculate
any reasonable answer to this question?
16. (This is based on an essay called “The Mathematics of Language,”
by Henry Kucera, which appears the front matter of the third
edition of the Heritage [1992].) Shakespeare’s complete works
contain 884,647 words. Discounting forms like loves, loved, loving
and counting them all as one word (love), the total vocabulary he
used is about 18,000 words. And yet in a modern body of writing
of about the same length, what is known as “The Brown Corpus,”
they used 37,851 words (defined the same way). Has English gotten
richer? Or might there be some other explanation? Hint: what
kinds of texts (there were 500 of them) went into the totality of the
Brown Corpus? – You don’t have to know; you can make a good
guess.
2
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 2
A
Study questions
1. Which modern languages are descended from Common
Germanic?
2. What major socio-historical and cultural events that influenced the
English lexicon in a major way took place at each of the following
dates or periods? (a) End of sixth century A.D.? (b) 1066? (c) 1476?
3. Why are the 1,000 or so loanwords that came into English from
Scandinavian in the Anglo-Saxon period not easily recognizable as
foreign, nor marked as belonging to a special more literate or more
elevated level of usage?
4. Where in the British Isles would you expect to find localities
bearing the names Allenthorpe, Culverthorpe, Scunthorpe,
Thorganby, Selby? Why?
5. What are the two chronological layers of French borrowings into
Middle English? Why are the numbers of loanwords for the two
periods uneven?
6. Using your dictionary, determine and state the ultimate source of
the following words.
beaver
film
fiscal
hound
hyrax
industry
innocuous
intrude
jurisdiction
lake
make
moose
mother
partnership
push
secret
slate
tsunami
viewerdom
wallaby
B
Roots
Terminology: In Textbook Chapter 4, the terms root and affix
are discussed in detail. At this early stage, root can be understood intuitively as the nuclear core of the word, and affix as peripheral material,
3
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 2
4
either in front of the root or after it, which modifies the meaning of the
root. The symbol √xxx means “the root xxx.” Where two or more
forms of the root are given in the second line, these should be understood as free variants of the root named on the top row. Your task is to
look at the words containing each root and make sure you know what
the meaning of the root contributes to the meaning of the whole word.
If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary. The questions in parentheses below some of the tables are intended to alert your curiosity to
something special in the meaning or historical derivation of the root.
1.
√ann “year”
ann
anni
annu
enni
annals
anniversary
annual
biennial
annuity
centennial
superannuated
millennium
perennial
(What do annals, annuity, and superannuated mean?)
2.
√arch “beginning”
archae “ancient”
arch “principal, rule(r)”
archaeology
hier1archy(-ical)
archetype(-ical)
matriarchy
archaeological
monarchy
archaic
oligarchy
patriarchy
archive(s)
an2archy
archbishop(-ric)
1
hier is a root that means “sacred”
2
an- is an affix that means “lacking”
Roots
(What’s the connection of archives to government rule?)
(How does the notion “sacred rule” – the word hierarchy – come to have
the present meaning?)
3.
√aster “star”
astr
astro
aster
astrology
astronaut
asteroid
astronomy
astrophysics
dis3aster
(Figure out – look it up if you can’t – what disaster has to do with
stars.)
4.
√brev “short”
brevi
brief
brev
abbreviate
brief
brevity
breviloquent
briefcase
debrief
5.
√cele(b)r “swift, frequent”
celer
celebr
celerity
celebrate
accelerate
celebrity
(What is the connection between “swift” or “frequent” and the meanings of celebrate and celebrity?)
3
dis- is a prefix that means “bad”
5
6
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 2
6.
√clud “close”
clud
claus
clos
exclude, -sion, -sive
claustrophobia
closet
include, -sion, -sive
claustrophobic
disclose, -ure
preclude
enclose, -ure
seclude, -sion
conclude, -sion
(Are clud and its derivatives related to cloud ?)
7.
√dei “god”
divin
dei
divine
deity
divinity
deify
deism
8.
√flec “bend, turn”
flex (flecs)
flect
reflex(-ive)
reflect(-ion)
flexible(-ity)
deflect(-ion)
circumflex
genuflect(-ion)
inflexion
(What does a circumflex accent look like?)
(What bends when someone genuflects?)
Roots
9.
√hes “stick, hold back”
hes
her
adhesive (-ion)
adherent
cohesive (-ion)
(in)coher(-ent)
hesitate (-ion)
inher(-ent)
10.
√jac “throw, lay, lie”
jac
ject
adjacent
reject(-ion)
ejaculate
inject(-ion)
eject(ive)
project(-ile, -or)
object(-ive)
conjecture
adjective
(How do you imagine that something “thrown toward” something
could come to refer to any class of words used to modify a noun or
other substantive?)
11.
√jug “join”
jug
jung
conjugal(-ity)
conjunction
conjugate(-ion)
juncture
jugular
subjunctive
NOTE: The variant of the root given above as jung actually never
shows up in this form, since it is always followed by -t, which causes
a regular change of g to c (phonetically k).
7
8
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 2
12.
√lev “light, rise”
lev
lieve
levitate
relieve
levity
elevate
lever
leaven(-ing)
alleviate
(Believe does not contain this root, contrary to its superficial appearance. Determine for yourself, with your dictionary, what class of
words believe is associated with.)
13.
√lig “bind, tie”
ligat
lig
liga
ligature
oblige
ligament
religion
(What do oblige and religion have to do with “being tied”?)
14.
√loc “place”
loc
loco
local
locomotive
relocate
locomotion
locative
allocate
locus
Roots
15.
√phan “show, appear”
phen
phan
fan
phenomenon
phantom
fantasy
phenomenal
phantasm
fantastic
fancy
sycophant
diaphanous
theophany
epiphany
(See if you can figure out how sycophant came to have its present
meaning. It means, literally, “fig shower,” i.e. one who shows figs.)
(What does Epiphany have to do with the twelfth day after Christmas?)
16.
√stat, stac “stay, stand, make firm, set up”
st
stat, stac
stit, stic
stant, stanc
arrest
state
substitute
circumstance
statue
armistice
instant
static
institute
substance
apostacy
(Arrest is ad- + re- + st.)
stance
9
10
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 2
17.
√ten “stretch, thin”
tend
tenu
tens
attend(-tion, -tive)
attenuate
intense(-ive)
extend
tenuous
extensive(-ion)
intend(-sion)
tense(-ion)
contend(-tion)
ostensible
distend
pretend(-tious)
tendon(-itis)
(It may be worth noting that intension is from intend, not from intense,
even though the spelling suggests the latter.)
18.
√the “place, put”
thes
the
thet
thesis
theme
epenthetic
parenthesis
anathema
hypothetical
metathesis
apothecary
epithet
hypothesis
synthesis
epenthesis
(How does anathema come to mean “cursed” or “loathed”?)
(How does apothecary change from “put away,” as in a warehouse, to
the present meaning?)
(What special meaning does metathesis have in the field of linguistics?)
(Epenthesis is a technical term in linguistics; the <d> in thunder, which
comes from thunor, is an example of it, so what does it mean?)
Roots
19.
√theo “god”
the
theo
theism
apotheosis
atheism
theocracy
pantheism
theology
theosophy
(How does apotheosis come to mean “deification” or “an exalted
example”?)
(What do all the examples on the left branch have in common that
might explain the fact that the final -o of the root is lost?)
11
3
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
A
Study questions
1. What are the source languages for the largest numbers of words
borrowed into English?
2. What is the source of the majority of the most common, everyday
words of English?
3. During which periods in history did English borrow most actively
from other languages?
4. What sources did English draw on for new words during the
Renaissance?
5. What was the Renaissance a “re-birth” of ?
6. Why is it not clear whether unimportant, princely, unjust, refill,
respectful, womanize, should be classified as native vocabulary, as
borrowed vocabulary, or both?
7. Why is it not clear whether destructive, cooperation, position, solid,
are Latin or French in origin?
8. Why is the statement that “About 45 percent of our vocabulary is
of French origin” more informative and interesting than the
equally true statement that “About 98 percent of our vocabulary is
of Indo-European origin”?
9. When were the following words first recorded in English? Where
did they come from:
(a) aborigine
(j) misanthrope
(b) apparatus
(k) ode
(c) cathedra
(l) parenthesis
(d) chronology
(m) podium
(e) complex
(n) reebok
(f) embargo
(o) serum
(g) forceps
(p) span
(h) lotus
(q) specimen
(i) mangle
(r) theory
10. When were the following words borrowed from Italian? How does
the chronology of the borrowing reflect the cultural scene in
England?
12
Roots
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
B
alfresco
cameo
carnival
cupola
duetto
flauto
imbroglio
(h)
(i)
(j)
(k)
(l)
(m)
(n)
loggia
macaroni
maestoso
operetta
quartetto
staccato
toccata
Roots
Terminology: For terminology and procedure, please refer to
page 3 of this workbook.
1.
√apt “fit, suited, capable”
apt
att
ept
adapt
attitude
ineptitude
aptitude
adept
2.
√auto1 “self, same”
auto
tauto
autarchy
tautology (-ical)
autocrat (-cy)
tautologous
automat (-ic) (-e) (-ic)
tautomorphous
automobile
autonomy
autobiography
(The meaning of autocracy shows a good deal of degeneration –
explain.)
1
The status of auto as a root or prefix is open to different interpretations. In the words
listed in this section it clearly qualifies as a root and those words have been around for at
least a hundred years. In more recent times auto has been extremely productive and can
probably be classified also as a (pseudo)-prefix, see Chapter 4: autoimmune (1950–55),
autodestruct (1970–75), autopilot (1930–35), autosexing (1935–40) autoteller (1980–85).
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
(Autopsy means what, literally? How does it relate to the phrase, “See
for yourself ”?)
(What is a good synonym for tautology?)
3.
√cap “head”
cap
capit
cep
cip
capsize
capital (-ize, -ism)
biceps
occipital
capriccio
capitol
forceps
precipice
cape
(re-)capitulate(-ion)
hydrocephalous
precipitate
decapitate
captain
(Could one argue that chief, chapter contain variants of this morpheme?)
(How does the meaning of cape, as in Cape Horn, fit in here?)
(See if you can find out why capital and capitol are not spelled alike.)
(To understand capitulate, here is a hint: it means “to specify under
separate heads.” Explicate it from there.)
4.
√carn “flesh”
carn
carr
car
carnal
carrion
caruncle
carnage
carnival
carnivore
(re-) incarnate
(Carnival is the season just before Lent, marked by merrymaking and
feasting, from Latin levare “remove” so “remove flesh” in preparation for Lent, during which, until Easter, Catholics eat no meat. By
association, a time of revelry or a festival.)
(Caruncle is from Lat. caruncula, diminutive of “flesh,” fleshy excrescence on organisms and plants.)
Roots
5.
√card “heart, agree”
card
cord
cardiac
cordially
cardiology
accord
dexocardiac
accordion
endocardium
concord
epicardium
discord
pericardium
record
megalocardia
myocardia
(The connection between heart and memory – e.g. record – is obscure.)
(How did accordion get into this set, do you suppose?)
6.
√cast “cut, purify, fortify”
cast
cest
chast
caste
incest
chaste
castle
incestuous
chastise
castigate
chateau
castrate
(Caste refers to any one of the hereditary classes into which Hindu
society is divided, the idea being to maintain pure blood lines; note
that it is surprising to find a final -e here, since one would then
expect it to rhyme with chaste, which it does not.)
(Chaste is the French form of the word “cast,” the basic root of this
whole set; but in this word it has been narrowed to mean a particular type of purity, namely female sexuality.)
(Incest has a negative prefix, therefore, “soiled, impure”; again,
however, the word has narrowed and pejorated substantially, referring specifically to sexual relations between close relatives.)
15
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
7.
√corp “body, flesh”
corp
corpse
corpus
corporal
corpse
corpus
incorporate
corps
corpuscular
corporeal
corsage
corpulent
corps de ballet
(The corporal that refers to a non-commissioned officer below sergeant
is the result of confusion with √cap “head”; the word used to be
caporal.)
8.
√dent “tooth”
dent
odont
dan
dental, -ure, -ist
orthodont -ure, -ist, -ics
dandelion
indent, -ure
periodont -ure, -ist, -ics
prosthodontics
mastodon
(What does mastodon mean, literally?)
(Do you perceive a resemblance between a dandelion and a lion’s
tooth?)
9.
√hem “blood”
hemo
em
hemoglobin
anemic
hemophilia
anemia
hemoptysis
hemorrhage
hemorrhoid
hemostat
Roots
(What does √glob mean in hemoglobin?)
(Hemophilia is a peculiar word: there has been a dramatic unexplained
shift of meaning to a hereditary disorder characterized by uncontrollable bleeding; but the etymological sense “loving blood” is the
diametric opposite of this meaning.)
10.
√ment “think, remind, warn”
ment
mon
m(i)n(e)(s)
mental (-ity)
admonish
mnemonic
mentor
admonition
amnesia
dementia
monitor
reminiscent
memento
monster
sentimental (-ity)
monument
compos mentis
premonition
(Note that mnemonic contains the root twice, in two allomorphs.
Extremely rare.)
(Latin memento – imperative of the verb “remember,” as in memento
mori “remember dying, be mindful of death,” memento is borrowed
as a noun with the meaning of “a reminder, a keepsake.”)
(compos mentis – Latin: “togetherness of mind”; in legal terminology:
full control of one’s mental faculties.)
11.
√op “eye, sight, look at”
op
opt
ops
presbyopia
optical
autopsy
amblyopia
optician
biopsy
myopia
optometry
synopsis
(Amblyopia is a curious word: it means “condition of a walking eye” –
dimness of vision without apparent physical defect or disease of
the eye.)
(Why does myopia mean “near-sightedness”?)
(Synopsis literally means “viewing together,” i.e., an overview.)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
12.
√path “feel, suffer, illness”
path
pathet
apathy
apathetic
allopathy
pathetic
electropathy
hydropathy
empathy
homeopathy
psychopath
idiopathic
pathology
pathos
sympathy
(Allopathy is conventional treatment that produces other (allo) than the
present condition.)
13.
√ped “foot”
ped
pod
pus
biped (centi-, milli-)
antipode
octopus
expedite
podium
impede
podiatry
impediment
pedal
pedestal
pedestrian
(im)pediment
pedometer
Roots
(What is the literal meaning of expedite?)
(Pedestal from Italian pie di stal “foot of the stall.”)
(Antipode literally means “with the feet pointing in opposite directions”; what place is directly opposite, through the center of the
earth, to Greenwich, England?)
14.
√sent “feel, agree, think”
sent
sens
assent
sense
consent
sensual
dissent
sensuous
resent
presentiment
sentence
sentiment (-al)
sententious
(The usual understanding of sentence seems remote from this root; but
think of a sentence as a way of thinking, expression of a thought
or opinion or judgment, and it makes sense.)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
15.
√spec “look, see”
spec
spect
spic
skep
scop2
specious
spectator
suspicion
skeptic
microscope
speculum
aspect
conspicuous
spectroscope
specter
auspice
horoscope
introspect
despicable
episcopal
prospect
perspicuous
perspective
perspicacity
respect(-ive)
circumspect
spectrogram
suspect
(The √hor- of horoscope is cognate with hour – so what does the compound mean literally?)
(Specious is tricky: it originally means “fair to behold,” but it has
degenerated to something like “plausible but lacking in solidity or
authenticity.”)
(Episcopal = “overseer.”)
16.
√tag “touch, feel”
tact
tag
tang
tig
contact
contagious
tangent
contiguous
intact
tangential
contiguity
tact (-ics)
tangible
tactile
2
-scope is a very productive root in English, compare baroscope, gyroscope, kaleidoscope, laryngoscope, periscope, stethoscope, telescope. With -scopy we have spectroscopy, urinoscopy etc.
Roots
17.
√vid “see”
vid
vis
evident (-ce)
advise
provide (-ence)
supervise
video
television
visa
vision
visit
visor
18. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √anim “breathe, mind, soul, spirit” – animate, animadversion,
animal, animosity, animus, equanimity, inanimate, magnanimous, unanimous.
(What does animate mean, literally? – remembering that √-ate
is a causative suffix.)
(Animadversion means literally “turning the mind to something”; but it is a negative word, “making negative comments”;
can you explain how the negative sense came about?)
(Is there a common phrase in English which preserves the original sense of this morpheme?)
(How might one explain the extremely negative sense of animosity?)
(Pusill- means “weak, small.”)
(b) √dexter “right hand, adroit” – dextral, dexterity, dextrous, dextrorotatory, dextrose, dextrocardia, dextrocardiac
(Dextrose is the dextrorotatory form of glucose.)
(What is the proper antonym of dextrous (also spelled dexterous)? Hint: it has to do with the left hand.)
(c) √ego “self ” – egocentric, egoism, egoist, egotist, egomania,
egotism.
(d) √iatr “cure, physician” – iatrogenic, geriatric, psychiatry (-ist),
pediatric (-ian), podiatry.
(e) √palp “touch, feel” – palp-ate, palpitate, palpable
(palpable is extended analogically to mean “as if you could feel
it.”)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 3
(f) √psych “spirit, soul, mind” – psyche, psychedelic, psychiatry,
psychic, psychoanalysis, psychology, psychopath, psychosomatic, psychotic, psychotropic.
(What does √somat mean? Now what does psychosomatic
mean? Likewise for √trop and psychotropic.)
(g) √pyr “fire, fever” – pyretic, antipyretic, pyrite “fire-stone,”
pyromania, pyrophoric, pyrotechnics, pyrosis.
(Pyrosis is a fancy word for what familiar condition?)
(h) √spir “breathe, animate” – aspire (-ation), conspire (-acy),
expire (-ation), inspire (-ation), perspire (-ation), respirator
(-ion), spirant, spirit (spright)
(sprite is originally a contracted form of spirit, specialized to
mean “disembodied spirit.”)
4
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
A
Study questions
1. In order for two morphemes to be cognate, what must they share?
2. In order for two languages to be cognate, what must they share?
3. Look up algebra. It occurs in all the modern European languages
in essentially the same form. They got the word from medieval
Latin, which got it from Arabic. Since Arabic is not cognate with
English, is algebra cognate with the Arabic source al-jabr?
4. What is the difference between two words sharing a derivation, and
two words having a common origin? Are all cognates derivatives?
Are all derivatives cognates? Explain.
5. What are the differences between opaque allomorphs and transparent allomorphs?
6. Define the term “morpheme.” Give examples of morphemes of
different syllabic lengths.
7. Examine the words below. Are all of them cognates? Parse each
one of them. Are all these words cognate? Which ones appear to
you to be unrelated to the majority of the words in this group.
Example: conformity = con + form + ity
formalin, formant, format, formerly, formic, Formica, Formosa,
formula, informational, informer, reformation, uniformity.
8. How does a compound differ from a morpheme? Is there a
minimum number of morphemes per compound? Is there a
maximum number of morphemes per compound?
9. What is the minimum number of roots in a compound? Think of
five compounds containing the minimum number of roots and -ive
compounds containing significantly more (like, as many as possible) than the minimum number.
10. In what ways do affixes differ from roots? Give five examples of
prefixes and five examples of suffixes from English. Define them as
precisely as possible (which in some cases may not be very precise,
because their meanings tend to be vague).
11. (1) Determine for each of the following words whether the root is
a free morpheme or a bound morpheme.
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
24
(a)
(b)
(c)
(2)
insert
(d) recount
majority
(e) imprint
circumspect
(f) evoke
Is -ity (abnormality, ability, humanity) a bound or free morpheme?
12. Divide the following words up into morphemes:
(a) unanswerable
(e) pencil
(b) interactive
(f) unbeatably
(c) consonant
(g) event
(d) teacups
(h) fixation
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words attached to each root and
make sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
1.
√aud “hear”
aud
audi
audit
audible
audiometric
audit
audiometer
auditory
audience
audition
auditorium
2.
√cant “sing”
cant
cent
chant
incantation
incentor
enchanted
canto
cantabile
chant(or)
Roots
(What explains the forms with initial <ch>?)
(Though it looks as if it ought to be the source of incentive, it isn’t.)
(Is incentor a very common word? If you didn’t know it, look it up.)
3.
