EXPATIATE
Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 12:05 am
• expatiate •
Pronunciation: ek-spay-shee-ayt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive
Meaning: 1. (Rare) To wander freely at large. 2. To talk or write at length on, to expand (on a topic), go into great detail. 3. To expand.
Notes: Be careful not to confuse this word with expiate "atone for" or expatriate "to exile or exile oneself"; they look a lot alike. Today's Good Word comes with two adjectives, both of which are vastly underused: expatiative generally means "expanding, tending to grow larger" while expatiatory refers to the tendency to go on extensively on a topic: "I couldn't wait for the end of his expatiatory response."
In Play: Today's Good Word is an intransitive verb usually used with the preposition on: "Sal U. Torrey can expatiate on the health benefits of lentils for hours; he drives everyone crazy." But don't let this example persuade you that today's verb can be used only pejoratively; I'm positive it has a positive sense, too:: "Felix, could you expatiate a bit more on your idea of an electric fork and why you think it would enhance our product line?"
Word History: Today's Good Word started out as expatiatus, the past participle of the Latin verb expatiari "to expand, spread out", based on ex- "out, away" + spatiari "to spread". The verb comes from the noun spatium "space", a noun which seems to have dropped into Latin from space, itself. While no one has any idea what this word was before Latin, it has spread widely since the dissolution of Latin into the Romance languages: Italian spazio, French espace, Portuguese espaço, and Spanish espacio. Notice that the last three languages appended an initial E to these words. These languages do not like words beginning with S + a consonant. That is why Latin scola "school" became escuela in Spanish and école in French. French even went to far as to drop the S after prefixing the E, not only in école but in étoile "star" from Latin stella and état "state, nation" (as in coup d'état "coup, blow to the state"), to mention just three.
Pronunciation: ek-spay-shee-ayt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive
Meaning: 1. (Rare) To wander freely at large. 2. To talk or write at length on, to expand (on a topic), go into great detail. 3. To expand.
Notes: Be careful not to confuse this word with expiate "atone for" or expatriate "to exile or exile oneself"; they look a lot alike. Today's Good Word comes with two adjectives, both of which are vastly underused: expatiative generally means "expanding, tending to grow larger" while expatiatory refers to the tendency to go on extensively on a topic: "I couldn't wait for the end of his expatiatory response."
In Play: Today's Good Word is an intransitive verb usually used with the preposition on: "Sal U. Torrey can expatiate on the health benefits of lentils for hours; he drives everyone crazy." But don't let this example persuade you that today's verb can be used only pejoratively; I'm positive it has a positive sense, too:: "Felix, could you expatiate a bit more on your idea of an electric fork and why you think it would enhance our product line?"
Word History: Today's Good Word started out as expatiatus, the past participle of the Latin verb expatiari "to expand, spread out", based on ex- "out, away" + spatiari "to spread". The verb comes from the noun spatium "space", a noun which seems to have dropped into Latin from space, itself. While no one has any idea what this word was before Latin, it has spread widely since the dissolution of Latin into the Romance languages: Italian spazio, French espace, Portuguese espaço, and Spanish espacio. Notice that the last three languages appended an initial E to these words. These languages do not like words beginning with S + a consonant. That is why Latin scola "school" became escuela in Spanish and école in French. French even went to far as to drop the S after prefixing the E, not only in école but in étoile "star" from Latin stella and état "state, nation" (as in coup d'état "coup, blow to the state"), to mention just three.