Word of the Week – Adept

Word of the Week – Adept

by | Jul 29, 2019 | Word of the Week

Did you know that the word adept is linked to alchemy?
Yeah…neither did I.
Adept is from the Latin adeptus, literally meaning “having attained” and was introduced into English in the Middle Ages among alchemists. If you showed particular knowledge of this art, you were known as “an adept.”
Over the years, adept broadened to include anyone who exhibits a high level of skill at something, though for quite a while it was only a noun used for the person, not an adjective (interesting, since the Latin word is an adjective). Also interesting to note is that adept implies a natural and acquired ability, as opposed to expert, which implies experience and practice.
Word of the Week – Confiscate

Word of the Week – Confiscate

by | Jul 22, 2019 | Word of the Week

When I think about Roman tax collectors, I admit that most of what I know has been gleaned from the Gospel passages dealing with them, LOL.
But did you know that tax collectors in Roman days would collect all the taxes in baskets woven from rushes? The Latin word for this basket was fiscus.
See where I’m going with this? Yep. Quite a lot of English words dealing with money have the -fisc root in there, the most obvious one being fiscal. I had no idea that it was because of the basket used to collect tax money!
Even more interesting is that it’s the same root in confiscate. Because, of course, if you didn’t pay those taxes, the government agents had every legal right to confiscate your money. Our English word does come directly from the Latin. It was used in English strictly for seizures of property of criminals, which would go into the treasury, until the 1800s, when it took on a broader sense of any seizing, whether by authority or as if by one.
Word of the Week – Lackadaisical

Word of the Week – Lackadaisical

by | Jul 15, 2019 | Word of the Week

This seems like a nice word for the middle of summer, doesn’t it? We know it as meaning “lazy, languid.” Not always a good thing, but on a summer day, you might be inclined to give it less negative connotation, right?
This word has a fun history, though! It dates to the 1700s but is inspired by an expression of centuries gone by. Namely, when someone wanted to express regret for a failure, they would say “Alack the day!” Which is more or less saying they’re sorry that day happened. (I’ve had a few of those…)
Well, this eventually became the word lackaday. And if you used this word too often, you came to be known as lackadaisical.
It’s worth noting that lax is a completely different word with a different history, though it’s thought that the similar sound may have influenced our modern meaning of the lackadaisical a bit.
Word of the Week – Anthology

Word of the Week – Anthology

by | Jul 8, 2019 | Word of the Week

We all know what an anthology is, right? A collection of pieces by various writers or artists (or by a single author) all gathered into one volume.

I’d never paused to think about how old these are, but in fact, the English word anthology as a collection of poems dates back to the 1600s…and is borrowed from Latin and Greek words for the same idea, proving anthologies have been around pretty much forever.

But did you know where the word comes from? Anthos actually means “flower,” and legein is “to gather.” So an anthology is literally a gathering of flowers, though it’s been used for centuries to mean literature, not a bouquet.

Still, I love that image, don’t you? That when we collect beautiful words, it’s like arranging blooms together…

Word of the Week – Excruciating

Word of the Week – Excruciating

by | Jul 1, 2019 | Word of the Week

A quick but enlightening word choice this week.
Did you know that the word excruciating is linked directly to crucifixion? If you’re like me, you’d never paused to think about it, but as soon as you see the two words side by side ~ excruciating | crucifixion ~ you see that common cruc root. This is actually from crux, the Latin word for cross.
Of course, as Christians, the cross holds particular meaning. But in Roman days, it was simply the most painful execution they’d found. So painful, in fact, that they created a new word from it. The Latin cruciare, a verb meaning “to cause pain or anguish” comes directly from the root for cross.
It’s been used in this same way in English since the 1500s, taken directly from the Latin.
Word of the Week – Cleave

Word of the Week – Cleave

by | Jun 24, 2019 | Word of the Week

One of my very first Words of the Week was the word cleave. I’ve long found it interesting that the word has two meanings, which are opposite each other:

Cleave, definition 1 – to divide, to split, to cut

Cleave, definition 2 – to stick, cling, adhere to something closely.

In my first post about it, I merely point out the oddity without actually looking at the history of the words (come on, Past Roseanna, what’s your deal? LOL), so I figured it was time to look into why these words have opposite meanings!
What I found is pretty interesting. Cleave (1) actually comes to us from Old English and was taken from the Proto-Germanic kleuban. There are many other old languages with similar words that all meant the same thing: the divide, to split by force. This was considered a very strong verb back in the Old English days.


But then as the years went on and English evolved into what we now call Middle English, the second cleave came along…from a totally different word. This one is from the West-Germanic klibajan, meaning “to stick.” Again, other languages have similar words that reflect this meaning.

Apparently from the get-go there was some confusion about the two meanings, because Cleave (1) had, by then, weakened a bit as a verb. It was no longer so strong and forceful a word, so introducing Cleave (2) that meant the opposite kinda messed with it even more, and also contributed to its continued weakening.

These days, we don’t often use either, and I have to wonder if in part it’s because of that confusion.

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