• elate •
Pronunciation: i-layt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: To overjoy and uplift, overfill with happiness, make ecstatic or exultant.
Notes: The past participle and action noun of today's Good Word are most often encountered, elated and elation. There is an adjective, elative, used to refer to the elative cases of Finnish and Arabic, but is semantically unrelated to elate.
In Play: The basic meaning of this word is to make extremely happy and to uplift: "The dismissal of all charges against Robin Banks elated him, his mother, and his lawyer. This elated Robin much more than receiving the Man-of-the-Year award last August." Robin was even more elated to hear that the committee had decided not to divest him of that award.
Word History: Today's word is based on Latin elatus "brought out", the past participle of efferre "to bring out, exalt". This word comprises e-, a shortening of ex- "(out) from" + latus "brought". This irregular Latin verb has two different roots because irregular verbs often have different roots; take, for example English bring : brought. Ferre "to bear, carry" goes back to PIE bher- "to carry", which ended up in English as the verb bear. Latus shows up in many English words borrowed from Latin and Greek: translate, legislate, relate, and so on, all with some sense of "carry", "bring", or "bear".