ESTABLISHING INSTITUTES

To institute something is to establish it or set it up, but an institute is an organizational body. Both definitions come from the Latin word instituere​, which meant "to put in place". The way they came about differed, however: the verb is through institutus and the noun from institutum, which meant "ordinance". It wasn't too much of a stretch from "established law" to "established organization", and here we are today with the two meanings. Back to the etymology of instituere - we can remove the prefix in-​, meaning "in", giving us statuere, which could be interpreted as "to establish" or "to set up". Statuere is from status, meaning "position" (because positions are established; this is also the etymon of English status), and that's from Proto-Indo-European sta, "to stand".