• victim •
Pronunciation: vik-têm • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Anyone or anything that suffers some misfortune.
Notes: This word has the broad, general meaning above rather than the three or four definitions listed in most other dictionaries. It comes with a negative adjective, victimless, and two quality nouns, victimhood and, since 1953, victimage, though the latter is more often used in the sense of "seeking out victims". We also have a verb, victimize.
In Play: Victims result from crimes, wars, accidents, diseases, cons, fights, and any other misfortune: "Hey, Miss Dakin! I'm the victim here, not the perpetrator!" Any other kind of misfortune: "Fowler Fairweather didn't get the job; he fell victim to a greater name-dropper." Victims are not always human: "Detroit fell victim to offshoring automobile manufacturing."
Word History: Today's Good Word was purloined from French victime, inherited legally from Latin victima "sacrificial animal". The semantic trail from "sacrificial animal" to "suffer misfortune" is easily seen. Victima seems to be a noun built on the past participle, victus, of vincere "to defeat, conquer", source also of victor, which English swallowed whole. Perhaps an earlier sense of victima was "the vanquished". Vincere is a nasalized version of PIE weik- "force, battle, victory", which also underlies Welsh gwyth "anger, wrath", Latvian veikt "to carry out, perform", Lithuanian veikti "act, operate, function", Dutch wijden "to consecrate", German weihen "to consecrate", and Norwegian vigsle "to dedicate, consecrate". (Now a fond e-bow to Eileen Opiolka, celebrating this week the 14th year since her first Good Word with as rich a history as today's.)