√dic “speak, give”
dic
dict
indicate(-ive, -ion, -or)
dictate(-or, -ion)
abdicate(-ion)
edict
vindicate(-ion)
addict(-ion, -ive)
verdict
benediction
indict
contradict(-ion, -ory)
(Which of the two root meanings appears in addict?)
(How do we account for the peculiar pronunciation of indict?)
4.
√doc “teach, praise”
doct
docu
dog
doc
doctor
document(-ary)
dogma
docile(-ity)
doctrine(-al)
docudrama
dogmatic
indoctrinate(-ion)
dogmatism
25
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
26
5.
√fa “speak, spoken about”
pha, phe
fa
phas, fes
phem
phatic1
fable2
aphasia3
blaspheme4
prophet
fabulous
profess(or)
disphemism5
fame(-ous)
profession
euphemism6
affable
ineffable
defame
infant7
preface
fate
(One could, with good justification, claim that the relation between
these allomorphs is too remote, diachronically, to be recognizable
synchronically, and that they should be listed as at least two distinct morphemes, perhaps even three. But the semantic coherence
is rather striking.)
(What sort of trauma causes aphasia, usually?)
(How does affable get its sense “amiable”?)
6.
√glos “tongue, speech”
glot
glos
glottis
gloss
glottal
glossary
epiglottis8
polyglot9
1
2
3
5
8
Speaking to establish an atmosphere of sociability rather than communicating ideas.
When we say, “Good morning, how are you?” we are being phatic: we do not expect a
recitation of the recent illnesses of the person we are addressing. In spite of some
spell-checkers’ built-in suggestion, it should not be confused with phallic < Gk.
phallos “penis,” or a representation thereof.
Originally just “story which is spoken,” has come to mean story about legendary events,
often with animals playing the roles of people, usually with a moral point to make.
4
√a means “not” and the suffix ia means “condition.”
√blas means “evil.”
6
7
√dys means “bad.”
√eu means “good.”
√in means “not.”
9
√epi means “upon” or “over.”
√poly means “many.”
Roots
(The use of the glottis in speech is secondary; what is the primary
anatomical function of the glottis?)
7.
√gnos “to know”
gni(t)
gnos
gnor
cognition
agnostic10
ignorant
incognito
prognosis11
ignore12
recognize
diagnosis
cognizant
diagnostic
8.
√graph “make lines, write, record”
graph
gram
telegraph
telegram
seismograph
grammar
phonograph
program
autograph
diagram
biography13
epigram
agraphia
ideogram
ideographic
anagram14
(See if you can track down the connection between grammar and
glamour.)
10
11
12
13
14
The a is a form of an meaning “not.”
√pro means “before.”
The i is a form of in meaning “not.”
√bio means “life.”
√ana means “from bottom to top,” or “back again.”
27
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
28
9.
√leg “choose, gather”
leg
lect
legion
e15lect(-ion,-or, -orate,-oral)
elegant/ce
neg16lect
sacrilege
se17lect (-ion)
prolegomenon
eclectic
legend
(Explain the “refinement” sense of the word elegant.)
(The root has to have the sense “steal” in order to interpret the word
sacrilege. Why?)
10.
√leg “law, charge”
leg
legis
legit
allege
legislate(-ure, -ion, -or)
legitimate
allegation
legitimize
delegat(-ion)
privilege18
colleague
collegial
legacy
legate
legal(-ity, ize)
(Why do the compounds in the middle have to do with creating laws?
What does lat mean?)
15
16
17
18
√ex means “out.”
√neg means “not.”
√se means “apart.”
√priv means “single” or “alone.”
Roots
11.
√log “speak, write, read, reason”
leg
lec(t)
log
legend
dialect
logo
legendary
acrolect
logogram
basilect
logic
mesolect
apology
lectern
prologue
lecture
dialogue
NOTE: There is a derivational suffix: -(o)logy “study,” as in biology,
anthropology, etc., in which the log is originally this root.
12.
√loqu “speak”
locu
loqu
locution
loquacious
circum19locution
eloquent
soliloquy
(What is the prefix in eloquent?)
13.
√nom “name”
nom
nomin
onym
mis20nomer
ignominy21
an22onymous
nominate
ant23onym
nominal
pseud24onym
nomenclature
hom25onym
19
21
23
25
20
√circum means “around.”
√mis means “wrongly.”
22
√ig is a form of √in- “not.”
√an means “without” or “lacking.”
24
√ant(i) means “opposite” or “against.”
√pseudo means “false” or “deceptive.”
√homo means “same.”
29
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
30
(Determine what the -clature portion of the word nomenclature comes
from.
After it was announced that the human gene had been mapped successfully, the journalists coined the word genomenclature. What is the
technical term for this coinage? )
14.
√or “mouth, speak”
or
os
adore
oscular
oratory
osculatory
(per)oration
oral
(Explain the massive semantic change that has taken place in the word
adore, which ought to mean simply “to speak to.”)
(In peroration, where do we get the sense of “speaking at great
length”?)
ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE: Usher, though no longer recognizable,
actually contains this same root. An usher was the door keeper
who first spoke to anyone entering a church.
15.
√ques “ask, speak”
ques
quer
quis
quir
question
query
inquisitive
inquire
request
querulous
inquisition
require26
conquest27
requisition
acquire
inquest
acquisitive
(Why does the word inquisition have a particularly negative sense?)
26
27
√re- here is simply intensive: “to desire very much” has become equivalent to “having
to have something.”
√con- “intensifier”; the sense is, to seek until you find (and subdue).
Roots
16.
√scrib “write”
scrib
script
scribe
scripture
describe
scriptorium
ascribe
description
scribble28
transcription
transcribe29
proscription
proscribe
prescription
prescribe
manuscript
(Figure out how the difference in meaning between proscribe and prescribe follows from the difference in the prefixes.)
(How does the sense “trivial” emerge in the word scribble?)
17.
√ser “put, arrange”
ser
sert
series
assert
serial
desert
seriatim
dissertation
seriation
exert
insert
PHONETIC NOTE: The s- is lost in ex-(s)ert by a principle discussed
in Chapter 6.
(Try to figure out how desert came to have its present meaning. Don’t
look it up: just think. Make a similar guess concerning dissertation.)
28
The suffix is diminutive.
29
√trans means “across.”
31
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 4
32
18.
√tut “watch, instruct”
tut
tuit
tutor30
in31tuition
tutelage32
tuition
tutorial
19.
√voc “speak, call”
voc
vok
vocal
evoke
vocabulary
provoke
advocate
revoke
vociferous
vocation
SPELLING NOTE: The root is spelled with -k only when the next
letter would cause “softening” of the -c. Thus provoke, if spelled
provoce, would be pronounced [pro-VOS].
20. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √agog “teach, induce” – pedagog(ue), pedagogy, demagog(ue),
demagoguery, synagogue
(The word demagogue, though it only means, literally,
“someone who teaches people,” is tarred with totally negative
connotations. Why?)
(Why do pedagogue and pedagogy sound so stuffy?)
(b) √cosm “universe, world, order” – cosmic, cosmology, cosmos,
cosmetic, cosmopolitan, microcosm, macrocosm
(How does cosmetic come to refer to such things as lipstick and
powder?)
(What does the polit of cosmopolitan mean?)
30
32
31
√or = “actor/agent” suffix.
√in- “on,” “knowing without the use of reason.”
The -el- is an extension of the stem, originally for past participle formation.
Root practice
(c) √etym “source, true” – etymology, etymon, etymological
(What is “true” about the etymology of a word?)
(d) √fuse “pour, melt, blend” – confuse, diffuse, effusive, infuse,
profuse, suffuse
(Not related to the type of fuse which sets of an explosion.
Why not?)
(e) √phon “sound” – cacophony, cacophonic, euphony, euphonious, phonetic, phonetics, phonology, phonograph, symphony.
(In what sense does a phonograph “write down” sounds?)
(Since symphony just means “sound together,” it must have
undergone what is called “narrowing” of meaning. Try to
explain what it might mean to undergo “narrowing of
meaning.”)
(f) √top “place” – topic, topology, topical, topography, toponymy,
isotopic
(Iso means “equal,” so isotopic means “equal place.” How does
it come to have the special meaning it does in chemistry?)
C
Root practice
1. Discover the root of each of the following words:
(a) analogy
(e) sonic
(b) dialect
(f) docent
(c) paragraph
(g) prophet
(d) denomination
(h) eclectic
2. Using the information given in the “Roots” section and your dictionary, parse and define the following words:
Example: manuscript:
manu – script
“by hand,” “write”
meaning: “something written by hand”
(a) anger
(j) parallelogram
(b) diagram
(k) phonology
(c) equivocal
(l) physiognomy
(d) fate
(m) plebiscite
(e) glossitis
(n) predict
(f) graphic
(o) quest
(g) ineffable
(p) sermon
(h) interlocutor
(q) ventriloquist
(i) legislate
33
5
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
A
Study questions
1. Define morphological rule.
2. (a) Define place of articulation.
(b) Give five examples of words staring with a consonant made at
the dental place of articulation.
(c) Give five examples of words containing palatal consonants.
3. Do the changes in pronunciation that are not accompanied by
orthographic changes count, in theory, as allomorphic variation
(e.g. deprive – deprivation)?
4. What are the five principles which generally determine the development of allomorphy?
5. What are some examples of undesirable sequences that are remedied by phonetic rules?
6. If a derivation has been in the language for a long time, is it more
or less likely to be transparent?
7. (a) Define manner of articulation.
(b) Give an example of a word containing a labiodental fricative.
(c) Give an example of a word containing a velar stop.
(d) Give an example of a word containing an affricate.
(e) Give an example of a word containing a nasal sonorant.
(f) Give an example of a word containing an oral sonorant.
8. The d in dog is a voiced alveolar stop. Describe the bolded sounds in
the words below in similar terms.
water
engineer
ladder
vocal
9. State which of the following sounds are stops, which are fricatives,
and which are sonorants.
(a) t
(c) ʃ
(e) l
(g) y
(i) v
(b) b
(d) (f) r
(h) m
(j) θ
34
Roots
10. Give the meaning of the indicated affixes in the following words:
(a) diaphanous
(b) interlocutor
(c) polytheism
(d) microcosm
(e) malformation
(f) retrograde
(g) cohere
(h) intimacy
(i) elevate
(j) immaculate
(k) lioness
(l) figurative
(m) politicize
(n) nullify
(o) monarchist
(p) refreshment
(q) starlet
(r) childish
(s) loathsome
(t) adulthood
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words under each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
1.
√ambl “walk, go”
ambl
ambul
amble
ambulance
preamble
somnambulist1
ambulant (-ce)
perambulate
(Not related to the Greek root √ambl- which means “to miscarry,” and
appears in many medical terms. This root is from Latin √ambul“walk.”)
(Why does amble have to be spelled with an <e> at the end? Why not
just ambl ? Could it reasonably be spelled ambel ?)
(Given what the root means, what sort of change in meaning does it
seem to have gone through?)
(What French phrase is ambulance a shortening of ?)
1
somn means “sleep.”
35
36
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
2.
√cad “fall”
cad
cas
cay
cid
cadaver
case
decay
accident
cadence
casual
deciduous
decadence
occasion
incident
coincide
occident
recidivism
(To see the connection in the word cadaver, think of the leaves in the
autumn of the year.)
(The word case as in “a legal case” is not related to the case of “brief
case.” which means “container.”)
(What is it that falls in a musical cadence?)
(What is falling down, in the word decadence?)
(To understand what is “falling” in the word occident, remember that
√ob- means “opposite.”)
(To understand recidivism, ask yourself what happens to some criminals after they are released from prison.)
3.
√clin “slope”
cli
clin
cliv
client
clinic
proclivity
climate2
decline
climax3
incline (-ation)
recline
2
3
The Greek word klima means “the sloping surface of the earth”; the association
between that meaning and the familiar word climate is clear.
The Greek ancestor of this word meant “ladder”; the modern meaning makes some
sense, but not a lot: with a ladder you get to the top, and the ladder leans.
Roots
4.
√cumb “bend, lie, hollow”
cub
cumb
concubine
incumbent
cube
recumbent
incubate
succumb
5.
√fer “carry, send, bring, bear”
fer
pher
phor
circumference
periphery
anaphor
conifer
peripheral
semaphor4
defer
metaphor
differ5
fertile
in-, pre-, suf-, trans- fer
offer
vociferous
(The idea of differ is that you “carry apart” your position against your
opposition.)
(Which sense of √fer is relevant in the meaning of fertile?)
(In the meaning of defer, what is carried, and where is it carried to?)
(What is being “carried” in a metaphor?)
4
5
sema “meaning.”
dif is from dis meaning “apart.”
37
38
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
6.
√flu “flow, river”
flu
fluc
fluv
fluent
fluctuate
fluvial
fluid
flux (= flucs)
fluviometer
influence
influx
affluent
effluent
mellifluous6
influenza
superfluous
(How do you suppose affluence came to have the sense “wealth”?)
(How does superfluous come to have the sense “useless and unnecessary”?)
7.
√gen “origin”
gene
genet, genes
genr
gen
gene
genetic
genre
oxygen
genesis
gender
hydrogen
6
genital
halogen
gentile, genteel
endogenous
gentle
exogenous
congenital
heterogen(e)ous
mell means “honey.”
Roots
8.
√gen “tribe, nation, type”
gen(i)
genu
gener
genius
ingenuity
general (-ize) (-ation)
ingenious
(dis)ingenuous
generic
congenial (-ity)
generous (-ity)
indigenous
generate (-ion) (-ive)
NOTE: √gen was originally a single root meaning “source.” At some
point in its history the two senses “origin” and “type” became
sufficiently distinct that we now have to say there are two distinct
(but homophonous) morphemes.
9.
√gn “birth”
gn
gon
germ(in)
cognate
gonorrhea
germinal
pregnant (-cy)
germinate
germane
German7
(√gn was originally an allomorph of √gen, above.)
10.
√ges “carry, bring, offer”
ges
gest
ger
(no examples)
gesture
gerund
gestation
belligerent
digest(ion)
ingest(ion)
suggest(ion, ive)
7
Practically everyone to the north of Italy was German, therefore neighboring, though
at times not very friendly neighbors.
39
40
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
(Why should ges be listed as an allomorph when there are no examples?)
(What is it that is “carried apart” or “broken up” in digestion?)
(For suggestion, think of the phrase “to bring under consideration.”)
11.
√grad “step, go”
grad
gred
gress
grade
ingredient
aggressive
gradation
digress
gradual
progress(-ive, -ion)
graduate(-ion)
regress(-ive, -ion)
degrade
retrogress(-ion)
degradation
(Is the allomorphy between grad and gred opaque? How about between
them and gress?)
(Try to explain the sense of digress – i.e., how does it come to have this
meaning?)
12.
√kine “move”
kinet
kines
cine
kinetic
kinesic(s)
cinema
kinesiology
telekinesics
(What does one study in the field of kinesiology?)
(What is a more everyday word for the area covered by telekinesics?)
Roots
13.
√lab “take, seize”
lab
leps
syllable
epilepsy
astrolabe
narcolepsy
prolepsis
(There is another morpheme √lab which means “lip,” as in labial. No
relation to the above root.)
(An astrolabe was a medieval instrument which “took” the altitudes of
stars so one could navigate.)
(If you are a narcoleptic, what are you “seized by”?)
(Look up prolepsis and see if you can relate the meaning to the etymology. Do the same with syllable. You will probably conclude that the
latter is a reasonable question, but the former is not.)
14.
√mit “send, go”
mit
mise
mis(s)
emit
promise (-ory)
emission
commit (-ment)
surmise
commission(-er)
committee
compromise
commissary
admit (-ance)
premise
admission (-ible)
omit
omission
permit
permission
submit
submission
transmit
transmission
missive
dismiss (-ive)
emissary
remission
41
42
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
SPELLING NOTE: Both the t and the s are doubled in many words in
order to mark the vowel as “short i.”
(Transmit means literally “to send across.” To send across what, do you
think?)
(The extended sense of admission, “confession of guilt.” is opaque in
that it doesn’t seem to have much connection with the notion
“sending towards something.”)
SEMANTIC NOTE: The three words missile, mission, and missive
have been specialized to their present meanings in ways that are not
reflected in the etymologies. The distinctions are exceptionally
arbitrary. A missile is restricted to military armaments; a missive is
a written message.
(Surmise means “conjecture”; see if you can give a reasonable paraphrase of the etymological sense of the word to explain how it
comes to mean “conjecture” – think about what can be confirmed
by evidence.)
15.
√mot “move”
mot
mov
mob
motion
move
mobile (-ize, -ity)
motive (-ate)
remove
mob
motor (-ist, -ize)
promote (-ion)
demote (-ion)
emote (-ion, – ive)
remote
locomotion (-ive)
(What is mob a shortening of, and what does the full phrase mean?)
Roots
16.
√pon “put, place”
pon
pos
posit
component (-ial)
compose
composite (-ion)
opponent
depose
deposit (-ion) (-ory)
deponent
repose
repository
exponent (-ial)
expose
exposition, -itory
postpone
suppose
supposition, -itory
proponent
impose
impostor (-ure)
interpose
interposition
pose, posture
posit(-ive)(-ion)
(pre-, ad-, post-) pose
(pre-, ad-, post-)position
appose
apposition
propose (-al)
proposition
oppose
opposite (-ion)
(Proposition and proposal are etymologically essentially identical. The
former has come to mean “suggestion,” whereas the latter is more
formal.)
17.
√rrh “flow”
rrh
rh
catarrh
rheumatic, -ism
diarrhea
rhythm
hemorrhoid
rhyme
logorrhea
43
44
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
18.
√sed “sit, stay”
sed
sid
sess
sedate
assiduous
session
sedentary
dissident (-ce)
assess
sediment
insidious
possess
supersede
reside
residue
preside
president
subsidy
(Insidious is especially interesting: in thinking about its meaning, consider the phrase “sitting in ambush.”)
(Assess is originally “to sit by,” referring to the role of an assistant
judge – hence the modern meaning.)
(Assiduous is a matter of “sitting down to it,” and therefore getting
something done.)
19.
√sequ “follow”
sequ
secut
sequel
consecutive
sequence
execute (-ive, -ion)
subsequent (-ce)
persecute (-ion)
sequester
prosecute (-ion)
consequent (-ce)
obsequious
(Sequester meant “to put away into a depository for safekeeping,” originally; now generalized to mean “isolate” or “seclude”; the synchronic form does not reveal this information.)
(What does it mean to say that “the meaning of obsequious has degenerated”?)
Root exercises
20.
√ven “come, bring, happen”
ven(e)
vent
convene(-r)
convent (-ion)
contravene
event
intervene
invent (-ion)(-ory)
convenient
prevent (-ion)
revenue
advent (-ure)
circumvent
(How can one explain the notion of innovation that is present in the
word invent?)
21.
√via “way, road”
vi
via
voy
deviate
viaduct
voyage
devious
envoy
impervious
obviate
obvious
previous
trivial
(Trivia means “three roads.” What could this have to do with the
meaning of trivial?)
C
Root exercises
1. Give the meanings of the following words containing the root pon,
pos “place, put”:
(a) compose (c) interpose
(e) purpose
(g) superimpose
(b) dispose
(d) juxtapose
(f) reimpose (h) apposite
45
46
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 5
2. Parse and define the following words:
(a) anaphora (f) gesticulate (k) obsess
(b) avenue
(g) hemorrhoid (l) perpetual
(c) cascade
(h) influenza
(m) position
(d) collate
(i) intermittent (n) rheumatism
(e) congress (j) metaphor
(o) second
(p)
(q)
(r)
(s)
(t)
souvenir
submit
superlative
transgress
venue
6
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 6
A
Study questions
1. Name and define the three types of assimilation. Give examples of
words containing each type.
2. Which of the following roots has undergone vowel or consonant
lenition? For each word give the basic form of the root and the type
of lenition.
(a) deciduous
(d) omit
(b) ecstasy
(e) reside
(c) repertory
(f) thesis
3. For the following words, name the replacement process(es) which
has (have) taken place.
(a) offend
(e) dissident
(i) nautical
(b) prescriptive
(f) suffer
(j) arrive
(c) explosion
(g) collate
(k) adult
(d) deficit
(h) require
(l) election
4. For each of the following words, answer these questions:
i(i) Has the word undergone a vowel lenition process?
(ii) If not, is the word an exception to a vowel lenition rule (i.e.,
does it contain the required environment for a vowel lenition rule to apply?)
