• inosculate •
Pronunciation: in-ahs-kyê-layt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. To connect to, to connect with, to open into, as a blood vessel might inosculate with another. 2. To interpenetrate, to join so as to be a part of, to grow or be tightly intertwined, as some areas of philosophy inosculate with mathematics.
Notes: Today's Good Word has been around since the 17th century and has produced a few offspring. The noun is inosculation and the past participle inosculated behaves more like an adjective than a participle. Given the fact that osculate is the medical term for "to kiss", you might imagine this word having something to do with French kissing but it doesn't. It is also unrelated to injections; that would be inoculate.
In Play: If plumbers had a vocabulary like this, paying their bills would be less a pain: "Ma'am, I'm afraid the water standing in your yard comes from a break at the joint where your water line inosculates with the water main running under the street." Figuratively, this word's meaning comes very close to that of integrate: "Melanie discovered that her hippie dress style made it difficult for her to inosculate with the conservative community of New Monia."
Word History: Today's word is made up of Latin in "in" + osculat-us, the past participle of osculare "to make an opening; to kiss". This verb was created from osculum "little mouth", the diminutive of os, oris "mouth". The root for "mouth" in Latin is or-, but when the nominative singular suffix, -s is added, the R drops out. This produces two roots for the sense of "mouth", or-, which we find in the English borrowings oral and orifice, and os-, which we find in today's word and Latin ostium "door". (Today's Good Word comes to us courtesy of the mysterious Grogie, who easily inosculated with the community of the Alpha Agora.)
Inosculate
- Slava
- Great Grand Panjandrum
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Inosculate
The Good Word for 2/16/14:
- Slava
- Great Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 8158
- Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:31 am
- Location: Finger Lakes, NY
Re: Inosculate
Grogie did come up with some of the most curious words. It's shame he(?) seems to have 'exosculated'.
Probably no such word, but it does follow, doesn't it? Perhaps it could be used as a fill-in for 'kiss off'? "Why don't you just exosculate!"
Probably no such word, but it does follow, doesn't it? Perhaps it could be used as a fill-in for 'kiss off'? "Why don't you just exosculate!"
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.
Re: Inosculate
My immediate reaction to this was that the "in-" meant "not", as in infrequent or inconvenient, but those are adjectives and inosculate is a verb. Are there any exceptions to this dichotomy?
- Slava
- Great Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 8158
- Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:31 am
- Location: Finger Lakes, NY
Re: Inosculate
The problem here is that there are two different in- prefixes, and they aren't even related. So there's in- 'not', and in- 'in'. The first comes from 'ne-' (as in indomitable), the second from 'en-' (as in today's GW enteric.
The Online Etymology Dictionary has a nice write up on these for further digging.
Hope that helps.
The Online Etymology Dictionary has a nice write up on these for further digging.
Hope that helps.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.
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