EMANATE

[Dr. Goodword]

• emanate •

Pronunciation: em-ê-neyt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb

Meaning: 1. To issue (from), to flow forth. 2. To arise or originate (from), to come out of or from. 3. (Transitively) To emit, to send or project outwardly.

Notes: Emanate offers several adjectives. We recommend emanative, as the emanative spirit of kindness that kindness effects (not affects!). You may use emanant but it sounds too much like eminent, imminent, and immanent, which we recently discussed.

In Play: Today's Good Word is quite flexible for it may be used intransitively: "As Beasley knelt to ask Prudence's hand in marriage, he noticed an odor remindful of salt herring emanating from his socks." It may also be used transitively: "By reading the paper regularly, Bradley became aware that his old college had emanated many brighter lights than him into the world." Just remember that things emanate from some point of origin.

Word History: If an English word ends on -ate, it most probably started out as a past participle of a Latin verb. This time the verb was emanare "to flow out", based on the preposition ex "out of, from" + manare "to flow, run", referring to liquids. It is difficult to find relatives of this word elsewhere in the Indo-European languages. Middle Irish had a word, moin "moor, swamp", that is probably related. However, it does not seem to have survived in Germanic languages like English and German, nor the Slavic languages like Polish and Russian.

[Slava]

Let us not forget the wealth of linguistic lagniappes emanating from Dr. Goodword.