(a) acquire
(g) depart
(m) permit
(b) centennial
(h) dissertation (n) reflection
(c) competent
(i) expatriate
(o) syllable
(d) decadence
(j) inventory
(p) viviparous
(e) decision
(k) obvious
(f) degrade
(l) occasion
5. For each of the following words, state which type of assimilation, if
any, has occurred.
(a) admit
(f) dialect
(k) occasion
(b) assess
(g) elegance
(l) prescriptive
(c) compete
(h) epilepsy
(m) surrogate
(d) conjunct
(i) impose
(n) symbiosis
(e) correlate
(j) impudent
47
48
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 6
6. Identify the rules which must be applied for the following
sequences to become words.
(a) ad+sed+uous
(f) narco+lab+sy
(b) de+scrib+t+ion
(g) ob+pos+e
(c) in+cad+ent
(h) sub+stat+ute
(d) in+cumb+ent
(i) syn+log+ism
(e) in+par+t
(j) subsidy
7. For the following words, give
ii(i) the basic forms of all the morphemes;
i(ii) the meaning of each morpheme (except stem-extenders);
(iii) the replacement rules (if any) required to derive the word
from the morphemes.
(a) arrogant
(h) repertory
(b) conjunct
(i) submit
(c) hypothesis
(j) insect
(d) impose
(k) suffer
(e) inject
(m) incident
(f) attend
(n) succumb
(g) occasion
(o) obsequious
8. Which processes account for the different phonetic shape of the
root in the following cognates:
(a) grateful – grace
(c) delude – delusion
(b) respectable – despicable
(d) capture – concept
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words attached to each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the meaning
of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
1.
√ambi- “both, on both or all sides”
ambi-
amphi-
ambidextrous
amphitheater
ambient
ambivalent1
ambiguous
ambition
1
val = “strong.”
Roots
(What is the literal meaning of ambiguous?)
(What profession commonly “goes around for votes” – hence ambition?)
2.
√andr “male human”
ander
andr
andro
philander (-er)
polyandry (-ous)
androgynous
androcentric
android
(A philosopher is one who loves wisdom. Is a philanderer one who loves
men?)
3.
√hom “same, even”
homo
homogeneous
homeo
anomalous
homeostatic
homomorphic
homonym
homorganic
homosexual
(What is the homeostatic device for maintaining even temperature?)
4.
√mater “mother, surroundings”
mater
matr
metr
material
matrix
metropolis
maternal
matricide
metritis
matriculate
metrocracy
matrilineal
matriarchal
matrimony
matron
49
50
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 6
5.
√par(t) “part, share, equality”
par(t)
por(t)
disparate
portion
parse
proportion (-al) (-ate)
compartment
6.
√pater “father”
patern
patr
patri
paternal (-ism)
patron
patrimony
paternity
patronym (-ic)
patriarch
patriotic
expatriate
patrilineal
(Why mon should mean “inheritance” is unknown.)
7.
√paed “teach, child”
paed
ped
paediatrics
encyclopedia
orthopaedics
pedagog (-y) (-ical)
pedant (-ry) (-ic)
(Why would the general name for a medical specialty of this type be
associated with the root for “child”?)
(Pedantic should mean only “one who teaches”; why has it come to
mean “one who teaches in a boring manner”?)
Roots
8.
√seg “cut, split”
seg
sec
sect
segment
secs (= sex)
section
secant2
sect (-arian)
insect
intersect
dissect
9.
√sper “scatter, seed”
sper
spers
spor
sperm
aspersion
sporadic
disperse
diaspora
intersperse
spore
10.
√uter “womb”
hyster
uter
hysterectomy
uterus
hysteria
uterine
hysterogenic
uteritis
11. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √anthrop(o) “generic human being” – anthropocentric, anthropology, anthropoid, misanthrope, philanthropy
(b) √bio “life” – biocide, biography, biology, symbiosis, amphibious, microbiology
(c) √ero(t) “physical love” – erotic, erogenous
2
In mathematics, a straight line intersecting a curve at two points, thereby splitting the
area it contains.
51
52
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 6
(d) √gam “marriage, sexual union” – bigamy, monogamy,
polygamy, gamete
(e) √lat “carry” not to be confused with lat “side” as in equilateral
– correlate, elated, legislate, relate, translate
(f) √mani(a) “intense desire” – bibliomania, maniac, megalomania
(g) √migr “wander” – emigrate, immigrate, immigrant, migrate,
transmigration
(h) √miso “hate” – misanthrope, misogamy, misogyny
(i) √par “beget, produce” – parent, viviparous, repertory
(j) √pass “step, go” – compass, encompass, passport, surpass, trespass
(Compass is semantically obscure; it appears to derive from the
French verb compasser “to measure.”)
(k) √pet “go, seek, strive” – appetite, compete, competent, impetuous, impetus, petition, petulant, repetition
(l) √phil “love” – Anglophile, bibliophile, philanthropy, philology,
philosophy
(m) √port “carry” – deport, opportunity, importune, deportment,
export, import, important, report, support, portfolio, portly,
purport, rapport
(n) √prol(i) “offspring” – proletariat, prolific, proliferate
(o) √pud “feel shame” – impudent, pudendum, repudiate
(p) √riv “river, shore, stream” – derive, arrive, rival, river, rivulet
(q) √rog “ask, take away” – abrogate, arrogant, derogatory, interrogate, prerogative, supererogate, subrogate, surrogate
(Arrogant is to take to oneself by force or coercion, then the
figurative sense.)
(In prerogative, the idea is that if you “ask first,” you obtain
special privileges.)
(Supererogate started as positive, “doing more than asked for,”
has become negative because if it wasn’t asked for, it can be
superfluous.)
(r) √tract “drag, pull, draw” – tractable, traction, tractor, attract,
abstract, contract, detract, distract, extract, protracted,
retract, subtract
(s) √vir “male, man” – triumvirate, virago, virile, virtue, virtually
C
Root exercises
1. The following words all contain the root phil “love.” In each case,
name the object of the “love.” Think of five other words containing the same root.
Root exercises
(a) Francophile
(a)
(b) gastrophile
(b)
(c) audiophile
(c)
(d) hydrophilic
(d)
(e) photophilic
(e)
2. Explain the following words containing the root mani “intense
desire”:
(a) theomania
(c) pyromania
(b) monomania
(d) erotomania
3. Parse and define the following words:
(a) biodegrade
(h) intersect
(b) bipartite
(i) matter
(c) climacteric
(j) misology
(d) cuboid
(k) perpetrate
(e) engine
(l) progeny
(f) gentle
(m) proportion
(g) homophonous
53
7
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 7
A
Study questions: Allomorphy
1. Which of the following words have undergone S-Degemination?
(Use a dictionary if necessary.)
(a) disparage
(g) dissonance
(b) dispel
(h) dissuade
(c) disperse
(i) distill
(d) dispirited
(j) distress
(e) disport
(k) distribute
(f) dissolution
(l) district
2. Find six more (i.e., different from the examples in the text) words
which have undergone X-Drop, and parse them.
Example: eloquent ex + loqu + ent
3. For the following words, name any Consonant or Vowel Dropping
processes that have occurred:
(a) agnostic
(j) execute
(b) agronomy
(k) exert
(c) asexual
(l) homonym
(d) astronomy
(m) monotheism
(e) cation
(n) obvious
(f) coalesce
(o) parhelion
(g) edict
(p) polyandry
(h) efficient
(q) proprietress
(i) elevate
(r) transcribe
4. For each of the following words, name the epenthesis process
which has taken place.
(a) ambulatory
(f) miraculous
(b) articulate
(g) resumption
(c) avuncular
(h) spectacular
(d) crumbling
(i) sumptuous
(e) fabulous
(j) vehicular
5. What is the etymological composition of the following words.
Have they undergone any deletion rules?
54
Roots
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
B
anaconda
anagram
anathema
anemia
annals
(f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
(j)
anonymous
antelope
antenna
anthem
anvil
Roots
Your task is to look at the words attached to each root and
make sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
1.
√allo “other”
al
allo
alias
allomorph (-ic, -y)
alibi
allophone (-ic, -y)
alien
allegory
2.
√ang “constrict”
ang
angu
ancs (=anx)
angst1
anguish2
anxiety
angina
1
2
Borrowed from German, “a feeling of anxiety.”
From Old French anguisse “narrowness.”
55
56
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 7
3.
√aug “increase”
aug
auc
augment (-ation)
auction (-eer)
augur (-y)
august3
(What is the name of the month derived from?)
4.
√ced “go, let go”
ced(e)
cess
ceed
concede
recess
proceed
precede
access (-ory)
ancestor
5.
√cre “come forth, grow”
cre
cr
cere
create
accrue
cereal
decrease
recruit
increase
6.
√don “give”
don
dat (dot)
dow
dos
donate
data
endow
dose
donation
antidote
dowry
dosage
condone
addition4
pardon
3
4
“Formidable,” “majestic”; the sense derives from “increasing in age.”
dit < dat by regular rule.
Roots
7.
√fac(t) “do, make”
fac(t)
fec(t)
fic(t)
fice
fact
affect
fiction (-ive)
office
infect
beneficial
effect
suffice
(The literal meaning of infect is “done to,” but it has come to mean
something much more narrow, usually of a medical nature, having
to do with bacteria, viri, or fungi.)
(Try to determine how fact and fiction came to be almost opposite in
meaning, though from this same root morpheme.)
8.
√frag “break”
frag
fract
frang
fragment
fraction
frangible
fracture
refract (-ion)
9.
√merc “pay, reward, price, trade, sell”
merc
merch
mercantile
merchant
mercenary
merchandise
mercy5
commercial
commerce
(Mercenary originally meant “greedy.” Explain the semantic change.)
5
Survivor of a phrase which meant “God’s reward.”
57
58
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 7
10.
√pan “all”
pan
panta
panac6ea
pantacea
pandemonium
panorama
panoply
(What does pandemonium mean etymologically, and how do you
suppose it came to be generalized?)
11.
√pend “weigh, hang, consider, pay”
pend
pond
pens
append (-ix)
despondent
expense
depend
respond (-ent)
responsible
independent (-ce)
ponder
recompense
expend (-iture)
correspond (-ent, -ence)
compensate (-ion)
impending
preponderant (-ce)
dispense
pendulum
pension
pendulous
pensive
perpendicular
suspension
suspend
(In the word impending, see if you can account for the semantic change
from “hanging in” to the modern sense of “about to take place.”)
(What does compensate mean literally?)
(How does the meaning of suspend in “to suspend judgment” comeabout?)
6
ak “cure.”
Roots
12.
√phos “light”
photo
phos
photograph (-y, -ic)
phosphor
photosynthesis
phosphorous
phototropic (-ism)
phosphorescent
13.
√sol “whole”
sol
hol
solid
catholic
consolidate
holistic
solder
holocaust
holograph
SPELLING NOTE: catholic is one of the few words in the language
where the -th- is pronounced like the Greek theta, though the -tbelongs to the prefix morpheme and the -h- belongs to the root
morpheme. It is as though we were to pronounce cat-house as
kathouse, to rhyme with Mathau(s).
14.
√solv “loosen, unbind”
solve
solu(t)
solve
solution
resolve
resolution
solvent
dissolution
insolvent
(in)soluble
absolve
absolute
dissolve
dissolute
59
60
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 7
15.
√tac “arrange, order”
tact
tacs (= tax)
tactics
taxidermy (-ist)
syntactic
syntax
taxonomy
16.
√techn “build, skill”
techn
tect
technique (-ical)
tectonic
technology
architect
polytechnic
17.
√ten “hold, maintain”
ten
tent
tin
tain
tenant
content
continent
contain
tenement
detention
abstinence
detain
tenet
retention
incontinent
pertain
tenure
continue
retain
sustenance
pertinent
tenable
impertinent
tenacious
appurtenance
(The original meaning of tenement is neutral. What happened to it?)
(What does a tenant farmer hold? Is the term not somewhat ironic?)
(Explain the semantic change which contentious has undergone.)
(Explain the semantic change which impertinent has undergone.)
Roots
18.
√volv “turn, roll”
volve
volu
evolve
revolution
involve
convoluted
revolve
voluble
revolt
volume
devolve
voluminous
19. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √alt “high” – altitude, alto,7 exalt
(b) √idio “particular,” “peculiar,” “private” – idiom, idiolect, idiot,
idiosyncratic
(Try to make etymological sense of idiosyncratic.)
(What is it that is peculiar about idioms? Think how you
“compute” the meaning of phrases generally, as compared
with how you “compute” the meaning of, say, “kick the
bucket.”)
(c) √mono “one” – monochrome, monogamy, monograph, monologue, monotonous
(d) √neg “not, no” – neglect, negate, renegade, reneg
(How does neglect come to mean “ignore”?)
(e) √put “cut, reckon, consider” – amputate [am- = ambi], deputy,
dispute, repute (-ation), disrepute, impute, indisputable, putative
(What meaning of the root is used in putative?)
(f) √rupt “burst, become unsound” – abrupt (“burst away”),
bankrupt, corrupt, disrupt, erupt, interrupt, rupture
(g) √sol “alone, single” – desolate, sole, soliloquy, solipsism,8 solitary, solitude, solo
(solipsism is a philosophical theory; what does it claim?)
(h) √tom “cut” – anatomy, atom, dichotomy, entomology,
epitome, tome
(What is being “cut” in anatomy?)
7
8
The highest man’s voice (countertenor) originally; now generally refers to the lowest
female voice, which corresponds to the same pitch range.
ipse “self.”
61
62
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 7
(Explain the change of meaning the epitome has undergone.)
(We think of a tome as a big book. What has it to do with
“cut”?)
C
Root exercises
1. Parse and gloss the following words in accordance with the
example. (Be sure to indicate any rules the words have undergone.)
Example: top + o + graph + y
Example: place + SE + write + NAbs
Example: “writing/record about place” = physical features of an
area
(a) abscess
(l) fragile
(b) allergy
(m) fragment
(c) altimeter
(n) monolingual
(d) anecdote
(o) negligee
(e) concrete
(p) pancreas
(f) crescent
(q) pantomime
(g) dowry
(r) secede
(h) efficient
(s) sincere
(i) endow
(t) suffrage
(j) facsimile
(u) tradition
(k) faculty
2. What Replacement, Drop or Expansion rules have the following
words undergone?
(a) edition
(f) fiction
(b) defect
(g) abstinence
(c) infringe
(h) revolution
(d) artifice
(i) continent
(e) solution
(j) volume
8
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
A
Study questions
1. Are the words in the following pairs cognates? If so, what rule has
changed their forms?
(a) Anglian ~ triangular
(m) just ~ juror
(b) apology ~ dialect
(n) logic ~ legal
(c) belligerent ~ digest
(o) narrate ~ agnostic
(d) car ~ career
(p) orthogonal ~ genuflect
(e) diaspora ~ sperm
(q) pensive ~ ponder
(f) engine ~ gingerly
(r) plus ~ plural
(g) exquisite ~ conquer
(s) promenade ~ mountain
(h) genesis ~ general
(t) sperm ~ sprout
(i) hesitate ~ inherent
(u) temple ~ anatomy
(j) ignore ~ prognosis
(v) verge ~ wry
(k) island ~ insular
(w) virgin ~ virile
(l) jocular ~ jugular
(x) writhe ~ divert
2. Does the pronunciation reveal the etymological origins of these
words? If not, what does? What does that fact tell you about
modern English orthography, or perhaps about processes of sound
change?
cupboard
handkerchief
Greenwich
forehead (at least in those dialects which rhyme it with horrid)
answer
3. Trace the etymology of the following sets of words:
monarch, Monday, monger, monster, month, deliver, livid, livery,
liver, olive
4. Trace the etymology of the following words:
appetite, perpetrate, perpetuate, pet, n., petal, Peter, peter, v., petite,
petition, Petrarch, petroleum, petty, petulant, strumpet, trumpet.
5. Choose five homophonous root sets from the list accompanying
Chapter 8 and supply derivatives (other than the examples that
appear in the text) for each of the members of the set.
63
64
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
6. The word travelgate has been used in the media since 1993. What is
the source of this word? Can you cite other -gate words?
7. Find ten words with “origin unknown” or “origin obscure” or
“origin disputed.”
8. Find cognates of the roots card, cord and discuss the semantic variation of the derivatives.
9. List and define the derivatives of the root sem. Is Semitic a member
of this family of words?
10. Which of the following words are cognates? Name the changes that
reveal the relationships, if any, among them.
(a) centaur
(g) docent
(b) centennial
(h) eccentric
(c) centimeter
(i) recent
(d) cento
(j) resent
(e) century
(k) sentiment
(f) descent
(l) sentry
11. Parse and gloss the following words. Pay careful attention to the
prefixes.
(a) afoot
(i) apostasy
(b) agnostic
(j) apothecary
(c) annunciate
(k) appear
(d) anomalous
(l) approve
(e) antonym
(m) ashore
(f) anxious
(n) avow
(g) aphasia
(o) awry
(h) apolitical
12. The prefixes ab-, cata-, apo-, de-, and ex- can have the meaning
“away.” Find two words with each prefix illustrating that statement.
abapocatadeex-
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words under each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
Roots
1.
√bel(l) “war”
bel
vel
rebel
revel
bellicose
revelry
antebellum
belligerent
(What is the relation of this root to the root of embellish?)
(What war does antebellum refer to?)
2.
√bene “good, well”
bene
bon
benediction
bonus
benefactor
bonanza
beneficial
debonnaire
benefit
boon
benevolence
bounty
benign
(What is the source of -fit in benefit?)
(What is the special sense of benign in the field of medicine?)
(In Spanish, bonanza meant “fair weather.” What sort of semantic
change took place?)
(In bounty, the form is actually the same as boon; see if you can explain
how the difference in pronunciation came about.)
65
66
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
3.
√civ “city, refined”
civ
cit
civic
citizen
civil
city
civilian
citadel
civilize
civilization
4.
√crat “rule”1
crat
crac ([-s])
autocrat
autocracy
aristocrat
aristocracy
bureaucrat
bureaucracy
democrat
democracy
plutocrat
plutocracy
(What does aristo- mean?)
5.
√dom “house, control, lord, sovereign”
dom
domin
domestic
dominate
domicile
predominant
domain
domineer
indomitable
domination
condominium
dame (< L. domina)
1
Martin Lehnert’s Reverse Dictionary of Present-Day English lists 42 nouns ending in
-cracy , among which are such transparent, but also transient, formations as cottonocracy, foolocracy, pedantocracy, pornocracy, squattocracy, strumpetocracy, as well as
the useful and also fully transparent androcracy, ergatocracy, gerontocracy, gynocarcy,
isocracy, meritocracy, monocracy, pantisocracy, technocracy, theocracy.
Roots
6.
√duc “lead, pull”
duce
duit
duct
adduce
conduit
abduct (-ion, -or)
conducive
conduct (-ion, -or)
deduce
deduct (-ion)
educate (-ion, -or)
product (-ion, -ive)
produce
induct (-ion, -ee)
induce
reduction
reduce
introduction
introduce
transduction
transduce (traduce)
seduction (-ive)
duke (< duc)
seductress
(Is adduce ever used in a concrete sense?)
(How does abduction differ from deduction and induction?)
(Is abduct ever used in an abstract sense?)
(Why is there no verb form *conduce corresponding to the adjective
conducive?)
(What are the two primary senses of deduction? How do they related to
deduce and deduct?)
7.
√fend “strike, ward off ”
fend
fense (= fence)
defend
defense (-ive)
offend
offence (-ive)
fence
SPELLING NOTE: When a final -e shows up, it generally means that
the vowel which precedes it is long. However, here it indicates that
the preceding -s- is really an [s] phonetically, since if the -e were not
present the form would be pronounced with a final [z], as it is in
sends, fens, hens, lens, etc.
67
68
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
8.
√grat “thankful, pleased, kind”
grat
grac
grateful
grace
gratify
ingratiate
gratis
gracious
ingrate
disgrace (-ful)
congratulate
grace (-ful)
gratuitous
gratuity
(The pronunciation of ingratiate clearly indicates that it belongs to the
allomorph on the right above, even though spelled as if it belonged
on the left.)
(Gratuitous is usually used in a negative way as “unnecessary, unwarranted,” as in a gratuitous comment. It is an obvious example of
semantic pejoration.)
