To take
The Indo-European root that meant take or seize was ghend. It made its way into Latin as
prendere,
and made its way from there to many places, & one of those places is the
English language.
We find it in the word prey, which arrived in
the 1300s originally meaning to plunder,
pillage & ravage, all arguably forms of taking. Over the years prey has come to be both a noun
& a verb. Its primary modern meanings are an animal hunted or taken for food & to seize food.
Latin for bird of
prey was osprey, which showed up
in English in the 1400s. Interestingly, Latin-speakers called the bird we now
call an osprey an ossifrage, but somewhere on the way
to English through Medieval Latin & Old French, the similarity of the two
words confused things and the ossifrage became the osprey.
The word spree (meaning a drinking bout) appeared in English in 1804 from Scottish. Though
its earlier source may have been the French word esprit, it more likely
came from a Middle Irish word meaning takings
or booty, which, as you’ve already guessed, came from the Latin word meaning
take.
When we win something we take it home & call it a prize, & when we pry
into someone’s life or physically pry something from its place, it’s
another sort of taking, all from that
same root.
When we take someone
unawares we surprise that person. And when we take someone & lock him/her up that person becomes an imprisoned
prisoner in a prison, all words that started out as
a little word meaning take.
And a person involved in taking this for that is an entrepreneur, a word that appeared
in English in 1828. Entrepreneur came from combining the Latin prefix entre-
(between) with the Latin root
prendere
(to take or seize).
I’m hoping some of you will have something to say in the
comments section. Perhaps you’ll offer your take
on all this.
Big thanks to friend Aaron Keating, for suggesting this week’s topic,
& thanks to this week’s sources: Merriam-Webster, Wordnik,
Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, & the OED.
"Osprey" sounds much more menacing, but I love the name "ossifrage." Sounds like another sort of bird altogether. Something sort of fluffy and snooty. :-)
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a bird called fluffius snootimus. Of course, the common name would have to be ossifrage. Thanks for coming by, Anne.
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