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MAKING "AMELIORATE" BETTER

8/19/2018

2 Comments

 
To ameliorate is to improve something, of course. But what a curious word! It came to English in the mid-seventeenth century from the French verb ameliorer, which came from two parts in Latin: the prefix a-​, meaning "to" in this context, and the root melior, meaning "better". So, etymologically speaking, to ameliorate is also "to make something better", a definition very similar to today. Melior may be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European root mel, meaning "strong" or "large" (clearly, strength and size were equated with being better in this transition). The a- in ameliorate is equivalent to ad-, which comes from a Proto-Indo-European word sounding the same and meaning either "to" or "near". According to Google NGrams, usage of the word ameliorate peaked in the mid-1800s, then dipped in the mid-1900s, and is now more utilized than ever.
2 Comments
Jake Scarlet
12/8/2019 05:00:31 am

How does this compare to the given name Amelia which shares the root “Mel”with ameliorate and yet is said to mean “work”?

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Maryellen Elizabeth Hart
12/29/2021 02:36:21 pm

Thank you for your website. I sought to know the etymology of the word: "amelioration".

Merriam Webster was defining the prefix "a" as meaning "without". So the definition did not make sense. Using the "a" prefix to mean "to" the word makes sense.

I understood the root word "meli" to mean "honey" or "sweet". Therefore "ameliorate" makes sense as improving a condition or making the situation sweeter ("to sweet" or "with honey").

Thanks!

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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