9.
√mal “bad”
mal
male
dismal
malediction
malady
malefactor
malaise
maleficient
malapropism
malevolent
malaria
malice
malign
malignant
malinger
(Dismal is a word taken over from a Latin phrase. What is the phrase,
and what did it mean?)
Roots
(Compare malaise with disease.)
(Malapropism derives from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan’s
1775 play The Rivals, the name of the character itself is from the
French mal à propos “badly to the purpose.”2)
(What Italian phrase is malaria taken from? What does it tell you about
earlier understanding of this disease?)
(Malinger refers to “sickliness,” originally. Explain how it comes to
mean “one who feigns illness.” The -inger part of the word is probably from a Germanic root which means “thin, weak.”)
10.
√mod “moderate, control, measure, manner”
mod
mode
accommodate
commode
moderate
commodity
modest
commodious
modern
modal
modicum
modem
modify
modulate
module
(Modify has the idea “to make less extreme,” from the idea of limiting,
or moderating, extended to change in general.)
(Interesting semantic changes in the word commode: originally a “chest
of drawers,” the sense “toilet” arises from the sense “of due
measure” and therefore “convenient.”)
(Modern is from the sense “in a certain manner that is appropriate to
this time and place.”)
(Modem, which contains modulator, is a blend of modulator and
demodulator, a word which came into use 1955–1960 with the
invention of the device capable of transmitting and receiving electronic data over the telephone.)
2
Some examples of Mrs Malaprop’s comical misuses cited in J. T. Shipley’s The Origins
of English Words (244) are “. . . if I reprehend anything in this world . . . ,” “the use of
my oracular tongue,” “a nice derangement of epitaphs.”
69
70
Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
11.
√pac “bind, agreement, peace”
pact
pac
impact
pacify
compact
pacific
pacificism
(Latin pace “with peaceful intent”; said when disagreeing in an argument in the hope that the other person will not mind their views
being disputed.)
12.
√pen “punish(ment)”
pen
penit
pun
punit
penal
penitent
punish
punitive
penalty
penitentiary
impunity
repent
13.
√pol “city, state”
polis
polit
acropolis
cosmopolitan
megapolis
political
metropolis
polity
necropolis
police
policy
(Cosmopolitan – one whose “city” is the entire world, non-regional,
non-provincial.)
(Guess what the metr- of metropolis is.)
Roots
14.
√reg “straight, lead, rule, king”
reg
rect
rig
regal
correct
(in)corrigible
regent
direct
regicide
erect
regimen
recto
region
rectangle
(ir)regular
rectify
interregnum
rectum
(Recto the right-hand page of a book, odd-numbered page – the opposite of verso “the back of the leaf, the page being turned”; direct
borrowing, in this form, from Latin.)
(This is the second word of the Latin phrase intestinum rectum
“straight intestine”; obviously it has been restricted in meaning to
just part of the straight intestine.)
15. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √class “group” – classic, classical, classicism, classify, declassify, declassé
(Classic originally pertained to any of the six divisions of
Roman people, later to any aspect of ancient Rome or Greece
in their periods of highest literary achievement, now generalized as to anything of superior rank, quality, significance,
lasting value.)
(Declassé is used contemptuously: someone who has lost
social status and prestige.)
(b) √cre(d) “believe, trust” – credence, credential, credible, credit,
credo, creed, credulous, discredit, incredible, miscreant
(Credo is originally the Latin 1st pers. sing. of the verb credere
“believe,” borrowed into English as a noun referring to a belief
system.)
(c) √dem “people” – demagogue, democracy, endemic, epidemic,
pandemic
(d) √eu “good, well” – eucalyptus, eugenics, eulogy, eupeptic,
euphemism, euphony, euphoric, eurhythmics, euthanasia,
evangelism
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 8
72
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
(j)
3
(Greek kaluptos “covered,” well-covered – the bud of the eucalyptus has a cap.)
(Euphemism is literally “well speaking,” but its meaning is
much narrower.)
(In evangelism, originally “bringing good news, glad tidings,”
now preaching of the gospel; explain the change from eu to ev.)
√fid “trust, bold” – affidavit, bona fide, confide (-ent),
confidence, diffident, fidelity, infidel, perfidious
(Diffident comes from the meaning “distrustful”; it now means
“lacking self-confidence,” i.e., distrustful of self.)
(Infidel means, literally, “one who is unfaithful,” i.e., an unbeliever in a particular faith.)
√greg “flock, gather” – aggregate, congregate, congregation,
egregious, gregarious, segregate
(Egregious means literally “out of the flock,” today “conspicuously bad,” “flagrant.”)
√mun “common, public, gift” – communion, community, communism, communicate (“to be common with”), immune (originally “exempt from public service”; now extended to not
being affected by certain influences, including specifically
disease), municipal, munificent, remunerate
√nom “law, system” – autonomous, anomie, economy, antinomy, metronome, nomocracy, taxonomy3
(Anomie was originally “lawlessness”; now refers to a lack of
certain standards and values in a society.)
(ec “inhabit”; in Greek, the word meant “management of the
house”; now in English “thriftiness with resources,” also
extended to the more general “system of management of
material wealth”; why is the term home economics redundant?)
(Antinomy is literally “law opposing”; specifically a contradiction, especially between two equally good laws, rules, or conclusions; “a paradox”; do not confuse this word with
antimony, a metallic element.)
√nunc “speak” – annunciate, enunciate, pronunciation, renunciation, announce, renounce
√ prec “entreat, pray” – deprecate, deprecation, precarious,
imprecate, imprecation
ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE: this root is not related to prec
“worth, value,” as in depreciate.
There are 16 nouns ending in -nomy, “arrangement, management, a system of laws,”
in Lehnert’s Reverse Dictionary of Present-Day English, among which are the transparent astronomy, gastronomy, geonomy, zoonomy.
Root exercises
(What does precarious suggest about when we are most likely
to pray?)
(How does imprecation come to mean “curse”?)
(k) √rat “reckon, reason” – ratio, rational, ratify
(l) √sci “know, discern” – science, conscience, conscious, prescience, omniscient, sciolism
(m) √son “sound” – sonorous, consonant, dissonant, sonata,
sonnet, unison
(n) √soph “wise” – philosophy, sophist, sophistry, sophisticated
(o) √ver “true” (not to be confusedwith ver “turn”) – veracity,
verdict, verify, verisimilitude, veritable, verity, aver
(p) √xen “foreign, strange” – xenophile, xenophobe, xenon
(Xenon is the chemical element, literally “a strange, rare
element, inert, not easily attracted to other elements.”)
C
Root exercises
1. What type of “rule” is involved in the following words containing
crat:
(a) gerontocracy
(d) monocracy
(b) gynecocracy
(e) theocracy
(c) hagiocracy
2. Parse, gloss and define the following words:
(a) circumduction
(g) nomad
(b) demography
(h) pacify
(c) dome
(i) regiment
(d) duchess
(j) veracious
(e) Eucharist
(k) xenolith
(f) malpractice
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 9
A
Study questions
1. Parse, gloss, give the meaning of and examples for the following
words containing onym:
(a) acronym
(f) metronym
(b) allonym
(g) paronym
(c) caconym
(h) pseudonym
(d) cryptonym
(i) tautonym
(e) eponym
(j) toponym
2. Which days of the week belong in the class of onomastic words?
Describe their history.
3. Find ten onomastic words for units of electricity and electromagnetic forces.
4. Find more examples (i.e., ones not discussed in the text) of classical words which are also instances of narrowing.
5. Using the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology or another dictionary which gives dates of entry (e.g., The Random House
Webster’s College Dictionary):
(a) Trace the semantic history of:
1. animosity 4. egregious
2. pill
5. adultery
3. courteous 6. fornication
(b) List ten words containing auto and trace their semantic history
(e.g., autofocus, autotoxin, etc.).
6. Look up the following words. What types of -onyms do they represent? Why? Write in the results:
(a) altar – alter
(i) mean
(b) currant – current
(j) oversee
(c) heat
(k) present
(d) hull
(l) pride – pried
(e) lay
(m) pupil
(f) locks – lox
(n) rabbet – rabbit – rabid
(g) low
(o) psi – sigh
(h) male – mail
74
Study questions
7. Speaking of business. The following words have undergone semantic change. What is their history? What type of semantic change
does every individual word represent?
(a) business
(i) franchise
(b) change
(j) grandfather
(c) company
(k) overhead
(d) concern
(l) policy
(e) deal
(m) proceeding
(f) depression
(n) racket
(g) equity
(o) security
(h) float
(p) vestry
8. What do the words below have in common? Using a dictionary
which gives more extensive etymological information, e.g., the
Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, the
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, trace their etymology
and mark the date of their first entry into the language:
(a) atlas
(f) volcano
(b) champagne
(g) mercury
(c) gerrymander
(h) pandemonium
(d) geyser
(i) turkey
(e) gung-ho
(j) xerox
9. Look up the history of the following words. When were they first
recorded in English? What are the etymological features they
share?
(a) aegis
(i) giant
(b) ambrosia
(j) hector
(c) apostrophe
(k) labyrinth
(d) chorus
(l) lesbian
(e) cynic
(m) mentor
(f) echo
(n) orchestra
(g) hero
(o) sphinx
(h) demon
10. Types of scope change: These are typical examples of scope widening. In each case, try to construct a context (a typical situation, or
a sentence) where the earlier narrower meaning would be subject to
misunderstanding and jumping to a broader sense.
(a) allergic “medical aversion”
→ “general aversion,” as in “I’m allergic to rock and roll.”
(b) anthology “collection of flowers”
→ “collection of exquisite poetry”
→ “collection of any kind of writing”
(c) apocryphal “hidden away”
→ “books of Old Testament not originally written in
Hebrew”
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 9
→ “of unknown authorship”
→ “of questionable authenticity”
→ “false”
(d) arbitrary “depending on judgment”
→ “depending on outside arbitrator”
→ “unpredictable”
→ “random”
(e) arrive “(ship) come to shore”
→ “reach any destination”
(f) bureau “desk”
→ “office containing desks”
→ “institution responsible for desk work”
(g) grotesque “of a cave, or excavated Roman chamber”
→ “odd and ludicrous as the wall decorations in the grottos”
→ “anything unnatural, absurd, incongruous”
(h) mater “mother”
→ “that in which something is embedded” as in material,
matrix
(i) nostalgia “homesickness”
→ “longing for times past”
(j) offend “strike against”
→ “create bad feelings”
(k) officious “eager to please and dutiful”
→ “offensively zealous in duty”
(l) sycophant “one who surreptitiously shows fig ships, the ships
that are about to ship figs out of the harbor”
→ “informer”
→ “flatterer”
→ “servile camp-follower”
(m) university “turned into one”
→ “comprehending the whole”
→ “widely learned or accomplished”
→ “a body of teachers and students”
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words under each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
Roots
1.
√ag “act, drive, do”
ag
act
ig
agenda
act (-ion)
navigate
agent
actual (-ity)
prodigal (-ity)
agile
exact
prodigious
(prod- “forth,” therefore “driven forth,” “driven out,” as in the Biblical
account of the prodigal son; from that story comes the idea of
wastefulness that we find in derivatives like prodigious, prodigality.)
(Try to explain the etymological sense of exact – think of errors being
ousted.)
2.
√cap “to take, contain”
cap
capt
cept
cip
capable
captive (-ate) (-ity)
accept
anticipate
(en-) capsule (-ate)
receptive (-ity)
3.
√cer “separate, judge, settle, discriminate”
cert
cri
cre
certain
crime
excrement
certify
secret
(The connection of this root with crime is a bit obscure: the idea seems
to be that in the courts the bad deeds are discriminated from the
good ones, and somehow this sorting out came to be associated
with just the bad deeds; as for the phonetics, -me(n) started life as
a Greek abstract noun suffix, but it is rare in English and must be
viewed as a meaningless fossil.)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 9
4.
√cit “put in motion, summon, arouse”
cite
cit
cite
recitation
recite
solicit
resuscitate
5.
√cur “run”
cur
car
cor
current
career
corridor
currency
car
cursive
carry
incur
recur
concur
(The suffix of career is from the French word for “race course” carrière,
almost identical with Spanish carrera, which we have also borrowed, though much later; so having a career is “running a race.”)
(Currency has undergone striking semantic changes, referring to
“money,” “contemporaneity,” “being intellectually on the ball,”
and various other figurative meanings.)
6.
√erg “work”
erg
org
urg
erg
organ
metallurgy
energy
organize
synergy
Roots
7.
√lud “play, game”
lud
lus
allude
allusion
delude
delusion
elude
illusion
interlude
collusion
prelude
ludicrous
(What is the difference between an allusion and an illusion?)
(In collusion, “playing” takes on a very sinister sense in this word, since
it refers to secret scheming.)
8.
√merg “dip, plunge”
merg
mers
emerge
immerse
submerge
merger
9.
√nav “sail, boat”
naut
nav
nautical
navy
aquanaut
naval
astronaut
nausea
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 9
10.
√pan “food, dough, bread”
pan
past
companion
repast
pantry
pasta
panier
11.
√pel “push, drive”
pel
pulse
compel
compulsion
dispel
expulsion
expel
propulsion
propel
repulsive
repel
pulse
12.
√pot “be able, powerful”
pot
poss
potent
possible
omnipotent
possess1
potential
13.
√prag “do”
pract
pragm
practice
pragmatic
practical
pragmatics
1
“Sit,” so, originally, whatever you were able to sit on, that is to occupy, was yours;
occupation was 100 percent of possession.
Roots
14.
√prob “test, find good”
prob
prov
probation (-ary)
prove
probable
approve
improbable
reprove
improve
15.
√sal “jump”
sali
selt
sault
sail
salient
exult
assault
assail
insult
somersault
(Somer is from Old French sobre “above”; the form of it reflects some
sort of folk analysis a long time ago; the sense is therefore “to leap
over,” specialized to refer to a particular kind of leap, head over
heels.)
(In exult, insult, the e-change to u is regular, and so is the S-degemination.)
(Insult transparently contains the same figure of speech we have today
in a phrase like “He jumped all over me for getting to work so
late.”)
16.
√salv “safe, healthy”
salv
salut
salvation
salute
salvage
salutation
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 9
17.
√sat “satisfy”
sat
satis
sate
satisfy
saturate
satisfaction
satiate, (in)satiable
18.
√stru “build”
struct
stru
construct
construe (-al)
instruct
instrument
obstruct
superstructure
(-ment “means,” therefore instrument “means for building.”)
19.
√vic “conquer”
vict
vinc
evict (-ion)
invincible
victory (-ous)
Vincent
convict (-ion)
20. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √burs “pouch, money” – bursar, disburse, reimburse, bursa,
bursitis
(Some early physician decided that certain cavities of the body
resemble a money pouch, whence terms like bursitis.)
(b) √phag “eat” – anthropophagous, dysphagia, necro2phagous,
sarcophagous
2
“Dead body, corpse.”
Root exercises
(c) √prec(i) “worth, value” (not related to prec “entreat, pray”) –
appreciate, depreciate, precious, preciosity
(d) √ therm “heat” – thermal
(also listed in dictionaries as a prefix because it is so common
in compound formations like thermonuclear, thermodynamic,
etc.)
(e) √val “strong, useful” – valid, valor, value, equivalent, convalesce, valence
C
Root exercises
1. Parse, gloss and define the following words:
(a) agitate
(l) municipal
(b) allergy
(m) navigate
(c) asset
(n) occupy
(d) concern
(o) variegate
(e) crisis
(p) organ
(f) cursor
(q) participate
(g) hypocrisy
(r) pasture
(h) hypothermia
(s) intransigent
(i) intercept
(t) pulsate
(j) intransigent
(u) reprove
(k) liturgy
(v) susceptible
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10 Exercises for Textbook Chapter 10
A
Study questions
1. For the following words, state whether the penult is heavy or light.
(a) lateralization
(f) orthography
(b) equivocal
(g) evanescence
(c) accomplice
(h) orthopedics
(d) preposterous
(i) Saskatchewan
(e) morphogenesis
2. Which of the following words are exceptions to the stress rules as
given in Chapter 10? For any exceptions, state what the stress
should be, according to the rules.
(a) amplitude
(g) entropy
(b) figurative
(h) accordion
(c) corollary
(i) capitulate
(d) multiplicity
(j) corpulent
(e) explicit
(k) monument
(f) vacation
(l) psychedelic
3. The following are all strange, long, obscure words which you may
never bother to learn the meaning of, unless you happen to be in
those particular technical fields. But all of them are pronounced in
accord with the rules given in this Chapter. Mark the stress according to those rules and pronounce them accordingly. If you are not
certain, indicate precisely what piece of information you are
missing, in order to become certain; then look them up.
(a) apoenzyme
(b) asphodel (HINT: the penult is light)
(c) bacteriophagy
(d) caliginous
(e) Carmelopardalis (HINT: the penult is light)
(f) cataphoresis (HINT: the penult is heavy)
(g) cenospecies
(h) cephalochordate
(i) chalicothere (HINT: this is a compound; the second element is
there)
84
Roots
(j) charcuterie (HINT: the first syllable is NOT Greek)
(k) chelicera (HINT: the penult is light)
(l) diaphoretic
(m) esurient
(n) eukaryote (HINT: the -y- is a short vowel)
(o) extrasystole (HINT: the -o- is a short vowel)
B
Roots
Your task is to look at the words under each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
1.
√acerb “sour, sharp”
ac
acerb
acro
acid
acerbic
acrobat
acute1
exacerbate
acropolis
acme
acrid
acne
(The notion “sharp in taste” leads to “sharp-pointed,” and from there
to “any object which is sharp-pointed,” such as the peak of a
mountain; it can then be made abstract, as in “acme of perfection.”)
(Bat = “walk”; if you walk on sharp points, you are “on your toes.”)
(In exacerbate ex- must be taken entirely as an intensifier: “to cause to
be extremely sharp,” used only metaphorically – that is, to worsen
any situation.)
1
Lit. “sharpened,” since the -ut suffix is the Latin past participle; extended metaphorically to refer to angles, where the sense is transparent, and then on to perception or
intelligence, where the sense is totally metaphorical – consider the notion “sharp as a
tack” referring to intelligence.
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 10
2.
√bol “throw”
bol
bl
symbol
parable
hyperbole
emblem
metabolism
problem
parabola
(Symbol “thrown together”; originally from Greek sumbolon, a token
of identification, a divided object which identified the people
sharing it when the two parts were compared, like comparing the
two halves of a torn dollar bill to see if they fit.)
(Already in Greek metabolism meant “changed in form,” specifically
the digestive process to produce energy; exceptionally, from a linguistic point of view, it is the prefix that carries the core meaning,
and the root that is bleached.)
(Parable “thrown beside,” “comparison”; one is supposed to compare
the lesson in the story to one’s own life, and improve one’s life
accordingly.)
(Emblem lit. “to throw in,” but semantically opaque; its meaning came
about through these stages: in Greek it meant “to insert, to set in”;
in Latin this became “embossed design,” leading to the Middle
English “pictorial fable” embossed on tapestries, and finally to the
current meaning of “symbolic design”; note that the deletion of
the -o – is very much like the deletion of -e- in words like metric.)
3.
√chrom “color, embellishment”
chromat
chrom
chromatic
chromophilic
chromatin
chromosome
(In music, the 12-semitone scale passes through all the musical colors.)
(“Loving color” really means something that stains readily; used in
Biology with reference to cells.)
(Chromatin is the part of the nucleus of a cell that stains easily; chrom is
short for chromatin inthe word chromosome; some means “body”;
therefore chromosome is a body within the nucleus of a cell.)
Roots
4.
√cor “round, curved”
cor
curv
corona
curve
coroner
curvature
coronary
curvaceous
corolla
corollary
(The word crown itself is derived from corona, English having borrowed
the form corouna from French, and then dropped the first and last
vowels because they were unstressed.)
(A coroner was one of the “officers of the crown” in medieval England;
specifically charged with checking out the causes of the deaths of
Norman nobility, to be certain there had been no foul play, especially of Saxon origin; generalized now to the task of checking out
all instances of death where the death may not have come about
through natural causes.)
(Coronary = “encircling” the heart, hence the vessels directly around
the heart; now generalized to refer to any problem or function
related to the heart.)
