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A PROLIFERATING WORD

9/14/2020

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Today I'd like to talk about the Latin verb ferre, which has been extremely influential in English. It meant "to bear" or "carry", comes from the Proto-Indo-European verb bereti, and was used as a root in many other words:
  • With the prefix trans-, meaning "across", it gave us the word transfer
  • With conus, meaning "cone", we got the word coniferous
  • With aqua, the word for "water", it developed into aquifer
  • With the prefix de-, meaning "down" or "away", it gave us defer
  • Tacking on the prefix re-, meaning "back", gives use the word refer
  • With prae, meaning "before", we got the word prefer
  • With in- ("into"), it became infer, on the notion of "carrying in" an inference
  • With -dis, meaning "apart", we got the word difference
  • By adding on sub ("up" or "under"), the result developed into suffer
  • With the prefix ob-, meaning "toward", we got the word offer
And so much more (including vociferous, proliferate, circumference)! It's crazy to think that all these important terms are connected through a single simple Latin verb.
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    AUTHOR

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a senior studying government and linguistics at Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law. 
      If I don't cover it soon, I probably already did it
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