The other day in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip which I get on my igoogle page, Calvin is doing his homework and asks Hobbes what a pronoun is. Hobbes says, “A noun that lost its amateur status.” A reasonable answer it seems to me. (Calvin thinks that he might get credit for being original.) It made me start wondering about English names for the parts of speech.
“Pronoun” is from Middle French pronom, derived from Latin pronomen. Nomen translates to “name” and pro means “in place of.” As a prefix, “pro” indicates substitution. Thus, we get our meaning: A pronoun takes the place of a noun.
“Noun” is derived from the Latin for name, but what about “verb”? It is from the Latin verbum which means “word.” “Verbose” is word plus Latin ose meaning “full of.” And “adverb”? It’s from verbum with the Latin prefix “ad” meaning toward or about. Thus an adverb modifies (is about) a verb.
“Adjective” is from Late Latin adjectivum, from Latin jec (iacere—the “j” in Latin came about when “I” was used as a consonant) meaning throw and ad the prefix which also means attached or added. We get “project” (the verb not the noun which is pronounced differently but spelled the same in English) from the same root, with another meaning for the prefix pro meaning “to” (or “toward”). So an adjective modifies a noun, or is attached to it.
I’ve always known that language is “logical” (from the Greek meaning speech or reason).
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