(Corolla is a diminutive form of corona, narrowed in meaning to refer
to a crownlike circlet of flowers.)
5.
√fig “form, shape”
fig
fict
figure
fiction
figurative
(Earliest sense, “the result of kneading,” therefore that which is
formed.)
(Fiction is NOT, as it appears that it might be, the same root as fac “do”
– it looks like multiple lenition but it is not; that impression is
further strengthened by phrases like “fact and fiction,” which
makes them seem related; but fact is something that is “done,”
whereas fiction is something that is “shaped.”)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 10
6.
√magn “large, great”
magn2
maj
magnify
majority
magnanimous
major
7.
√ple “fold, tangle”
plec
plic
ply
complex (= ecs)
accomplice
comply
multiplex
complicity
imply
duplex
explicate
reply
implicate
apply
implicit
multiply
replicate
(Accomplice is from the archaic complice, literally “one who is folded
with” or intertwined with someone else; it’s not clear why the first
prefix was added – perhaps by analogy with accompany.)
(Apply is “to fold toward” or “to fold together,” leading to the meaning
“to affix” or “to put onto,” both literally and metaphorically.)
8.
√post “after, behind”
post
poster
post mortem
posterior
post partum
posterity
postpone
preposterous
postscript
posthumous
2
Even though it appears likely that magnet should be from this source, in fact it is not:
magnet and all its derivatives come from the name of a city near which magnetic
stones were found in the ancient word, and the root of magnet, magnetic, magnetize,
magneto, etc. is magnet, which is a single morpheme.
Roots
(The original Latin form was postumus “most afterward,” meaning
both “last” and “born after the death of one’s father”; in Late
Latin the h was added, perhaps due to the connection of the
meaning to the root hum “earth, bury,” which is a false etymology.)
(Preposterous = “before coming after”; although contradictory, this is
the intended meaning, originally “inverted,” and now “nonsensical,” “absurd.”)
9.
√prim “first, foremost, begin”
prim
prin
primal
prince
primary
principal
primate
principle
prime
primeval
primitive
primordial
(“The foremost bishop” in a geographical area; in biology, “the foremost order of mammals.”)
(Principle and principal are of the same origin, and in spite of the best
efforts of the usage editor’s note on “Word Usage” in the Heritage
Dictionary to sort out the difference between principal and principle, they are historically un-sort-out-able and have commonly been
spelled alike until recent times; synchronically, the difference is that
the -al form has to do with rank or importance, and the -le form
has to do with fundamental belief systems.)
10.
√simil “same, one”
sim
simil
simul
semb
simple
assimilate
simulate
resemble
simplex
facsimile
simultaneous
assemble
similar
dissemble
simile
ensemble
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 10
(What is the source of the <b> in assemble and semblance?)
(Simultaneous “at the same time” has a strange suffix that appears to be
derived from the forms instantaneous and momentaneous, with the
<t> mistakenly peeled off the roots instant and moment and taken
as part of the suffix.)
11.
√tort “twist”
tort
tor
contort (-ion)
torment
distort (-ion)
torque
extort (-ion)
retort
tortuous
torture
12.
√vac “empty”
vacu
vac
van
vacuous
vacate
vanish
evacuate
vacancy
vanity
vacuum
vacation
13.
√ver “turn”
vers
vert
vor, ver
adverse
advertise
vortex
adversary
inadvertent
vertex
controversy
pervert
converse (-ion)
subvert
universe
vertical
Roots
(Vertex, vortex, “highest point,” originally from Latin “whirling
column.”)
14. The following occur only in a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
(a) √ampl “large” – ample, amplifier, amplitude
(b) √equi “even, level” – equanimity, equator, equilateral, equilibrium, equinox, equity, equivocal
(Equator comes from a longer phrase in Latin, of which only
the first word is now used: the full phrase meant “equalizer of
day and night.”)
(Equity ought to mean simply “fairness”; has become very specialized to refer to the value of property in excess of how much
you owe on it.)
(A statement which is “equal-voiced” in two directions, and
therefore capable of more than one interpretation, is equivocal;
a favorite ploy of politicians and administrators because it
avoids commitment; sometimes you hear equivocation used as
a synonym for lying.)
(c) √lat “hidden” – latent
(d) √later, lat “side, wide” (not to be confused with later
“worship,” as in idolatry) – lateralize, -ation, latitude
(Lateralization has to do with brain functions delegated to one
hemisphere (one side) of the brain; thus, typically in a righthanded person, speech is controlled by the left hemisphere.)
(Latitude is literally “width”; apart from the latitude–longitude kind of geographical use, the term has come to mean
“freedom from constraint,” like the band-width of permitted
behavior.)
(e) √medi “middle” (not to be confused with med, mod “appropriate measures” as in medical, moderate) – mediocre (ocr =
mountain peak), media, medieval (ev = “age”), mediterranean,
intermediary
(If you’re mediocre, you should be the one in the middle, i.e.,
average; but in fact what has happened to the meaning?)
(The Mediterranean was in the middle of the then-known
world.)
(f) √meter “measure” – metric, metrics, metronome, perimeter,
symmetrical, trigonometry (the allomorphs are regular)
(g) √min “little, least” – diminish, diminutive, minor, minority,
minuscular
(h) √morph “form” – amorphous, morphology, morphogenesis
(Not related to the morph of morphine, which comes from
Morpheus, the ancient god of dreams.)
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Exercises for Textbook Chapter 10
(A “morphogenetic defect” is one which occurred during early
growth, when a cell went wild or in some way failed to develop
normally.)
(i) √ortho “straight, correct” – orthography, orthodontist, orthopedics, orthoepy
(Ped “child”; should refer, and originally did, to practice of
medicine in the domain of child rearing; but that practice concentrated heavily on skeletal structures, straightening out
deformities and the like, and it has come today to refer to correcting disorders of the skeletal system in general, not just children.)
(Epy means “word” or “writing”; so orthoepy has to do, for
example, with spelling reform.)
(j) √trop “turn” – tropic, trope, entropy
(Tropic = “turning”; from the apparent turning back of the
sun after it reaches the latitudes when it is farthest from the
equator (the solstices).)
(Trope from Greek “turn,” “figure of speech,” as in “to turn a
figure of speech.”)
(Entropy = “turning in,” meaning in Greek “transformation”;
today it has the meaning “disorder,” “deterioration,” plus
specific scientific meanings in the theory of fluids.)
(k) √tum “swollen” – contumely, detumescence, intumescence,
intumescent, tumid, tumor, tumult
11 Foreign Words and Phrases
1
Borrowing and phonetic adaptation
As we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, English has always been a language open to enrichment from other languages. Much of the discussion in this book deals with words which, though not of Anglo-Saxon
origin, are not treated as “foreign” by speakers of English. The classical
vocabulary we have been analyzing has become assimilated into the
language, and though some of the words may have been unfamiliar to
you, their overall shape follows the patterns of English and does not
bear the mark of foreignness.
The adaptation of borrowed vocabulary to the native patterns is a
lengthy historical process. Having dealt with the morphemes and words
introduced in the more distant past, we now turn to some more recent
imports from various languages. The words we have included in this
chapter here have achieved a measure of currency in English. Like all of
the learned words discussed earlier in the book, many of these recent
loans are a recognizable component of an educated person’s vocabulary and they can be encountered in non-specialized texts. On the other
hand, many of these items are still identified with the language from
which they were borrowed in orthography, pronunciation, or both.
Many of the borrowings from non-classical languages are relatively
new and their components, if any, have not become productive within
English. We will therefore not attempt to parse these words systematically into familiar building blocks. Nevertheless, in some cases it will be
useful to refer to the meanings of the components of a word or a
phrase, either to help you memorize it, or to help you with the meaning
of other words and phrases where the loan occurs.
Criteria for recognizing “foreign” words. It is difficult to define all the
criteria which separate accepted and assimilated borrowings from what
we call here “foreign” words and phrases. One good sign of foreignness
is the preservation of original source orthography that is in some way
distinct from the familiar spelling conventions in English. Seeing a
word spelled with an accent mark, letters, or letter sequences such as
<-ñ->, <ka-, ko-, ku-, kh-, kl->, <-tz->, <-zz->, <-sch->, <-ieux->, etc.
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Foreign Words and Phrases
immediately signals that there is something distinct about that word.
Similarly, we are often aware that some sound, or sound sequence, in
the pronunciation of a word is distinctly un-English. The French
expression déjà vu, literally “already seen,” now used as a specialized
psychological term (see our list below), is a good illustration of foreignness in both spelling and pronunciation. The Spanish mañana
“tomorrow” or the Russian kolkhoz “cooperative farm” are also
marked as foreign in both spelling and pronunciation.
Earlier in this book we introduced some phonetic symbols used in
the International Phonetic Alphabet, the IPA, and we used those
symbols throughout to transcribe the pronunciation of well-established
lexical items in English. In what follows in this final chapter, we will
depart from our IPA practice. Instead, we will transcribe the pronunciation of the foreign words in “imitation” English spelling. The reasons
we are doing this just here, and not elsewhere are two. First, in introducing IPA symbols in Chapter 5, we restricted ourselves to symbols
which are needed for the pronunciation of native English words.
Therefore, if we wanted to represent the foreign pronunciations
authentically, the IPA symbols that the reader will be familiar with
would not be sufficient to cover the rich variety of foreign sounds that
can be encountered in the donor languages. Second, the pronunciation
of many of the words borrowed from living languages will vary in
English depending on the familiarity of the speaker with the source
language. In other words, there is no established “standard” pronunciation for many of these words. We mark stressed syllables with capital
letters; the rest of the transcription should be transparent.
Odd spelling and pronunciation may not always be sufficient to mark
a foreign word or phrase, however. Another possible criterion for “foreignness” is semantic novelty. Recently borrowed words cover notions
that originate elsewhere; they often evoke associations with a specialized field, a particular culture, with social phenomena or customs
outside the English-speaking world. The German lederhosen, the
Yiddish kosher, the Spanish corrida, the Russian perestroyka, and the
Japanese shogun are words distinctly associated with the cultural and
political outlook of the societies in which these languages are spoken as
mother-tongues. By adopting these words in English, we enrich both
our vocabulary and our knowledge of other people’s customs and
views.
Most dictionaries mark the special status of unassimilated borrowings by printing them in italics. Similarly, style guidebooks stipulate,
and publishers and editors expect, that such words and phrases should
be italicized or in some way stand out on the printed page. As with the
preceding vocabulary material in this book, the degree of familiarity
and currency of these words and phrases will vary. Some may be
French
household words for some readers, others may be completely new. In
selecting the entries, we have mostly followed our own intuitions as to
what is still felt to be “alien.” If we pursue the legalistic metaphor, we
could say that they all hold a legitimate work permit within English;
some of them have achieved a permanent resident status, and some are
first-generation citizens.
2
French
You will remember from Chapter 3 that about 45 percent of an
educated English speaker’s vocabulary today is of French origin. The
most numerous additions of French words to the English word stock
came as a consequence of the Norman Conquest of 1066: more than
ten thousand French words were borrowed into English during the
Middle English period, the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Since
then, French has continued to be an important source of new words
and phrases in English. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
in Europe, French was taken to be the principal language of culture
and civilization. Because of that prestige, other European languages
including English borrowed large numbers of words from French.
Some of these earlier borrowings have been totally assimilated into
English and may not trigger a sense of “foreignness”: communism
(1843), chauvinism (1870), dossier (1880), blasé (1819), impasse (1851),
clairvoyance (1847). This is true of many words borrowed through
motoring and aviation early in the twentieth century: fuselage, garage,
hangar, limousine. The word associated with the re-definition of ground
transportation during the twentieth century, automobile, had been borrowed from French in 1865. Its shortened form, auto is first recorded in
English in 1899; a measure of how soon and how thoroughly this word
was felt to be a native word is the proliferation of compounds with
auto- as their first element: autobus, autocade, autocar, autocourt,
automaker, automotive, automotor.
On the other hand, a fair number of French words and expressions
exist in English which have not been fully adapted to the native pronunciation and spelling patterns. For most speakers, these phrases still
have an air of “otherness” about them. They can be perceived as
elegant and educated, and they are likely to show up in the writing of
individuals who seek to give a special elevated touch to their work.
They are sometimes heard in conversation, not infrequently coming
from individuals seeking to establish their social and educational credentials, or savoir faire, “know how,” of sophisticated language use.
The number of words and expressions one could list here is quite large;
we are only offering a sample of the most common such expressions.
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au jus oh ZHOO, oh JOO (the final -s is not pronounced in French;
English speakers vary on this detail; the vowel is one which does
not exist in English at all) – literally “with the gravy” – served in the
meat’s natural juices.
au pair oh PEHR, literally “equal, even” – a person, usually foreign,
employed to take care of children and housework in exchange for
room and board.
bête noire bait NWAR “black beast,” means aversion, pet aversion, something dreaded or detested = bugbear < Welsh – originally hobgoblin
“bugbear, bogey” – collective for a creepy, crawly form of life.
coup de grâce koo de GRAS “stroke of mercy.” A death blow or shot
administered to the mortally wounded, a decisive finishing blow or
event, originally the blow with which a knight dispatched his fallen
opponent. Other coup, or “blows” are: coup d’état: “stroke of
state,” takeover, coup de force “a sudden violent action,” coup de
maître: masterstroke, masterpiece.
déjà vu de-zhah VOO, also de-zhah VYOU “already seen,” the illusion
of remembering scenes and events even though they are actually
being experienced for the first time. The medical term is paramnesia
[para “beyond, beside” +a+mn+es+ia] “memory disorder, beyond
remembering.” Recently the phrase has extended its meaning to
anything that is blandly and unexcitingly familiar, a repetition.
enfant terrible an-fan te-REEBL “terrible child,” originally, “a wild and
destructive child,” now: an excessively brash and outspoken
member of a group whose failure to conform may be a source of
embarrassment to the group.
faute de mieux foht de MYUR “for lack of anything better,” cf. also tant
mieux “so much the better.” Most commonly used abstractly, as in
“for lack of a better alternative,” “for lack of a better argument.”
gaucherie gohsh-REE “left-iness,” – i.e., as if done with the left hand, a
tactless or awkward act, crudeness, lack of social experience,
gracelessness.
idée fixe ee-day FEEKS “fixed idea,” generally an obsession.
joie de vivre zhwah duh VEEVR “joy of living,” an optimistic disposition based on the sense that it’s a joy to be living.
laissez faire les-say FEHR “let do,” doctrine that the government
should regulate as little as possible, especially in respect to business
and industry, a policy of non-interference, letting things drift
without direction or planning. The expression comes from the
teachings of eighteenth century French economists who advocated
that the people should be allowed to do as they wished.
neé NEY “born,” usually added to a married woman’s name to refer to
her maiden name if the two names are different. The masculine
form, used after pseudonyms, is né.
Latin
noblesse oblige noh-BLESS oh-BLEEZH “nobility obligates”: the
obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior and
actions associated with high rank or birth.
nouvelle cuisine noovel kweeZEEN “new cooking,” a combination of
healthy food preparation which underscores the natural taste of
the ingredients, the artistic presentation of the food on the plate,
and the small-to-moderate quantity of the food.
parti pris par-tee PREE “side taken,” preconceived opinion, prejudice,
bias.
pot pourri poh poo-REE “rotten pot” – a mixture of flowers, herbs, and
spices usually kept in a jar and used as an odorizer/scent producer;
a medley, miscellaneous collection.
précis pre-SEE or PRE-see, originally, this is the French adjective corresponding to precise in English. The noun précis preserves the
original meaning of the root cid, cis “to cut,” an abbreviated
version, a summary.
savoir faire sa-wahr FEHR “to know how to do” – the knowledge of
how to behave and what to do in various social situations.
tête-à-tête tet-uh-TET “head-to-head,” privately, usually just between
two people.
vis-á-vis veez – ah- VEE “face-to-face,” used metaphorically for “in
relation to, with regard to.”
3
Latin
Historically, Latin has been the most important source of
enrichment for the vocabulary of English. As pointed out in Chapter 3,
as much as 17 percent of our active word stock is directly imported
from Latin. The first Latin loans came to English fairly early – through
contacts between the Romans and the Germanic tribes on the
Continent before the fifth century A.D., through the adoption of
Christianity and the translation of religious and literary texts from
Latin into Old English. The trend continued through the Middle Ages,
through Medieval scholasticism, and during the Renaissance when for
many educated people Latin was an active second language. Even in
modern times, Latin has remained one of the most common sources of
borrowing. It was the language learned in high schools in the English
speaking world by almost every educated individual throughout the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even well into the twentieth
century. Although that was not as true of education in America to the
same extent as in Britain, a good reading knowledge of Latin was
required for admission to most fields at America’s best universities until
about 1940. After 1945 the number of Latin words borrowed into
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English has declined sharply, just as the teaching of the classical languages in public schools and universities has declined sharply. Still,
scholars have continued to turn to Latin when they need a new term for
a new invention: myxomatosis (1952), nuclease (1952), pesticide (1950),
video (1951). The borrowing of Latin words and phrases directly into
English has traditionally depended on specific contexts – legal, religious, scientific – and as that exposure diminishes, so does the rate of
borrowing.
Latin terms in common use. The majority of the Latin words and
phrases listed below have come into the ordinary language through their
use in specialized areas, primarily the field of law. You will find many
more of the legal terms in the Workbook chapter dedicated to technical
vocabulary (Chapter 12). Here we include only the ones that have
“leaked out” into ordinary discourse, along with some other words and
phrases that came directly from Latin in recent times. Some, like ad hoc,
are so common that we would hardly realize they are not ordinary
everyday English were it not for the odd spelling of hoc. Others like
carpe diem seem to have acquired more general currency lately, judging
from its popularity in recent films and on vanity plates. Others, like
recto/verso, are only appropriate in special contexts: manuscript studies,
paleography, printing, book-binding – you can’t use these words if you
are giving road directions. Finally, some, like advocatus diaboli and bona
fide have exact English translations; whether you use the Latin phrase or
its English equivalent will depend on register, style, your personal judicious choice of the right word in the right context.
ad hoc “for this purpose,” anything constituted or put forward for a
single occasion or for a special purpose – unlike standing committees we can have ad hoc committees, which when they have met
their assignment are automatically discharged. Unlike principled
arguments there can be ad hoc arguments, which are arguments
without general applicability and therefore suspect.
ad hominem “to the person,” arguments not addressed to the issue but
to feelings about the character of the other person.
ad infinitum “to infinity,” referring to any series or events that seem destined to go on without end, or at least ad nauseam, q.v.
ad nauseam “to nausea,” referring to a continuation of events that
seems repetitious, boring, and interminable to the degree of being
sickening.
ad rem “to the thing,” i.e., argument to the matter at hand, not irrelevant or far-ranging.
advocatus diaboli “devil’s advocate,” one who takes the opposite side of
an argument just for the sake of argument, or at least to see
whether the other point of view has any hope of success.
