Vocabulary Blog

Prepare is an interesting word.  It comes from the Latin word pre (before) and the word paro (make ready).  So it literally means to make ready beforehand, which is basically the definition of prepare.  The pre part seems redundant though.  You can’t get ready after the fact, so there’s no postpare.  And there’s no word pare that simply means to get ready during.  There’s also a Latin word preparo, which means the same thing as paro, so even the Romans were just as confused as us.

Next time somebody “preps” for the SATs or GREs, they’re actually missing the most important part–pare.

I’ll also leave you with some other English words that are derived from paro.

pare - when you peel a vegetable, you’re preparing it.

apparatus- an instrument used to prepare something.

Just be careful not to confuse paro words with the root word par, meaning equal, or the Greek prefix para, meaning beside or side-by-side (parody, parable, paradox, etc.)

There’s probably a word for the phenomenon where once you learn a new word you start to notice it everywhere.  I don’t know what that word is, so I’m going to hope that somebody posts it in a comment.

The reason I bring this up is because I was reading an article on Wikipedia today and saw ostensible used, which was the topic of one of my previous posts.

. . . some argue that it employed ideas and methods that were relatively new at the time and, due to the ostensible success of the operation, led to Operation PBSUCCESS becoming the de facto model for the overthrow or destabilization of a defiant government for some time to come . . .

If nothing else comes from this blog, I can at least point to this as a success.

I was watching a show recently in which they used the term per diem.  I honestly hadn’t heard that expression, but even if I hadn’t taken highschool Latin, I could tell that it means “per day”.  I knew what diem meant because of the well-known Latin phrase carpe diem, which means “seize the day”.

I wondered though, did diem ever find itself into English words, or was it merely destined for use in Latin phrases?

I decided to do some research.  My first mistake is that the Latin root is dies.  Diem is the accusative case in the 5th declension.  I perused word lists without any luck, but finally after some seriously googling I found what I was looking for.

nudiustertian - this has to be one of the best words that I’ve never heard.  It means “the day before yesterday”, and comes from a combination of words literally meaning “now is the third day”.  Isn’t that beautiful?  Unfortunately this one will probably never appear on the GRE or SAT.  It isn’t even in Webster’s.  I could only find it in the Oxford dictionary.

meridian - used to mean “midday”, as a combination of medius (mid) and dies (day).

journey - you wouldn’t know by looking at it, but this one came to us from Latin to French to English and literally means “a day’s trip”.

diet - a found an explanation of this one here, although etymologists aren’t positive that they’re related.

dismal - from dies mali, literally “evil days”.

diurnal - I’ll leave you with this one, which might actually appear on the GRE or SAT.  It means “during the day”, or “daily”.

I was practicing GRE words at http://gre-word-test.com, and I sadly missed a question related to the word ostensible. I’m more familiar with the word ostentatious, but I want to be sure that I can properly distinguish between the two.

ostensible - meant for appearance; apparent
ostentatious - intended to attract notice; showy

They’re both derived from the Latin word meaning to display or exhibit.

I’ll take a break from British writers and look towards the classic American writer Mark Twain for some examples.

Here in The Prince and the Pauper Twain describes the display of a wedding ring as ostentatious.

There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same manner: the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed.

In another writing, Twain uses ostensible to describe a horse believed to be seven, but in fact is fourteen years old.

I believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven-year-old horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me.

I was inspired by the excerpt from my last entry to add two more words (those British authors sure have a way with words).

onerous - burdensome; difficult; wearing; tiring

perusal - studying something carefully

I do know what perusal means, but I’ll swallow my pride and admit that I used to have it wrong. The context in which I often saw peruse used was something along the lines of “I perused the magazine.”, which I assumed to mean the act of casually skimming through; that’s the way I usually read magazines. Instead it means the exact opposite. Charlotte Bronte had it right.

Between my full-time job, studying for the GRE, and wasting time on the Internet, I have a difficult time finding time to read.  And by read I’m not talking about dumbed-down blogs and celebrity news, I’m talking about real literature–books–those things people used to read in high school when they couldn’t find Cliffs Notes.

The problem with not reading is that it can severely limit one’s vocabulary.  Standardized tests, for better or for worse, reward a good vocabulary.  Of course it is possible to memorize a bunch of words long enough to get a reasonable score on the GRE or SAT, but I’d rather have a practical knowledge of words, not a bookish knowledge.  I want to be able to use fancy GRE words the same way I would use a curse words when hitting my thumb with a hammer.  Words should flow from my subconscious without me having to “look” them up in my mind’s dictionary.

That’s the purpose of this blog.  By writing about words, I hope to save those words to the same part of my brain as those curse words.

The first word I’m going to write about I chose because it fits the theme of this post. 

Incipient- beginning, starting, coming into existence

The Latin root of incipient is related to the word inception, which I hope will help me to remember it.

Here’s an excerpt Charlotte Bronte’s The Professor.

Night was my usual time for correcting devoirs, and my own room the usual scene of such task–task most onerous hitherto; and it seemed strange to me to feel rising within me an incipient sense of interest, as I snuffed the candle and addressed myself to the perusal of the poor teacher’s manuscript.