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• scion •

Pronunciation: sai-ên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A twig with buds cut from a plant for grafting onto another plant, a graft. 2. A descendant or heir in a rich family with a substantial family tree.

Notes: Remember to ignore the silent C in today's word; many can't resist the temptation to pronounce it. Some dictionaries even accept the spellings cion or sion. We don't like either. Like heiress, scion has a feminine form scioness, if you care to use it.

In Play: Today's Good Word is widely used in the world of horticulture, where scions of one plant are regularly grafted to the stock of others: "Grafton tried to graft apple, plum, peach and pear scions to his papaya tree in hopes of producing his own fruit salad, but it didn't work." One of the advantages of wealth is that you get to call your descendants scions, rather than merely "chips off the old block". You simply cannot say, "Buddy Roe is the scion of a family of poor redneck dirt farmers, who never had two nickels to rub together." To be a scion, your family must not only be wealthy, but you must come from old money, not new.

Word History: Today's word is the French word scion from the verb scier "saw, cut", akin to Spanish segar "cut, mow, reap" and Italian segare—both from Latin secare "cut". This verb contains the root which underlies English section, secant, and several other words borrowed from Latin. An extension of secare is scindere "cut in two", the past participle of which is scissum, origin of our word scissors and also related to scythe. In Greek the same root emerged as schizo "I split" found in schizophrenia "split mind". (We simply must thank Margie Sved, a scion of the Alpha Agora family, for suggesting today's noble Good Word.)

does scindere also give us rescind?

I have this word several times while reading and never really understood its meaning. Thanks to the Alpha Agora for clearing it up. I had to smile. NO ONE would ever accuse me of being a scion. As a proud card carrying member of the hoi polloi, I have no worries about that.

does scindere also give us rescind?

Yes.

There might be a Semitic root behind the Greek. The surname of Judas Iscariot almost certainly means he was a member of a terrorist group called the Long Knives, or Sicarii. Notice that another of the group was called Simon the zealot.

Contrary to popular thought, schizophrenia does not refer to a split personality, but to a mind split from reality.

There might be a Semitic root behind the Greek. The surname of Judas Iscariot almost certainly means he was a member of a terrorist group called the Long Knives, or Sicarii. Notice that another of the group was called Simon the zealot.

Interesting addition. I'd never heard this term before. I'm not sure of the Latin, but it does appear the zealot in Hebrew comes from the Greek.

To toss one more on the pile, Sicarii made me think of British pruning shears. Oddly enough, spelled in a French manner.

I'm not sure about the relation between Hebrew and Greek. In biblical studies of course, Greek lexicons refer back to the Old Testament and Hebrew words that may have preceded the Greek. As far as we know, New Testament writers were Jews writing in Greek, but probably with Hebrew or Aramaic as their native language.

I always thought Iscariot meant "from Kerioth," the town or region Judas (or his father) came from. Plus, Judas was the son of Simon Iscariot, which makes the Sicarii angle unlikely.

Good call, misterdoe. Here's what etymonline has on the subject:

from Latin Iscariota, from Greek Iskariotes, said to be from Hebrew ishq'riyoth "man of Kerioth" (a place in Palestine).