Tag: word origins
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amnesty & coyote
Two other words central to the language of the US border crisis debate are amnesty and coyote. Regardless of your feelings about the implications of their meanings, they certainly make me continually appreciate the diversity of our “immigrant” English tongue. Amnesty Amnesty–a government’s official forgiveness of offenses–came into English in the late 1500s, French via Latin, from the Greek, amnestos,…
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immigration
Last post, we looked into the origins of border, which turned up many planks and ships. But what of immigration? Immigration The homeland of immigration is the Latin verb, migrare, “to move” or “change residence.” Immigrate features the prefix im-, a form of in-, “into,” assimilated to the root’s m to ease pronunciation. Immigrate‘s counterpart, emigrate, uses e-, “out of,” to make its meaning. The Latin migrare has…
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border
“Border crisis” may be the noun phrase of the American moment. Not too long ago, I looked at the origin of crisis in a different border battle. But the word border itself may be having something of its own etymological crisis. Border Border, attested in the geographic sense in the 1500s, is first documented in the English of the 14th…
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independence
Independence Day celebrates the United States’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence (from Great Britain, in case you’ve never heard of this country called the United States) on July 4, 1776. Celebrants mark the day with parades, barbecues, fireworks–and, if you’re me, etymologies, because nothing says “stars and stripes” quite like a good word origin.…
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gavel
American political institutions love to sit. Committees have chairs. Congressional chambers have seats. Courts have benches. Presidents have, well, desks. They also love metonymy, that “figure of speech in which a thing is represented by something closely associated with it” (Drury, The Poetry Dictionary). Thus we refer to those chairs, seats, benches, and desks as stand-ins–sit-ins?–for the…
Mashed Radish 