Latin
bona fide “in good faith,” sincerely and honestly.
carpe diem “pluck the day,” a metaphor for “enjoy the day, live to the
full”: the enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment without
concern for the future; often rendered in English as seize the day.
caveat “let him/her beware,” legal warning to a judicial officer to
suspend the proceedings until the opposition has a hearing. It is
now generalized as a countable noun to refer to any expressed
reservation or caution, as in a contract or agreement; compare to
cave canem “beware of the dog,” a sign intended to warn intruders
to stay away.
ceteris paribus “other things being equal.”
cui bono “to whom good?,” i.e., who stands to benefit (e.g., who are all
those political action groups working for, anyway?)
deus ex machina often abbreviated to deus, “god from a machine,” originally an unexpected rescue out of a genuinely hopeless situation,
brought about in Greek drama by having a god descend on the
scene from a contraption called machina. Now the expression is
generalized to any illogical or miraculous situation where the
cavalry arrives in the nick of time; viewed as an unacceptable trick
in good fiction or drama because unmotivated.
et cetera, abbreviated etc., means “and other things”; the phrase – very
common – “and etc.” is an embarrassing solecism, since it means
“and and other things,” and demonstrates that the user does not
know what etc. stands for.
excelsior “still higher,” motto of New York ex + cel “from the hill, rise,
project,” compare excel, excellent.
in absentia “in absence,” e.g., getting a degree without being present at
the awards ceremonies.
in medias res “into the middle of things,” without introduction or
preparation, plunge right in.
in situ: “in position,” in the natural or original position.
in flagrante delicto, “while the crime is blazing,” in the very act of committing a misdeed, (caught) red-handed.
inter alia “among other things.”
ipso facto “by that fact itself,” by the very fact of something already
having taken place.
lacuna “a blank space,” a missing part, gap, hole, generally in an
abstract sense, like “a hole in the argument” or “a gap in the presentation”; the plural is lacunae.
lapsus linguae “slip of the tongue.”
lingua franca “French language,” referring in the Middle Ages to a
blend of Italian + French + Spanish + Greek + Arabic spoken in
the Mediterranean ports; now any of various languages (as
Swahili, Latin) used as common or commercial tongues among
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people of diverse speech, any method of communication resembling a common language.
magnum opus “a great work,” one’s major achievement; the plural of
opus is opera.
mea culpa “through my fault,” a formal acknowledgement of personal
fault or error; see also culpable, culprit, inculpate, exculpate.
mobile vulgus “movable crowd,” referring to the fickleness of the
masses, from which we get the word mob.
modulo “except for.”
modus vivendi “a way of living,” feasible arrangement, practical compromise, especially one that bypasses difficulty – a way of getting
along with another person or nation in spite of basic differences.
ne plus ultra “not more beyond,” i.e., the absolute peak of perfection.
nolens volens “willy-nilly.”
non sequitur “it does not follow,” a characterization of an argument
which is believed to be illogical; used as a countable noun.
nota bene “note well,” abbreviated NB, meaning “pay attention.”
obiter dictum “something said in passing,” ob “by” + iter “way” – by
the way; an incidental and collateral opinion uttered by a judge but
not binding, any incidental remark or observation, a side remark, a
digression, the plural is obiter dicta.
passim “everywhere, throughout, here and there,” as in a document.
per se “in itself, as such,” to the exclusion of other considerations or
external circumstances.
persona non grata “an unwelcome person,” originally used in the
context of international diplomacy.
placebo “I shall please,” treatment prescribed for the mental relief of
the patient rather than for its actual effect, a mild, soothing harmless pill containing no real medication, sugar pill, a pill having no
effect whatsoever except psychologically, see also complacent,
placate, placid.
prima facie “on the first appearance,” at first view, before closer inspection.
pro forma “as a formality,” i.e., doing something because it is mandated
by the rules, not because of the ambition to achieve results.
quid pro quo “what for what,” something given or received in return for
something else, “appropriate exchange,” used negatively: mutual
exchange of favors.
recto/verso right-hand, left-hand page; the page to be read first/the page
to be read second.
reductio ad absurdum “reduction to absurdity,” often shortened simply
to reductio. It refers to a manner of argumentation in which it is
shown that if the same premisses are pushed to their logical conclusion, the conclusion will be ridiculous.
Greek
sic “thus, in this way,” usually added in a text after a grammatical or
spelling error in a quotation, drawing attention to the error and
making sure that the one quoting it is not perceived by other
readers as the culprit.
sine qua non short for conditio sine qua non, meaning a necessary condition – literally “without which nothing.”
status quo “state in which,” i.e., the existing condition, the current state
of things.
sub rosa “in confidence,” literally “under the rose” which doesn’t make
much sense unless one knows that for the ancient Greeks the rose
was the symbol of secrecy and confidentiality.
sub verbo “under the word,” abbreviated s.v., and most commonly used
in dictionary entries to refer the reader to another word under
which relevant information is to be found.
sui generis “of its own kind,” unique, peculiar, constituting a class
alone.
tabula rasa “smoothed or erased tablet or writing surface,” a “clean
slate”; more narrowly, a psychological term for the mind in its
hypothetical primary blank or empty state at birth before receiving
outside impressions.
verbatim “following the exact words,” word for word, the antonym for
paraphrase. Used in reference to exact quotations, as in “a verbatim quotation.”
vita brevis is short for ars longa, vita brevis “art is long, life is short”;
originally the ars in question was the art of healing (the original
quotation is from the father of western medicine, Hippocrates),
now extended to refer to the permanence of all serious forms of
creative achievement in contrast to the brevity of human life.
4
Greek
The number of borrowings directly from Greek, outside the
technical vocabulary of the medical and life sciences (which create new
terminology very commonly from both Greek and Latin), is much
smaller than what we get from Latin. The technical vocabulary of medicine is heavily based on Greek roots, and only slightly less so on Latin.
The nomenclatures of botany and biology are almost entirely based on
Latin and Greek. Entire books much longer than this one present the
relevant vocabulary which must be studied by specialists in those fields.
In the context of college life in North America familiarity with the
names of the letters of the Greek alphabet is taken for granted, and
some of them can be used metaphorically. Alpha, used as an adjective,
can mean “high-or first-ranking,” beta is the second place in a
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classification system, an iota is a minimal, vanishingly small quantity of
something, and in the Workbook chapter on specialized vocabulary we
cover the transferred medical meanings of chi, delta, ypsilon. The sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, pi, has been borrowed by mathematicians as a symbol for the constant 3.14. The seventeenth letter, rho,
was used by nineteenth-century philologists who introduced the term
rhotacism; more recently the root rho was incorporated into another
linguistic term rhotic, an adjective describing a variety of English in
which the -r- sound is pronounced at the end of words and before consonants. The C- or S- shape of the eighteenth letter of the alphabet,
sigma, has given us the words sigmoid “crescent-shaped” or “having a
S-curve,” sigmodont, sigmoidoscope. The last letter of the Greek alphabet, the omega, has come to mean “the end,” as in the expression the
alpha and omega “the beginning and the end.”
Semantic transfer. Many characters, places, notions from Greek
mythology have made it into the common language through semantic
transfer; we listed some of them earlier in this book. Many more can
easily be added: aegis, agora, ambrosia, apostrophe, chorus, cynic,
demon, echo, giant, hector, hero, labyrinth, lesbian, nemesis, orchestra,
paean. In the common vocabulary of English one of the more reliable
criteria pointing to the Hellenic origin of a word is the spelling with
<-rh->: rhapsody, rheumatism, diarrhea, rhinoceros, rhythm. The
spelling with <-hy-> is also most frequently the Latin rendition of
Greek <-hu->. The latter spelling includes, among others, all the derivatives of hydr(o)- “water,” hyena, hygiene, hymen, all the derivatives of
hyp(o)- “under” and hyper- “over, above,” hyssop, hysteria, etc. For
common words, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a loanword
should be labeled “Latin” or “Greek,” since the Romans borrowed liberally from the Greeks, and the multiple strands of the classical vocabulary are inextricably tangled. The entries below are not of that kind –
they are all clearly “Greek.” As in the previous sections, our list will not
be comprehensive; we have been guided only by our own experience
concerning the usefulness, frequency, and familiarity of the words and
phrases listed here.
eureka “I have found it,” Archimedes’ cry as he ran naked from the
bath, having hit upon the principle of buoyancy which enabled him
to tell whether the gold crown of his king contained any baser
metal. His discovery led to the formulation of the principle of
flotation known as Archimedes’ principle. Eureka is the motto of
the State of California.
hapax, short for hapax legomenon, pl. hapax legomena “once read,” a
word or phrase recorded only once in a given body of text, a
unique attestation of a word or expression.
Greek
heuristic hyou-RIS-tic “discovery through trial,” providing aid or direction in the solution of a problem; working out a solution by trial
and error. Both a countable noun and an adjective: we can speak of
“a heuristic,” meaning a particular set of procedures, or we can
speak of “a heuristic solution,” meaning a solution which is
arrived at by a series of closer and closer approximations. The
opposite of heuristic is algorithmic, referring to a procedure that is
guaranteed to succeed (e.g., an algorithm for determining all the
prime numbers – an algorithm which happens not to exist).
hoi polloi HOY-puh-LOY “the many, the general populace, the masses,
the common people”; hoi is the plural of the definite article.
Though most people are unaware of this, saying “The hoi polloi
are generally in favor of . . . ,” we are saying, “The the polloi are
generally in favor of . . .”
hubris HYOU-bris “away from proper behavior,” an act or disposition
characterized by insolence, exaggerated pride or self-confidence,
often resulting in retribution. The great Greek tragic heroes were
usually guilty of hubris, and it was the main cause of their downfalls.
koiné coi-NAY, common or standard language, usually a dialect which
has achieved the status of a literary standard used as a lingua
franca among speakers of various dialects of one and the same language. A koiné is valuable as a unifying factor in a nation or
smaller group, which is why koinés have been carefully cultivated,
even created, in many parts of the world; koinés can unfortunately
also be the cause for devaluation or even extinction of other
dialects and languages.
kudos KOO-dos “fame, renown, prestige, resulting from achievement,”
a singular noun. Phrases like “She received all sorts of kudos for
her performance,” make the word appear, misleadingly, to be a
plural form.
palindrome palin “back, again” + drom “run, course”: a word, verse or
sentence that reads the same backwards and forwards ELBA –
ABLE; ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA; MADAM I’M ADAM.
It is a word game item.
panta rhei “all things flow”; the observation that everything is in a constant state of change, that all things are in a flux and therefore
nothing can prevent change, was first made famous by the Greek
philosopher Heraclitus (c.540–c.470 B.C.).
plethora pleth “to be full,” originally referring to a medical condition
marked by a florid complexion (excessive blood), now generally
referring to anything in overabundance, superfluity.
prolegomemon pro + leg, log “speak, write, study” – prefatory remarks, a
formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret
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an extended work. Essentially the same as a preface or a foreword.
The plural is prolegomena, which would be excessive if intended as
an introduction to only one book.
5
German
In spite of (or perhaps because of) two world wars with
Germany on the other side, English has borrowed relatively few words
from German into the ordinary lexicon that still retain their German
flavor, though there are numerous originally German words that have
been fully assimilated, like rucksack, protein, kindergarten, seminar,
lager, veneer, sauerkraut. The still unassimilated ones that are perhaps
best known are these:
angst literally “fear”; a psychological term denoting intense and traumatizing anxiety, discomfort, often also guilt, associated with the
conflict between man and society within an existentialist framework. The term came in vogue around the middle of the century
and is associated with the philosophical and psychological schools
of Heidegger and Freud; most frequently it is used in the collocation existential angst, or in the compound adjective angst-ridden.
anschluss AN-shloos “annexation,” also “political union,” more
specifically the union between Nazi Germany and Austria accomplished by Hitler in 1938. Outside the European context, the term
can be used more broadly to mean “any improper agreement
involving occupation of foreign territories.”
blitzkrieg BLITS-kreeg literally “lightning war”; any offensive conducted with great speed and force, “sudden and overpowering,”
the tactic of rapid and massive attacks, especially air raids,
intended by Hitler to result in quick victory over the Allies, also
used figuratively as in “she could not withstand the blitzkrieg of
germs.”
doppelgänger DO-pul- GAN-gur “double-goer,” a ghostly version of a
living person, also used to mean “a perfect likeness,” a “spitting
image,” which itself is a mispronunciation of spit and image.
echt <ch> = /h/ “genuine, unadulterated, authentic.” According to the
OED, George Bernard Shaw was the first to use the word in
English during World War I, in the phrase “echt Junker opinions.”
ersatz er-ZATS “fake, substitute, imitation,” it also implies inferior
quality. Ersatz can be used as the opposite of echt.
Festschrift FEST-shrift literally “celebration-writing,” it can also appear
in lower case: festschrift, the plural is Festschriften or Festschrifts – a
collection of essays written in honor of a prominent scholar usually
German
marking an anniversary or an important period in that scholar’s
professional life.
führer FYU-rer “leader,” sometimes also capitalized; a neutral word in
German until Hitler proclaimed himself pompously the Führer of
Germany in 1934, following Benito Mussolini’s example –
Mussolini had called himself Il Duce “the leader” since 1922.
Führer can be used figuratively for anyone who demands and asserts
unrestrained authority and power the way the fascist leaders did.
gastarbeiter GAHST-AHR-bighter “guest-worker,” the compound conceals the real nature of the “guest-working”: after World War II
the burgeoning German economy provided temporary, and not so
temporary, menial jobs for immigrants from Yugoslavia, Turkey,
Italy who did not have the privileges of German citizens. The term
was borrowed into English in the mid-sixties and has become a
synonym for cheap immigrant labor and lack of citizen’s rights.
gemütlichkeit guh -MYOOT-lich-kight cordiality, friendliness, coziness;
a strongly positive word, based on the adjective gemütlich, which
means “comfortable, cozy, good-natured.”
gestalt guh -SHTALT literally “shape, form,” a structure, configuration
or pattern so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with
properties not derivable from the sum of its parts.
gesundheit guh-ZOONT-hayt “health” (gesund = sound, as in sound
mind in sound body); it is the polite and friendly thing to say in
German when someone sneezes, the German for “bless you.” The
word is more wide-spread in those parts of the States where there
have been significant numbers of German immigrants.
lebensraum LEH-bens-roum literally “living space,” territory believed
especially by Nazis to be necessary for national existence or economic self-sufficiency.
kaputt kuh -PUT “broken, destroyed, non-functional, out of commission”; the word was borrowed from German, which in its turn borrowed it from French, during the nineteenth century. Today its use
is mostly confined to facetious or outright comic contexts.
kitsch KITCH a strongly derogatory word indicating decorations,
pseudo-literary compositions, or any form of art which is gaudy,
tasteless, pretentious, generally worthless.
lederhosen LEH-dur-HOH-zun “leather trousers,” in fact, leather
shorts, usually held up by highly decorative suspenders; the characteristic Southern German, Swiss, and Austrian article of men’s
clothing that goes together with Alpine landscapes and yodeling.
leitmotiv LIGHT-moh-TEEF, also spelled leitmotif, “lead motif,” a
dominant theme, a recurrent musical or literary pattern characterizing a composition, a novel, or the behavior of a character in an
opera or a literary piece.
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Foreign Words and Phrases
putsch putch: a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government; the word became particularly popular in 1991
during the unsuccessful anti-Gorbachev putch in fragile postSoviet Russia.
realpolitik reh-AL-po-li-TEEK: literally “practical politics,” i.e., politics
based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical
or ethical objectives.
schadenfreude SHAH-dun-FROY-duh literally “damage”+“joy” –
enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.
sitzfleisch ZITS-FLAYSH: literally “sitting flesh,” the ability to engage
in activity which requires sustained concentration and persistence.
spritz shpritz literally “to squirt, spray” – to spray briefly, to dilute alcoholic with non-alcoholic carbonated drink, compare also spritzer.
Now often pronounced with initial /sp-/.
übermensch YOO-ber-MENSH “super-man.” During the last two centuries the word was first popularized by the German philosopher
Nietzsche who developed the notion of a human being who has
exceptional self-control, possesses enormous physical power, and is
capable of super-human creativity. The word was then discredited
by the Nazis who equated their notion of the superiority of one
race, the Aryan race, with the notion of übermensch.
verboten fur-BOH-tun “forbidden,” in English the word is mostly associated with a sense of strong Prussian discipline, now appropriate
only in comic circumstances and contexts.
wanderlust literally “to wander, travel + desire, pleasure”: strong or
unconquerable longing, impulse to travel.
schuss SHOOS a sports term, a precipitous straight downhill run in
skiing, involving no turns to slow down the speed; also used
figuratively for any fast and largely uncontrollable downfall.
yodel YOH-dul a style of singing in which the normal singing voice
alternates with a falsetto creating an interesting fluctuating musical
effect.
6
Yiddish and other Germanic
Yiddish, a Germanic language with elements of its vocabulary
from Hebrew and from the Slavic languages with which it was in
contact in Eastern Europe, the Ukraine, and Russia, has provided some
useful and colorful words in English. Yiddish was officially proclaimed
the Jewish national language in 1903. Since Yiddish uses the Hebrew
script, transcribing Yiddish words in the Roman alphabet often allows
spelling variants; we have tried to record the most frequent ones, but
our list of alternative spellings should not be assumed to be exhaustive.
Other Germanic languages
chutzpah also hutzpah HOOT-spah – supreme self-confidence, nerve,
gall. Ordinarily used with quite negative connotations.
goy, pl. goyim, also goys, from Hebrew goy “people, nation”; a nonJewish person, a gentile.
kibbutz, pl. kibbutzim, also kibbutzes; a cooperative settlement in Israel
based on joint ownership and sharing of the products of the collective enterprise. A member of a kibbutz is a kibbutznik.
kibitz, also kibbitz to meddle, to offer unwanted advice, especially
someone watching a card game and making suggestions how to
play the hand; a kibitzer is a busybody, a meddler.
klutz an awkward person, usually also taken to be less than bright.
kosher “right, fit”; allowed to be eaten according to the dietary or ceremonial laws of Judaism, extended to anything that is proper, legitimate, acceptable.
kvetch, also kvetsch “to whine, to find fault,” and doing so in an annoyingly plaintive voice; from German quetschen “to squeeze”; the
noun can be either kvetch or kvetcher.
l’chaim, also l’chay(im), lechaim, lehayim, lechayim from Hebrew “to
life,” a drinking toast, “cheers,” “good health.”
maven also mavin, mayvin, a knowledgeable person, an expert, a connoisseur.
mazel tov, also mazal tov, mazzel tov, “congratulations, good luck.”
mensch MENSH, the word means simply “man” in German; in
Yiddish it has been narrowed and elevated to a human being of
exceptional uprightness, a decent, honest, reliable human being;
though the original noun is masculine, it can now be used for
either gender
schlemiel shluh-MEEL , an individual of low reliability and not much
to admire in the way of manners, a bungler.
schlimazel shluh-MAH-zul , extremely unlucky person, the kind that
the American cartoonist Al Capp in the comic strip “Li’l Abner”
always portrayed as going around with a cloud above his head,
raining on him but not on anyone around him.
schlock cheap imitation, low quality, sleazy; cognate with German
schlag “a blow,” originally “broken merchandise,” then generalized.
7
Other Germanic languages
Other Germanic languages have continued to influence the
vocabulary of English, though the number of recent borrowings is
somewhat limited. Some of the words which have been borrowed
recently from other Germanic languages are:
107
108
Foreign Words and Phrases
apartheid a-PAR-tight Afrikaans, literally “a condition of being apart,
separation,” referring to the formerly mandated separation of
Africans and Europeans in South Africa.
berserk in Old Norse mythology warriors who fought with fury (bear +
shirt/sark), now “violently or destructively frenzied.”
man(n)ikin MAN-i-kin literally “a small man,” a word borrowed from
Dutch. The most famous manikin is the statue of the little boy urinating in Brussels; the word can also be used to mean a model used
for teaching human anatomy. A variant spelling mannequin has
been borrowed into French and thence to English; a mannequin is
someone employed to model clothes; it is also the word for a model
of a human figure on which clothes are displayed on shop windows
and inside shops.
ombudsman, sometimes capitalized, < Swedish ombud “charge, commission,” a person appointed to deal with complaints by individuals against public authorities; figuratively, any person involved
with arbitration between an individual and an institutional or
public grouping.
skoal Danish skaal, Old Norse skal “bowl,” now “drinking toast” used
along with “here’s to your health.”
slalom Norwegian – a sloping track, “a downhill ski race,” also metaphorically “a zigzag or winding course, marked by obstacles or
barriers.”
8
Italian
In Chapter 3 we discussed the influence of Italian opera on the
musical vocabulary of English. More generally, Italian is the language
which the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classical composers
found most suitable for expressing tempos and dynamics in their
musical notation. This includes words like allegro, largo, presto,
andante, adagio, crescendo, piano, forte, glissando, soprano, ritardando,
ritenuto, sostenuto, diminuendo, fortissimo, pianissimo, all of which are
familiar to musical cognoscenti, no doubt even to musical neonates.
