BEREFT

[Dr. Goodword]

• bereft •

Pronunciation: bê-reft • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Deprived of, missing.

Notes: Today's Good Word is a good example of a word in transition. The verb bereave "deprive of" is traditionally conjugated bereave, bereft (past tense), bereft (past participle). Today, however, most speakers and writers 'regularize' it: bereave, bereaved, bereaved. That gives us two past participles to use in reference to deprivation. Bereaved is generally used in reference to humans, as in the bereaved widow. Today's Good Word is associated with nonhuman nouns, as in bereft of all hope.

In Play: Here is a sentence that shows the difference between bereaved and bereft: "Her stockbroker died, leaving the bereaved woman bereft of any hope of recovering the money he had embezzled from her account." Notice that we may be bereaved by people other than our immediate family. Bereft is generally used with abstract nouns, like hope, power, and ideas but it may be used with concrete nouns, too: "Mike Hassel's new house was bereft of any personal artifacts that would have given the visitor some hint of his personality."

Word History: Today's Good Word is the descendant of Old English bereafian. It is composed of the archaic prefix be-, which we also see in because, believe, and bemuse. The prefix is clipped onto the root reaf, which goes back to Proto-Indo-European reup- "snatch". The suffix -ian is the the infinitive ending, long since lost. Reup- became raubon "rob" in Old Germanic, whence French borrowed it as rober "rob", adding its infinitive suffix, -er. English then borrowed it back from French as rob, giving us two words (rob and bereave) for the price of one.

[Bailey]

http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewt ... ght=bereft


What it didn't count cuz I didn't capitalize it?

mb

[Cacasenno]

• bereft •

Word History: Today's Good Word is the descendant of Old English bereafian. It is composed of the archaic prefix be-, which we also see in because, believe, and bemuse. The prefix is clipped onto the root reaf, which goes back to Proto-Indo-European reup- "snatch". The suffix -ian is the the infinitive ending, long since lost. Reup- became raubon "rob" in Old Germanic, whence French borrowed it as rober "rob", adding its infinitive suffix, -er. English then borrowed it back from French as rob, giving us two words (rob and bereave) for the price of one.

Interesting.
In Italian we have the word arraffare for snarch, seize, hog. The origin is traced to the Longobard haraffon, same as the French rafée and sgraffignée

[gailr]

Interesting.
In Italian we have the word arraffare for snarch, seize, hog. The origin is traced to the Longobard haraffon, same as the French rafée and sgraffignée

I wonder...why, yes, it looks like this also gave us raffle.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English rafle, a game using dice, from Old French, act of seizing, dice game, perhaps of Germanic origin.

-gailr
who does not buy lottery or raffle tickets and is therefore bereft of megazillions...

[Cacasenno]

We have an illegal street riffa. No dice but number picking.
Odd odds for the players. With such etymology, hardly a surprise !

[Stargzer]

We have an illegal street riffa. No dice but number picking.
Odd odds for the players. With such etymology, hardly a surprise !

That sounds like what we call the numbers game, or just the numbers, also illegal (except when run by one of the States!). Maryland has Pick-3 and Pick-4 (digits).

When I was very young I remember my father going to the shoemaker next door to his jewelry store, holding some dollar bills in his hand, talking to the man, and handing him the money. He didn't have any shoes repaired. The shoemaker may have been Italian, but that memory may be contaminated by too many Italian stereotypes and too many Godfather movies. In later years it finally hit me that he must have been playing the numbers.

[gailr]

That's funny, gzer. It prompted memories of discussions past, and what great satisfaction my friends have taken in springing from criminal roots somewhere in their respective family trees. Now I'm wondering if this is a USian trait or if the posters in other lands also relish legendery [ancestral] rogues and scofflaws?

[Stargzer]

I've always said I haven't traced my Irish ancestors because with my luck they either be Orange or horsetheives, and I think I'd prefer the latter.