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• inveigh •

Pronunciation: in-vay • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive

Meaning: To protest angrily, to speak or write (against) with great hostility, to rail passionately (against).

Notes: Today's Good Word has a rather unexpected derivation: invective, an adjective meaning "full of inveighing" (invective speech), which also serves as a noun meaning "a violent verbal attack". A person given to inveighing and using invective is generally referred to as an inveigher. Remember to use the preposition against with this Good Word and invective, as shown in the following examples.

In Play: Invective has come into vogue recently in the US: "Many US town hall meetings were disrupted in 2009 by unhappy citizens inveighing against 'Obamacare'." Many of the same people inveighed against repeal of that law in 2017. This word has many uses around the house, too: "Harold, why don't you stop inveighing against the clutter in the garage and clean it up?"

Word History: Today's word was borrowed from Latin invehi "to attack verbally", originally "to be carried in", the passive infinitive of invehere "to carry in". This verb is made up of in "in" + vehere "to carry, haul". With a noun suffix, the root of this verb became vehiculum "means of conveyance, vehicle", which meandered down to French véhicule, borrowed by English as vehicle. The root of vehere came from an earlier form wegh- "to lift, to carry", which also developed into Germanic words like German Weg "way" and Wagen "car", and English wagon and weigh. The latter came from an original word meaning how much is lifted or carried. In the Slavic languages we see its remains in words like Russian voz "wagon" and vozit' "to haul, carry, drive".

Always have trouble differentiating between inveigh (with its harsh, violent meaning) and inveigle (much softer, and with a different meaning of to persuade or cajole). The latter was not discussed today, but likely derived from the same source.

Good distinction, Tom! I see that's your first post. Welcome and keep it up!

Good distinction, Tom! I see that's your first post. Welcome and keep it up!

And it has quite a background, Perry, root of many words.

Interestingly enough, even though they share the same first 6 letters, inveigh and inveigle have different roots. Inveigh is above, inveigle below:

formerly also enveigle, etc., late 15c., "to blind (someone's) judgment," apparently an alteration of Middle French aveugler "delude, make blind," from Vulgar Latin *aboculus "without sight, blind," from Latin ab- "off, away from" (see ab-) + oculus "eye" (from PIE root *okw- "to see"). The Latin word is a loan-translation of Greek ap ommaton "without eyes." Meaning "to win over by deceit, seduce" is 1530s. Related: Inveigler; inveiglment.

I expect that last word there is a typo, missing an "e".

A person given to inveighing and using invective is generally referred to as an inveigher.

I think it would be more fun to call such a person an "invector."