ELECT

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Dr. Goodword
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ELECT

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Nov 04, 2008 12:11 am

• elect •

Pronunciation: ê-lektHear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, transitive

Meaning: 1. To choose for a specific function or purpose by voting, as to elect a new president. 2. To freely choose from an unrestricted variety of choices, as to elect a college course outside one's major.

Notes: Today is Election Day in the United States, a good time to take a look at the verb on which election is based. This verb has given us plenty of offspring: the action noun election and the personal noun elector. This word's adjective, electoral, is prominent in the name of the Electoral College (pronounced Electoral not Electoral) that will make the final judgment as to the next president. The electorate is the body of electors or voters as a whole. The verb has its own adjective, too, elective, which comes with an adverb electively. Beyond that, the verb itself may used as a postpositional adjective in expressions like president-elect, referring to an elected president who has not yet assumed office.

In Play: Elect differs from select in referring to selecting someone for a specific position: "In a democracy, the people always elect the government they deserve." This verb also bears the connotation of selecting freely among an array of choices: "If I elect to shave the top of my head and grow hair on the bottom of it, that is my decision to make."

Word History: Today's Good Word is another Latin gift, taken this time from electus "chosen", the past participle of eligere "to choose". This verb was originally ex "out of" + legere "choose, appoint, read". The root of this verb, leg-, seems to have originally meant "to collect" and "to speak". No one knows why this root bears these two seemingly unrelated meanings. We find the root, though, in Latin lex, legis "law" (a collection of rules), a word curled up inside English legislator. Legislator was originally the Latin phrase legis lator "bearer of laws". But then we also see it in lexical and lexicon, which come from Greek lexis "speech", from legein "to speak".
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Bailey
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Postby Bailey » Tue Nov 04, 2008 12:36 am

The elect- noun, chosen ones.

B.

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Slava
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Re: ELECT

Postby Slava » Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:36 pm

The root of this verb, leg-, seems to have originally meant "to collect" and "to speak". No one knows why this root bears these two seemingly unrelated meanings.
Well, we could perhaps hope that people will "collect" their thoughts before they elect to "speak."
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

Bailey
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Postby Bailey » Sun Nov 16, 2008 8:45 pm

the noun version still indicates an election [collection] from the verb form.

B.

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