But these are by no means the only words we have borrowed from
Italian. Others have come into English recently, including some of the
entries below:
bambino “an infant, a small child,” the feminine form is bambina: when
used in reference to a teenage girl or a young woman it can have
demeaning sexual connotations.
cognoscente KOG-nuh-SHEN-tee. pl. cognoscenti, a Latinized Italian
word based on the root √gn- “to know,” meaning a real expert,
Spanish
someone who possesses superior knowledge and taste, usually in
some branch of the arts.
che sarà, sarà keh suh-RAH suh-RAH literally “what will be, will be.”
diva, pl. divas or dive, originally “goddess,” related to divine. Since the
end of the nineteenth century the term has been used for a leading
female opera singer, a prima donna.
dolce far niente DOHL-chay FAR NEE-ent-uh, literally “sweet doing
nothing” – pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness, compare the
word dolci at the top of the desert menu in Italian restaurants. The
root dol- < Italian, ultimately Latin dul- “sweet” should not be confused with dol-, dolor- “pain, suffering.”
dolce vita DOHL-chay VEE-ta, literally “sweet life” – a life of indolence
and self-indulgence, a combination of luxury, frivolity, and licentiousness; the phrase was popularized in English following the
international triumph of Federico Fellini’s classic film La dolce vita.
duce DOO-chey “leader” < duc “lead, pull,” see also under Führer above.
mafia literally “boldness,” name of an alleged international criminal
organization, usually capitalized when referring to the criminal
network based in Sicily. Now extended to apply to any malevolent
and lawless clique with a very rigid internal hierarchy and an
unbreakable sense of group loyalty, as the Russian mafia, the Labor
Party mafia.
numero uno “number one,” sometimes used humorously as a synonym
for “leading, first, top ranking, alpha.”
paparazzo, pl. paparazzi, a photographer who makes money from pictures taken in violation of the privacy of celebrities; the circumstances of the death of Princess Diana reinforced the already
strong negative associations of this word.
prima donna, also spelled as one word, literally “first lady,” now also
used in negative contexts; prima donna behavior is the conduct of a
pretentious, arrogant, demanding person who expects special treatment and privileges where such may not be well earned.
sotto voce SOH-toh VOH-chay “under the voice, under the breath,” in
an undertone, in a private manner, very softly.
viva voce VEE-vah VOH-chay “with the living voice, orally, aloud.”
9
Spanish
Spanish loanwords started entering the language at the time of
the confrontation between England and Spain in the sixteenth century.
Words borrowed then include those mentioned in Chapter 3: armada,
bravado, canoe, cocoa, Negro, potato, sombrero, tobacco, yam. In the
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, mostly as a result of contacts
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110
Foreign Words and Phrases
in the southwestern U.S., English speakers started using words such as
bonanza, coyote, gaucho, lasso, marijuana, stampede, vamoose (from
vamos “let’s go”) and many more which are now part of our everyday
vocabulary.
Spanish geographical names. In the same area in the United States,
very large numbers of place names are directly borrowed from Spanish.
Starting from the name of California’s capital, Sacramento, from Las
Vegas to Los Angeles and San Francisco, Spanish place names dot the
maps of California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Florida. A
rich array of hagiographical names are also found in those regions: San
Andreas, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Cruz, San Gabriel, San
Fernando, San Marino, San José, San Juan Capistrano, San Luis
Obispo, Santa Maria, Santa Monica, Santa Rosa are all places familiar
to Californians. Some place names are distinctly Spanish sounding:
Buena Vista, El Cerrito, Los Gatos, La Jolla, (compare to the Texan city
La Joya, also La Joya in NM). Spanish words can be recognized in
various topographical, housing- and tourist-related contexts: adobe
“sundried brick,” alameda “a tree-lined promenade,” as in Alameda
County in CA. Fort Alamo has its name from the word alamo “a poplar
tree,” alcatras < Portugese alcatraz “a pelican, also the island on which
pelicans nest,” has given the name of the infamous prison Alcatraz.
Arroyo is “a stream bed, a gully,” as in Arroyo Grande, CA, Arroyo
Hondo in NM, bodega “a wine shop,” turns up in Bodega Bay north of
San Francisco, camarilla “a secret group, cabal,” compare Camarillo in
CA. From Spanish we also have the words canyon (Sp. cañon), loma “a
broad hill, a range,” compare Loma Linda, marina (also Italian) “a
promenade by the sea,” cf. Marina del Rey, CA, mariposa “butterfly,”
cf. Mariposa, CA, ocotillo “a spiny shrub,” cf. Ocotillo, CA, the word
patio, playa “beach” as in Playa del Rey, CA, sierra “a sawtoothed
range of mountains” as in the Sierra Nevada, salina “a salty pond or
marsh,” cf. Salinas in CA, and the name of the hotel chain Ramada
from the Spanish ramada meaning “an arbor, porch.”1
The current situation. According to current estimates, about 12
percent of the US population is Spanish-speaking, and Spanish is the
foreign language of choice for nearly 58 percent of high-school students, as against only 28 percent choosing French.2 In spite of these
1
2
For the glosses of some of the Spanish words cited here, as well as for more examples
of early borrowings from Spanish into English, see the article by John Algeo “Spanish
Loanwords in English by 1900,” in Félix Rodríguez González, Spanish Loanwords in
the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 1996: 13–41.
A series of studies published in the volume Spanish Loanwords in the English
Language, ed. González, explore various aspects of the Spanish lexicographical legacy
and presence in English. The figures cited here are from the editor’s Introduction, p.2.
Spanish
large numbers, much higher in Florida and the Southwest, relatively
few words have entered the everyday English lexicon from these contacts, for the same reasons that so few words entered English from
Celtic in the early history of the Germanic tribes in England. Three
that are recognizably Hispanic and widespread in the general English
lexicon are gringo, machismo, and Chicano (from Mejicano, pronounced me-khi-KA-no; the ch- results from the American effort to
imitate the sound of -j- in Mejicano, since that sound does not exist in
English). As in the lists of words from other languages, in selecting
words of Spanish descent below, we have followed our practice of
avoiding terms for food and drink, which are quite numerous.
barrio literally “district, suburb,” but in English generally refers to a
poor Spanish-speaking immigrant neighborhood.
corrida short for “corrida de toros,” a bull-fight.
embarcadero “wharf ” or “quay”; the most famous one called by this
name in America is probably the San Francisco Embarcadero, now
mainly a tourist attraction near Fisherman’s Wharf, but a thriving
port until the early 70s.
gringo a Mexican-Spanish contemptuous name for Anglo-Americans.
hombre literally “man,” but as borrowed into English it has a strong
sense of machismo (see below) connected with it.
incommunicado “out of communication,” as in solitary confinement.
macho “masculine, vigorous,” but meaning ostentatiously giving the
impression of toughness and virility.
mañana “tomorrow,” but used in English mainly to mean “to put things
off yet another day.”
mestizo, fem. mestiza, originally the offspring of a Spaniard and an
American Indian, now generalized to refer to mixed blood generally, or to a full-blooded Central or South American Indian who
has adopted European ways.
niño “child,” referring to “THE child,” i.e., the Christ child, celebrated
during the Christmas season. The shortened form El Niño from El
Niño de Navidad refers to a complex body of weather phenomena
on the west coast of Central and North America generated by
unusually warm Pacific waters and often producing heavy rains.
The feminine form is el niña.
parador – a chain of inns or hotels in Spain, usually magnificently renovated historic buildings
pronto – “quick” – though the word is identical in Italian and could
have been borrowed from there through its use in music, the
American usage of it meaning “right away” was borrowed from
Spanish in the contacts all over the Southwest.
111
112
10
Foreign Words and Phrases
Russian
Geographically and historically, English has had very limited
contacts with the Russian language. The twentieth century, however, has
been a time of intense international contacts, friendly or otherwise, of
huge demographic shifts, of collapsing political systems, and the development of transport and communication technologies which make
national boundaries vanish. Seventy years of communism in the Soviet
Union naturally gave rise to many concepts and terms associated with
the specific economic and political realities in the largest adversary of
the “West”; you will recognize the historical importance of some of
these items listed below. Included are also some Russian words which
are familiar from descriptions of Russian customs and articles of clothing. Finally, with the political changes at the end of the 1980s we have
become acquainted with some new political terms, though the major
direction of vocabulary transfer through the twentieth century, and
especially most recently, has been from English into Russian.
apparatchik literally “one who operates within a power structure”
(apparat), especially a political party – pejorative due to its association with the communist regime, implying blind and strict obedience to the dogmas of a party political establishment.
babushka literally “grandmother, old woman,” in English changed by
metomymy to mean the kind of headgear elderly Russian women
wore traditionally, a head scarf, folded into a triangle and tied
under the chin.
dacha, also spelled datcha “a country house.”
duma, DOO-mah, also spelled douma literally “thought,” though the
word was extended to mean an elected governing body between
1905–1917; it has now been reintroduced as a synonym for “parliament.”
glasnost GLASS-nost literally “voicing, publicity,” with amelioration of
meaning: open and frank discussion of political and economic
realities initiated by Soviet President Gorbachev in the mid 1980s;
any such openness.
gulag GOO-lag, originally, an acronym for the Russian state agency on
labor camps, an ignominious term for a detention or labor camp;
the word was popularized in the West by Solzhenitsin’s famous
novel The Gulag Archipelago.
kolkhoz “cooperative farm”; membership of the kolkhozes was forced
on the Soviet farmers.
kulak originally “a miserly person,” an extended meaning of the literal
meaning of kulak “fist”;during the years of forceful collectivization
Japanese
the word was used as a derogatory term for any landowner who was
opposed to the regime and was therefore regarded as a dangerous
class enemy.
mir “peace” – for most speakers today the word is associated with the
space station Mir, but, in fact, the word is a common Slavic root
for both “peace” and “world.”
nyet “no,” used almost exclusively in humorous contexts.
perestroika literally “rebuilding, reconstruction,” with amelioration of
meaning – the program of political reform in the Soviet Union
started by President Gorbachev in 1986, which resulted in the disintegration of the former communist regime in the country; any
such reorganization and rebuilding.
politburo “political bureau/agency,” during the communist era, the
chief executive committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet
Union and in other East European countries, a governing body
vested with almost unlimited power.
samizdat “self-publishing.”
samovar “self-boil” – a tea urn, usually a stately and stylish household
object.
soviet (as in Supreme Soviet ) literally “council, advice” – a government
body, council, usually hierarchized.
sputnik literally “co-traveller” – any of a series of earth-orbiting satellites. The Russian suffix -nik “one who” has been borrowed from
Slavic into English and has produced beatnik, computernik,
filmnik, flopnik, kibbutznik, CIA-nik, MITnik, peacenik, refusenik,
stay-putnik, among others.
troika “a threesome,” originally a vehicle drawn by three horses abreast,
now used almost exclusively to refer to a governmental commission or administrative group of three powerful individuals.
11
Japanese
As many as 222 Japanese words have been recorded in English
since 1949.3 The recent ones include 16 culinary items, 25 business
items, 20 art words, 14 sports terms and 9 religious words. Some
Japanese words have been incorporated into English to suit commercial
interests including such words as walkman and pac-man.
banzai – originally a shout or cheer meaning “10,000 years,” the term
came to be known in English mainly through the suicidal attacks
3
See Garland Cannon’s study “Recent Japanese Borrowings into English,” American
Speech, 69.4. (1994), 373–97, Appendix 1.
113
114
Foreign Words and Phrases
of ground troops or aircraft by Japanese soldiers and airmen near
the end of World War II.
bonsai – an intentionally dwarfed plant or tree; the practice, highly cultivated in Japan, appears to have started because of the scarcity of
land on the densely populated Islands.
haiku – a form of Japanese verse, or an imitation of one in another language.
hara-kiri – ritual Japanese suicide formerly practiced by the samurai
warriors.
ikebana – a formal Japanese flower arrangement.
kana – Japanese syllabic writing, both hiragana and katakana.
karate – an unarmed form of Japanese combat using both hands and
feet.
kimono – loose garment, flowing sleeves, used as a dressing gown, fastened with a sash.
kanji – Chinese ideographs used in Japanese writing; these are the
primary instruments of Japanese writing, supplemented by kana.
kabuki – traditional form of Japanese drama, highly stylized, all parts
played by males.
kamikaze – “divine wind,” originally referring to the wind which
destroyed an invading Mongol navy in the thirteenth century, now
referring to the suicide pilots near the end of World War II who
dived into enemy warships with their aircraft loaded with explosives.
ninja – a hired warrior in feudal Japan who has undergone superior
training in martial arts.
origami – Japanese art of folding paper into elegant and complex
designs.
sayonara – “goodbye.”
shogun – hereditary commanders of the Japanese military forces until
1867, when the Mikado took control again.
tsunami – a tidal wave caused by a major undersea earthquake.
zoris – literally “straw” + “footwear,” originally thonged sandals with
straw soles, now soles of rubber or plastic or other materials.
12 Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
1
Technical vocabulary in relation to ordinary language
Jargon. All professions – indeed, all occupations and hobbies –
develop their own jargons. Birdy and bogey are part of the jargon of
golf, as smash and seed belong to tennis. Jargon is not a word to which
negative connotations should be attached: it simply means “words
belonging to a specific area of expertise.” Linguistics is full of jargon
like phoneme, morpheme, constituent, thematic role, etymon, and so on
with no end in sight. Part of what it means to be a “professional” in
some field, perhaps a very large part, is to understand the jargon. In this
chapter we are not discussing the jargon but the overflow of the jargon,
which bubbles out of a heated and constantly renewed cauldron, into
general usage. Let us exemplify this distinction. Consider the word
transposon. Anyone who has gotten this far into etymology can make a
reasonable guess that this word has to do with changing locations of
something from one position to another: trans “across” + pose “position” + on “thing which.” But that much information does not tell us
what it really means. Here is a definition from the field that coined the
term,1 namely biology. The source is a standard textbook in that field.
transposon (L. transponere, to change the position of): A DNA sequence
carrying one or more genes and flanked by insertion sequences that
confer the ability to move from one DNA molecule to another; an
element capable of transposition, the changing of chromosomal location.
To understand what it really means, obviously we must know what DNA
is, what a molecule is, what a gene is, what an insertion sequence is, what
a chromosome is, and what a chromosomal location is. Technical fields
define one technical word in terms of other technical words, and you can
only understand such definitions by learning enough about the content
of the field to break into that circle of technical terms.
But transposon has not yet gotten out into ordinary language: it is
not a term normally used by anyone except a biologist talking to
another biologist. If someone learns enough etymology to recognize
1
Taken from Understanding Biology by Peter H. Raven and George B. Johnson (Mosby
Year Book, 1991). The quotation is taken from the glossary, p. G21.
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The language of law
the morphemes of transposon, and if that person also learns the relevant scientific facts and interpretations, then etymological knowledge
of the morphemes is useful in retaining the meaning of transposon in
one’s memory for future needs. But etymology and this book cannot be
expected to be a substitute for scientific knowledge. Because it is a
purely technical term not found in general usage, the term transposon
would not be included in the coverage of this book or books of this
type. It may or may not show up in a general purpose dictionary. This
term, for example, does appear in the 1993 edition of the American
Heritage College Dictionary, but it does not appear in the 1973
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, even though
the latter is considerably larger. Since these dictionaries do not give
dates of first usage, we cannot determine whether the word was simply
coined between 1973 and 1993, or whether in 1973 the makers of the
dictionary knew the word but did not consider it suitable for a general
purpose dictionary, or whether it has become more widespread in usage
in the last twenty years, or whether they have made a conscious decision to include more technical terms in the later editions.
The important point is that etymology is useful as a pigeon hole for
the recollection of the meanings of technical terms, but it is not at all to
be taken as a substitute for technical definitions. The real meanings, the
technical definitions, have to be learned from inside the field. They
cannot be understood outside that context.
2
The language of law
Disclaimer. Let us begin our discussion of the language of law
with an important disclaimer, related to what we have said above: we
are talking about the words from legal language which have percolated
out into the ordinary language of educated speakers who are not themselves lawyers, or perhaps even the husbands or wives or sons or daughters of lawyers. We are also not talking about law itself, nor about the
precise legalistic interpretations that might be given to any of these
phrases in a matter of serious litigation. Our definitions are oriented
toward etymology, rather than toward the precise legal sense of these
words. To master the legal sense, one needs to study law, just as one
needs to study medicine in order to acquire a real understanding of the
technical jargon of the medical profession.
2.1
Specialized dictionariesi
All fields have specialized dictionaries which can be consulted
for the technical senses of words within the field. In law, Mellinkoff ’s
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Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
Dictionary of American Legal Usage (1992) is highly reputed, though it
is not the only one. If you really want to understand legal language,
don’t consult an etymologist or even a general-purpose dictionary:
consult a lawyer, a law professor, and/or a proper legal dictionary like
Mellinkoff’s. With that said, we can turn to legal language from an etymological perspective.
2.2
Attorneys and discoveryi
The word attorney itself means “one appointed to serve for
another” (borrowed from French atorné), literally “one who is turned
to” (torn is cognate with turn). Attorneys very commonly use ordinary
everyday words in a highly specialized sense. Such a word is discovery.
They use it to refer to pretrial procedures by which one finds out about
information, facts, and records in the possession of the other party. So
an attorney can say things like, “During discovery, we’ll get all the
records we need.” Without knowledge of this special sense, the sentence sounds very strange indeed.
2.3
Latin and the lawi
Since court procedures were actually conducted in Latin
during the Middle Ages, it is not surprising that the language of law is
shot through with Latin phrases, much more commonly even than
general educated or even scholarly English. For example, a fortiori
“from stronger (reason, conviction)” – fort as in fortitude, not as in fortuitous – is used once a position/view/fact is established to some reasonable degree, to assert that something else becomes thereby better
established by virtue of being entailed by the first position/view/fact.
To the extent that A is true, then B – which is entailed by A or in some
way depends on it – is a fortiori likely to be true. A priori literally means
“from first,” and is used casually in ordinary English to mean “a best
first guess.” But lawyers use it in a more specific sense: “necessarily true,
not susceptible of proof.” Caveat is actually a whole sentence in Latin –
“let him beware” – a warning or caution, for example, used by a justice
to indicate that he is about to suspend proceedings. As actually used in
ordinary English, it simply refers to the expression of some
qualification or limitation placed on a generalization. Contra bonos
mores “against good customs” refers to behavior that goes against commonly accepted standards: it is the technical term for immorality.
De facto and de jure. A useful pair of phrases that have oozed out
from the courts into common parlance are de facto and de jure. De facto
means “actually, as a matter of practice, not of law”; whereas de jure
means “legitimized by law or legal precedent.” Nolo contendere –
The language of law
“I don’t want to contend” – has also come out of the legal closet, but
with a slight loss of its technical sense in the courtroom, where it is
specifically an admission that can not be used against the defendant
outside the case under trial; it is not an admission of guilt like a confession, since the alleged facts can be denied in another trial.
Quid pro quo “something for something,” a consideration in a legal
contract, has come out into ordinary language to refer to any more or
less equal exchange or substitution.
Fungibility. Another word that has moved from legal contracts into
general use – especially on the financial pages of the daily newspaper –
is fungible from fung “perform” (e.g. function), that is to say, having
equivalent performance – goods like oil, corn, grain, where any subset
can be freely exchanged for any other, are said to be fungible. If you
loan me $10, I don’t have to pay you back with the same $10 bill: two
fives will do fine, or ten ones, or any old ten dollar bill that I have in my
possession. Money is fungible.
Torts. A tort is a wrong or injury not involving breach of contract
(from Latin tort “twist,” “turn,” as in tortuous, torture), whereby
someone acquires the right of civil legal action for damages. It acquired
this sense of “a wrong” in ninth-century French; the semantic extension involved in the change from “twist” to “wrong” may be connected
with the sense we see in torture, but it is not certain. No modern dictionary has produced a satisfactory explanation of this curious semantic
twist.
Attainder. In our constitution a bill of attainder is specifically prohibited because it would condemn a person without a hearing just because
that person belongs to some group (like, say, the Communist Party).
But what is the attainder part of this phrase? The -tain- part of it is
actually the same as the morpheme tang “touching” as in tangent. It
obviously underwent some elaborate changes on the way from Latin to
French, before it was borrowed into English. Nonetheless the “touching” sense is fundamental: the word means “contaminating, spreading
like a disease,” for example the additional conditions (besides prison) in
which one finds oneself after conviction for a felony, namely loss of
civil rights or liberties.
