• routine •
Pronunciation: ru-teen • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, adjective
Meaning: 1. A set of regular, ordinary procedures, often performed perfunctorily. 2. A scripted entertainment performance, a "canned" performance. 3. (Computers) A set of programming instructions that perform a specific task.
Notes: Today we have a word that should be related to route, but whose semantics discourage such a connection. (See, however, Word History.) As an adjective, it has an adverbial form, routinely. As a noun there are several forms it assumes, routineer "someone who works routinely", two quality nouns, routineness and routinism "slavish adherence to routine", and a verb routinize.
In Play: Routines have the reputation of being repetitive and boring: "The work routine in the office was more than Anita Job could take." The second sense usually is preceded by a made-up adjective: "At the interviews that followed, she went into her I'm-a-poor-girl-that-no-one-understands routine."
Word History: Today's Good Word is a combination of route "way, course" + -ine, when route favored "course of action" rather than its current meaning. Route has an interesting history. It was borrowed from Old French rute "road, way, path", a reduction of Latin rupta "broken", as in 'via rupta' "road broken (through the woods)". Latin created its verb out of Proto-Indo-European reu-p-/rou-p- "to tear, break, rupture", source also of Sanskrit ropayati "tears, breaks off", Serbian rupa "hole", Latin rumpere "to break, rupture, Icelandic rifa "a crack, rift, tear", and Dutch roof "robbery". (Now for another word of appreciation to a grandmaster of suggestions, Albert Skiles, for yet another stimulating Good Word.)
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