Lecture 8: Words for Beginnings and Endings
z The etymology for this word is straightforward and helpful: Puerile
comes from the Latin puer, meaning “boy or male child,” and as we
all know, boys can certainly be silly.Moribund (adjective)- Approaching death; coming to an end.
- No longer effective or active; stagnant; not progressing or advancing.
z Moribund comes from the Latin word morior, which means
“to die.” This same Latin verb also gives us the fertile root
mort. The following words are derived from this powerful root:
mortal, immortal, mortality, mortuary, postmortem, mortify, and
rigor mortis.z Immortal is an interesting example to illustrate the concept of
DEVRUEHGSUH¿[HV
ż As mentioned in an earlier lecture, English has created and
continues to create thousands of new words by combining Latin
DQG *UHHN DI¿[HV URRWV DQG EDVH ZRUGV )RU H[DPSOH WKH
word previewZDVFUHDWHGE\DGGLQJWKHSUH¿[pre-, meaning
“before,” to the word view. Of course, to preview something is
to look at it beforehand.ż In the same way, immortalZDVFUHDWHGE\DGGLQJWKHSUH¿[
in-, meaning “not,” to mortal. However, it’s almost impossible
to pronounce “inmortal.” Thus, over time, the nLQWKHSUH¿[
in- was absorbed, or assimilated, into the initial m of the
base word, mortal, yielding “immortal.” The same process
took place with immature, immaterial, immodest, immoral,
and immovable.ż :HNHHSWKH¿UVW m in the spelling of these words to remind
ourselves that im- is an alternative form of the in SUH¿[
PHDQLQJ ³QRW ́ ,I ZH HOLPLQDWHG WKH ¿UVWm, we’d lose an