Making your will. Suppose you die intestate. You have not done your
relatives any favor: you did not make out a proper will. Intestate contains the root test meaning “witness,” so the word means “not witnessed” (in- = “not”). Your will is a witness to your wishes about what
is to be done with your property. There will have to be a special judicial
hearing to probate your will in any case, which is from another root
meaning “test,” the source of prove. All in all, with all this testing, it’s
probably better just not to die. But when one does, it is common to have
a fiduciary “in faith” relationship (fid = “faith”) with a trustee or an
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Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
executor (secu “follow” – “one who follows out”) who can be trusted to
carry out your wishes for you. And if you change your mind about your
will, you can add a codicil (code “code of law,” + diminutive suffix -cil =
appendix to a will). As long as there aren’t too many debentures (deb
“owe”; debentur is a full verb in Latin meaning “they are due,” a note of
unsecured debt) outstanding against you, your surviving relatives will
not hold you culpable (culp “blame,” as in mea culpa “my fault”).
Plaintiffs, collusion, and depositions. If you initiate suit against
someone else, you are the plaintiff (planc, plaint “lament” from “to
strike (one’s breast)),” the same root that gives us plague and apoplexy,
both of which involve a blow being struck metaphorically. In the course
of filing your complaint, you want to be sure not to engage in collusion
(lud “play,” with an interesting semantic change: it doesn’t mean play at
all when you etymologically “play together with” someone or something in a litigious context, because that would be non-serious behavior: the word has therefore come to mean, in the serious context of the
law, “secret agreement to defraud, or to suppress evidence,” which is a
strange kind of play indeed). In the course of the litigation, you may
become a deponent – one who gives a deposition, a statement under
oath; literally depose = “to put away,” that is, give testimony under
oath. Indeed, if you lie while under oath you are guilty of perjury – “to
swear falsely” – the “false” sense comes from the intensifier per-. Jur
really simply means “law”; jurisprudence is “knowledge of law” (prud =
“know,” as in prudent “one who knows”), though it is also used to refer
to a division or department of law within the government. Not only
must you tell the truth under oath, you may be required to show documents in your possession: they are obtained by subpoena, which is short
for subpoena duces tecum “you bring it with you,” i.e., a legally binding
requirement that you must bring certain documents to court or to
deposition for examination.
Injunctions and hearing.You may have gone to court to obtain an
injunction in which someone is enjoined to cease some action (e.g., to
stop a strike). Enjoin means literally to “join onto,” to put pressure
onto someone, therefore to prohibit some action. While in court you
may have a plenary hearing – a “full” hearing (pl is cognate with full,
though the cognate relationship is not transparent because it is so
remote in time) – or you may have a summary hearing, a shortened,
condensed, concise hearing.
Jury service. If you serve on a jury, you will at some point likely be
sequestered. That word looks as though it should break down into se
“apart” and ques “ask,” but in fact it comes from sequ “to follow” – the
jurors “follow each other” off into a separate place for their deliberations. During their deliberations they may decide on a large award for a
plaintiff, but that award will be subject to remittitur – re + mit “send” in
The language of medicine
the passive form of the verb, therefore “to be sent back,” referring to
the possibility of the judge reducing the jury award.
Indictments. An indictment is simply a list of formal charges: in- “in,
on” + dict “say, speak.” The pronunciation in-DIGHT comes from the
earlier form indite. The letter c was reinserted into the spelling (but not
the pronunciation) of the word by some printer who apparently
thought it was connected with indicate, “to point at someone, to
accuse.” If you have been frequently indicted, you may be guilty of
recidivism – re + cad “fall back,” the tendency to habitual criminality.
Of course even so you are entitled to avoid confinement under the procedure of habeas corpus “you have the body,” a procedure to determine
legitimacy of confinement.
3
The language of medicine
The science of medicine began with the ancient Greeks, with a
common-lore history that fades into the mists of human origins, not
written down but transmitted by word of mouth. The oath still taken
by physicians was authored by a Greek physician named Hippocrates,
in the fifth century B.C. Therefore it is not surprising that their specialized language is both ancient and full of etymological curiosities. Most
people are interested, at least until they or people close to them fall ill
and they need to learn more, mainly in three areas of vocabulary: (1)
the names of medical specializations; (2) the names of disorders and
diseases; and (3) the names of common medical procedures. A fourth
area might be the names of medications, but these have proliferated so
rapidly in recent years, and are still being innovated, that we cannot
hope to say anything useful about them here.
Specialized dictionaries. As with law, the field of medicine is well
served by superb specialized dictionaries that should be consulted for
all technical definitions. Among the widely used ones are Black’s
Medical Dictionary (37th edition, 1992), and Webster’s Medical Desk
Dictionary (1986 with more recent reprints and up-dates).
3.1
Generali
“That which is fitting.” The root med (medical, medicine, medicate, remedy) itself is of some interest: it means “that which is fitting”;
it is distantly cognate with modest, modulate, moderate and more
closely related to mete as in the expression “mete and fit.” So the
meaning “heal” is really a narrowed and specialized sense of “taking
appropriate measures” in the event of illness. Doctor, understood as
“medical doctor,” is another instance of specialized meaning. The root
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Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
dog (from which doc derives by normal voicing assimilation) refers to
teaching, as in dogma, doctrine. It comes by this meaning via the same
semantic path as med, since its earliest meaning is “to be fitting or
acceptable,” and to persuade others of what is fitting (hence, teaching).
And the subject of the teaching is the most basic of all subjects, to
judge from the name: the root phys (in physician, physical, physics,
physique) means “nature.”
Handwork. It is not so long ago that the surgeons were at the bottom
of the medical status scale – their status changed greatly after they
learned to wash their hands properly and to sterilize their tools, as well
as the discovery of the miracle drugs to prevent infections in open
wounds. The word surgery comes to us, by way of a significant amount
of Middle English phonetic butchery, from Greek cheir “hand” + erg
“work” + -ia “abstract noun suffix.” It is etymologically exactly like the
Latin-derived word manufacture, namely “hand” + “work.” The real
work of surgery is still performed by hand; in the task of manufacturing they prefer robots and computers these days. But at least etymologically we might well have had brain manufacturing and automobile
surgery, with no change in what they do.
Treatment and service. The word for physician in Ancient Greece was
not based on either med- or dog-. It was iatr- the root used in naming
many medical specialties like pediatrics (children), geriatrics (the
elderly), psychiatry (the mind), podiatry (the feet). The practice in
which they engaged was called therapy, from the Greek word for
“servant, to be of service” – one of the nice examples of semantic amelioration and from which we get the many types of therapy – hydrotherapy, therapeutic, balneotherapy, chemotherapy.
Knowledge. A root of considerable frequency in medicine is gno(s),
which also occurs in non-medical words like agnostic. Gno(s) is cognate
with know and means the same thing. Words like diagnosis, prognosis,
physiognomy are therefore just different forms or areas of knowledge:
dia- normally means “through, across,” but in diagnosis it is probably
best defined as “apart,” since the essence of diagnosis is differentiation,
separating out symptoms (root ptom “fall” + “together,” i.e., “concurrence”), and distinguishing the nature of a particular medical problem
from other possible ones. The full Greek verbal form from which diagnosis comes meant “to differentiate,” and that meaning has survived
essentially unchanged down through these last 2,000 years or so.
Prognosis is etymologically transparent: pro- “before, in advance,” i.e.,
to make predictions about the future behavior of a disease, how long it
will take to recover, and the like. Physiognomy, though it looks medical,
is actually not a medical term at all: the -gnomy part of the word had
come to mean “interpreter” in Ancient Greece, and physiognomy refers
to the skill of interpreting character from facial features – a skill to
The language of medicine
which physicians are not likely to give much credence, and certainly one
which they do not view as part of their profession.
3.2
The branches of medicinei
Medical specialties are named most commonly by creating a
compound which has the area of study as the first member and -ology
as the second. -ology generally means “the study of X,” but in specialty
names it has come to mean “specialization in X,” as in:
anesthesiology (an “lacking” esthet “feeling”)
cardiology (card “heart”)
dermatology (“skin”)
endocrinology (endo- “within” + crin “to separate, like a sieve”; etmology
is not helpful here, since glands and hormones, which are the focus of
endocrinology, are not obviously sieve-like; the idea is that hormones
are internally secreted and pass directly into the bloodstream)
epidemiology (epidem “prevalent,” i.e., through a large population, epidemics)
gastroenterology (gaster “stomach” + enter “intestines”)
gerontology (geront “old, aged”)
gynecology (gynec “female”)
hematology (hem(at) “blood”)
immunology (immune “exempt”)
laryngology (larynx “windpipe”)
neonatology (neo “new” nat “born”)
neurology (neur “nerve”)
oncology (onc “tumor”)
ophthalmology (ophthalm “eye”)
otology (ot “ear”)
pathology (path “suffering” – study of the nature of disease)
pharmacology (pharmac “drugs”)
radiology (rad “ray, beam,” the role of X-ray technology in medicine)
rheumatology (rheum “flow,” the phlegm once thought to cause
rheumatic disorders)
toxicology (tox “poison”)
urology (ur “urine”)
-Ics. A much smaller number of specialties are formed on the suffix ics, which though common throughout the sciences (mathematics,
physics, economics, phonetics, ballistics) has been put to use less in medicine. One of the oldest of these is obstetrics, literally “standing in front
of ” (a midwife helping a woman give birth to a child). Orthopedics is
the branch of medicine that deals with injuries to the skeletal system:
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Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
etymologically it is misleading, since ortho means “correct” and ped
means “child”; the compound originally mean “child-rearing.” The
connection is that originally the specialty was focused on correcting
skeletal problems of children. It has been generalized now.
Orthodontics similarly began – and largely remains – a dental specialty
having to do with straightening out the teeth of children.
3.3
The names of disorders and diseases2i
Naming diseases. The two most common ways of naming diseases are (a) from the nature of the disturbance in some bodily system,
some organ, or some particular kind of cell; and (b) from the name of
the organ that is suffering, plus a suffix indicating what type of abnormality has occurred. A third common way is to name the disease after
the person who first discovered it or described it exhaustively, like
Hodgkin’s Disease (Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, first half of the nineteenth
century).
Size. The nature of the disturbance may be, for example, abnormality in size: macrocephalic “enlarged head”; megaloblasty (megalo
“great, enlarged,” blast “bud, sprout” – having abnormally large red
blood cells, e.g., in anemia), polycythemia (poly “many” + cyt “cell” +
hem “blood” + ia “condition” – condition – characterized by having
too many red blood cells)
Color, shape, texture, formation, function. Or it may be an abnormality in color, as in cyanosis “blueness,” jaundiced “yellow,” cirrhosis
“reddish yellow,” chlorosis “green,” poliomyelitis “inflamation of gray
cells” (poli “gray”); in shape, as in brachydactyly “having short fingers”;
in texture, as in sclerodermia “having hard (thick) skin”; in formation,
as in hyperostosis “excessive bone formation,” or osteoclasis (clas
“break”) “destruction of bone”; or in function, as in tachycardia (tachy
“rapid,” card “heart”).
Bodily organs. More commonly, however, diseases are named from
the name of a bodily organ and a suffix indicating a particular type of
abnormality:
-itis “inflamation” e.g. appendicitis, laryngitis, meningitis (meninx
“membrane”)
-sis -is -esis -osis -asis- iasis “state of, act of ”, e.g. anthracosis, neurosis
-oma “tumor” (benign or malignant), e.g. fibroma, myoma (muscle)3
-ia “condition,” “disorder,” e.g., hypochondria, alexia (reading),
agraphia (writing)
-cele “swellings containing fluid,” e.g., cystocele
2
Much of our information in this section is drawn from an older but quite interesting
book by Ffrangcon Robert entitled Medical Terms: Their Origin and Construction
3
(Heinemann: London 1959).
Glaucoma is an exception: it is not a tumor.
The language of medicine
Classical names of body parts. The main problem with such names of
diseases is that most of us do not know enough of the anatomical
lexicon to recognize the Greek and Latin names of parts of our own
anatomies: and there is no way to repair that deficiency except to study
anatomy. The roots chosen for naming diseases are quite likely to be
taken from Greek rather than Latin, and these roots are less likely to be
familiar to an English speaker (because the Latin roots are more likely
than Greek roots to occur in non-technical words we have borrowed).
Thus, for example, most of the following Greek roots have a much
more recognizable Latin equivalent, but the Greek root is the one used
in one or more medical coinages (many of the more familiar Latin
roots are used in medical coinages also, of course):
Greek
Latin
English
aden
arthr
card
cephal
cheil
chondr
colp
dactyl
dermat
encephal
glos, glot
hem, hemat
hyster
mast
myel
mys
nephr
neur
odon(t)
omphal
onych
oon
ophthalm
orchid
osteo
oul
ot
phal(l)
phleb
glans
articul
cor(d)
cap, cep
lab
cartilag
vagin
digit
cut
cerebr
lingu
sangu
uter
mamm
medul
muscul
ren
nerv
den(t)
umbil
ungu
ov
ocul
test
os(s)
gingiv
aur
pen
ven
gland
joint
heart
head
lip
cartilage
vagina
finger
skin
brain
tongue
blood
uterus
breast
marrow
muscle
kidney
nerve
tooth
navel
nail
egg
eye
testicle
bone
gum
ear
penis
vein
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Technical Vocabulary: Law and Medicine
pleum, pneum
pod
proct
rhach
rhin
sarc
som(at)
steth
stom
trachel
3.4
pulmon
ped
an
spin
nas
car(n)
corp(or)
pector
or
cervic
lung
foot
anus
spine
nose
flesh
body
chest
mouth
neck
The names of common medical proceduresi
As with the names of disorders, clinical procedures are frequently identified by the name of the relevant organ with a suffix
attached which indicates the kind of procedure involved. The most
common such suffixes are these:
-tomy “cutting or cutting into,” e.g., colotomy “opening of the colon,”
nephrotomy “incision of the kidney,” gastrotomy “an incision into the
stomach to introduce nourishment directly into it,” tracheotomy
“cutting an opening in the windpipe”
-ectomy “cutting out, removing,” e.g., neurectomy “excision of part of a
nerve,” hysterectomy “removal of the uterus”
-desis “a binding,” e.g., arthrodesis “joining two bones together”
-pexy “fastening,” e.g., nephropexy (neph- “kidney”)
3.5
Curiositiesi
Because the terminology of medicine is so ancient, and
because physicians have continued to use inherited words for concepts
that have changed radically along with new technology, the etymology
is often curious and unrevealing about the real meanings of these
words. The word estrus is an example: it simply means “gadfly,” and it
referred originally to the behavior of mammals that were being bitten
by gadflies. It came to refer to the recurrent period of sexual excitement
in female mammals, a period when, it would appear, some ancient
wordcrafter divined a similarity between their behavior in heat and that
of animals being pestered by gadflies. Myopia, from my “closed,
squinting” + op “eye,” is based on the way nearsighted people squint.
Venereal is one of those depressing instances of pejoration: Venus was,
after all, the Roman goddess of love. Thorax simply meant “breastplate,” the kind of leather protective plate worn over the front of the
upper body by Greek soldiers. The transfer of meaning, from “armor”
to “upper chest cavity,” is a classic instance of metonomy.
The language of medicine
Hypochondria is a classic instance of misinformation: the Greeks
thought the tendency to worry about one’s health was a condition originating hypo- “under” chondri “cartilage (of the upper chest).” They
were wrong: it’s all in the head. The Greeks many times gave names to
parts of the body which were simply based on similarity of appearance.
Chiasma, for instance, is simply the crossing of two nerves or ligaments,
which look like an X (the Greek letter chi). The large triangular-shaped
muscle called the deltoid muscle owes its name to the Greek letter delta,
which looks like a triangle. Similarly the hyoid muscle gets its name
from the Greek letter upsilon (Y) – a u-shaped bone at the base of the
tongue.
135
Exercises for Workbook Chapter 12
A
Study questions
Using especially the Latin and Greek roots given in section 3.3
of this chapter, and also the root lists of this chapter and earlier ones
plus the affixes you’ve learned, coin (i.e., invent) words for each of the
following meanings. Each boldfaced part of the meaning here should
be assigned to a particular morpheme in the words you coin.
Additionally, make sure any suffixes match the part of speech and
meaning asked for.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
B
an instrument used for looking into joints
a large tumor of the spine
a fevered condition
related to the treatment of eye inflammation
a procedure which removes a tumor of the tongue
the joining of two teeth together
the state of having a hidden swelling of blood
to cause an illness of the skin on the top of the foot
a sensation under the breast
the study of the body of new borns
to bring to life an egg
to strengthen (purify) the self
not suited for the head
a specialization in (the study of) fire
Roots
Your task is to look at the words under each root and make
sure you know what the meaning of the root contributes to the
meaning of the whole word. If you don’t see it, look it up in your dictionary.
The following occur in only a single invariant form (i.e., zero allomorphy):
136
Roots
(a) √barbar “uncivilized” – barbaric, barbarian, barbarous, barbarity
(b) √chron “time” – chronic, chronometer, chronicle, anachronism,
anachrony
(c) √clar “clear” – clarity, declare, declaration, clarify, clarification, clarion
(d) √clam “call out” – exclaim, declaim, exclamatory, proclaim,
proclamation, disclaim, reclaim
(e) √com “revel” – comedy, comedic, comedian
(f) √cosm “universe, world, order” – cosmic, cosmology, cosmos,
cosmetic, microcosm, macrocosm
(How did cosmetic come to refer to items like lipstick, powder,
etc.?)
(g) √cre “grow” – creature, create, creation, excrescence,
crescendo, increase
(h) √crit “discern” – critic, criticize, critical, criticism
(i) √du “two, double” – duple, duplicate, duplicity
(j) √dubi “doubt” – dubious, dubiety, indubitable
(k) √eco “environment” – ecosystem, ecology, economic(s),
economy
(l) √electr “electric” – (<Gr. “amber”) electric (-ity, -al), electrode,
electron (-ic)
(m) √err “wander, go wrong” – aberrant, err, errant, erratic,
erratum, erroneous, error
(n) √etym “true, source” – etymon, etymology, etymological
(o) √fem “female” – effeminate, female, feminine (-ity)
(No connection with male. Originally femelle “little woman,”
and by folk etymology was transformed into the current
form.)
(p) √fess “admit, acknowledge” – confess, confession, profess, profession (-al), professor
(q) √fin “end” – final, finish, define, definite, definitive, definition
(r) √firm “strong” – affirm, infirm, affirmative, affirmation
(s) √flict “strike” – inflict, infliction, conflict, afflict, affliction
(t) √form “shape” – conform (-ation, -ity), uniform (-ity), formation, formal (-ity, -ize)
(u) √fort “strong” – confort, effort, fortify, fortification, forte,
fortress
(v) √fug “flee, flight” – fugitive, refuge, fugue
(What does a musical fugue have to do with “flight”?)
(w) √fuse “pour, melt, blend” – fuse, confuse, diffuse, effusive,
infuse, profuse, infuse
(x) √lumin “light” – illuminate, luminous, lumen, luminous
137
138
Exercises for Workbook Chapter 12
C
Parse and Gloss the following words:
1. hydrocephalous
2. capitalism
3. occipital
4. pericardium
5. electrocardiogram
6. opinion
7. stethoscope
8. collusion
9. deposition
10. ballistics
11. economics
12. assignment
D
Here is a list of diseases whose names are formed with -itis
“inflammation.” Look up the ones that you do not know, or that you
do not think you can guess correctly.
appendicitis, arthritis, bronchitis, bursitis, colitis, conjunctivitis,
dermatitis, encephalitis, enteritis, gastritis, gastroenteritis, gingivitis, hepatitis, ileitis, laminitis, laryngitis, mastitis, meningitis,
mephitis, myelitis, nephritis, neuritis, osteitis, otitis, pancreatitis,
peritonitis, phlebitis, poliomyelitis, rachitis, rheumatoid arthritis,
rhinitis, sinusitis, tendinitis, tendonitis tonsillitis
E
Here is a similar list, this one based on -osis “condition.” Look
up the ones you do not know, or that you do not think you can guess
correctly.
acidosis, alkalosis, apotheosis, arteriosclerosis, asbestosis, cirrhosis,
coronary thrombosis, cyanosis, cystic fibrosis, diagnosis, endometriosis, fibrosis, halitosis, hypnosis, meiosis, melanosis, metamorphosis, metempsychosis, mitosis, mononucleosis, multiple sclerosis,
narcosis, necrosis, neurosis, osmosis, osteoporosis, pollenosis, pollinosis, prognosis, psittacosis, psychosis, sclerosis, scoliosis, silicosis,
stenosis, symbiosis, thrombosis, trichinosis, tuberculosis, zygosis