• recruit •
Pronunciation: ri-krut • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, noun
Meaning: 1. To seek to enroll people in an organization or movement, to induce prospective members to join, as 'to recruit football players'. 2. To gather together, collect, build, as 'to recruit an army'. 3. To renew, replenish or restore, as 'to recruit one's health after an illness'. 4. (Noun) Someone who has been newly recruited.
Notes: Today's word has a large lexical family. The action noun is recruitment and the personal noun is recruiter. Someone who is recruited is a recruitee or just a recruit, recruited because they were recruitable. A fresh supply of something is denoted by the now archaic recruital.
In Play: Although most recruits are associated with military branches and sports teams, this term is used much more broadly: "Gladys Friday had trouble recruiting enough supporters of her bid for office manager." It may refer to restoration in its broadest sense: "Gladys failed to recruit her energies from her attempt to become manager, so she resigned and moved on."
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken from French recruter "to hire", probably radically remade from Latin recrescere "to increase, grow again". This verb comprises re "again" + crescere "to arise, grow, increase", created from PIE k'er-/k'or- "to grow", found also in Greek koros "boy", and Latin Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and crescen(t)s "growing", present participle of crescere (originally referring to a stage of the moon), Russian kormit' "to feed" and Polish karmić "to feed". Where [k'] became [s], we find Armenian ser "lineage, progeny", Albanian ther "to prick, pierce", Lithuanian šerti "to feed". (Let's see now if we can recruit gratitude sufficient to reward Joakim Larsson of Sweden for his suggestion that we explore today's Good Word.)
