EXPATIATE
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:36 pm
• expatiate •
Pronunciation: ek-spey-shi-eyt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive
Meaning: 1. To meander, to wander about freely without any particular destination. 2. To write or speak meanderingly, without focus or coming to a point.
Notes: This ordinary Latin borrowing lives with a large, happy family. The process noun is expatiation and the agent noun is expatiator. The adjective is expatiative, which sets up the adverb, expatiatively. Remember that English dropped the redundant [s] after ex- that was kept in Latin (see Word History).
In Play: Use this word to refer to anyone who has trouble sticking to the topic of conversation: "Too bad you’re late; you missed Maude Lynn expatiating on her grandchildren again." However, the original meaning is still there, waiting to spice up your vocabulary and conversations: "I love to walk along the country roads behind my house but I can only truly expatiate when I leave the road and explore the fields and forests."
Word History: Today’s Good Word comes from Latin usurpare "to use illegally" from usus "use" + rapere "to seize." Rap-ere derives from the earlier Proto-Indo-European root, reup- "seize, snatch, grasp". In the Germanic languages this same stem became raubo- "booty (siezed property)" and, finally, German rauben "rob" and English rob itself. An interesting sidenote: somewhere along the way the Germanic root was borrowed by the French, where it came to refer to any kind of clothing, stolen or not. The French word was then borrowed back into English as our word robe, a particular kind of dress.
Pronunciation: ek-spey-shi-eyt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive
Meaning: 1. To meander, to wander about freely without any particular destination. 2. To write or speak meanderingly, without focus or coming to a point.
Notes: This ordinary Latin borrowing lives with a large, happy family. The process noun is expatiation and the agent noun is expatiator. The adjective is expatiative, which sets up the adverb, expatiatively. Remember that English dropped the redundant [s] after ex- that was kept in Latin (see Word History).
In Play: Use this word to refer to anyone who has trouble sticking to the topic of conversation: "Too bad you’re late; you missed Maude Lynn expatiating on her grandchildren again." However, the original meaning is still there, waiting to spice up your vocabulary and conversations: "I love to walk along the country roads behind my house but I can only truly expatiate when I leave the road and explore the fields and forests."
Word History: Today’s Good Word comes from Latin usurpare "to use illegally" from usus "use" + rapere "to seize." Rap-ere derives from the earlier Proto-Indo-European root, reup- "seize, snatch, grasp". In the Germanic languages this same stem became raubo- "booty (siezed property)" and, finally, German rauben "rob" and English rob itself. An interesting sidenote: somewhere along the way the Germanic root was borrowed by the French, where it came to refer to any kind of clothing, stolen or not. The French word was then borrowed back into English as our word robe, a particular kind of dress.