Sperate

[Dr. Goodword]

• sperate •

Pronunciation: sper-rayt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Hoped for, anticipated. 2. (Law) Having some likelihood of recovery (debts).

Notes: It is amazing that the negative of today's word, desperate, is completely popular while the positive antonym has dropped off the lexical radar. The Oxford English Dictionary provides examples of 'sperate and desperate debts' as late as the very end of the 18th century. It also lists a verbal usage of desperate, but makes no such offer for sperate. Today's word has been left to die alone in law offices.

In Play: We have so many ways to use today's Good Word. One is: "After seven weeks the sperate rain descended so forcefully, it washed away their garden." Another is: "The sperate promise of the stock he bought vanished when the CFO resigned."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes directly from speratus "hoped for", the past participle of Latin sperare "to hope", based on spes, speres (plural) "hope". We see it again in the derivation desperare "to be hopeless, to despair", which was reduced to despair in Old French, whence the English borrowing. We see this same root in prosper, from Old Latin pro spere "according to one's hope". English inherited the PIE root directly through its German ancestors as sped "abundance; to prosper" as in current Godspeed "farewell". This word originally was a phrase, God speed you "God prosper you, make you succeed". In Old English the word sped was already beginning to mean "succeed", and from there it was but a hop, skip, and jump to "quick" and the current spelling speed. (Today's Good if moribund Word comes from the mysterious master of arcane words, Grogie, in the Alpha Agora.)

[George Kovac]

One of the pleasures of living in a bilingual city like Miami is exploring the cognates between Spanish and English, especially the variations in the evolution of similar words. I claim no fluency in Spanish.

"Esperar" is one of those intriguing words. I always translated "esperar" as "hope." For example, the woman's given name "Esperanza" would be "Hope" in English.

But then one day, I read an ad on the side of the bus, advertising mortgage relief: "¿por qué esperar para bankrupcty?" I originally translated the catch phrase as "why hope for bankruptcy?", which made poor sense.

I discovered that in Spanish "esperar" can mean "to hope" or "to wait." From context, the meaning usually is clear to native speakers of Spanish, but the possibility of intentional ambiguity and richness is there. English proceeds solely on the meaning of "to hope" with words like "sperate" and the meaning "to wait" is limited to other English words.

Espero que esto aclare las cosas, pero espero sus respuestas. I hope this clears things up, but I await your responses.

[George Kovac]

While the English language, unlike Spanish, does not see a link between "hoping" and "waiting," it often conflates "hoping" with "praying." But not always:


“He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.” -- Douglas Adams, "Life, the Universe and Everything"