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• amenable •

Pronunciation: ê-men-ê-bêl; ê-meen-ê-bêl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Tractable, compliant, agreeable, disposed to comply with, as 'amenable to reason'. 2. Fitting, susceptible, capable of being dealt with in a particular way, as 'issues amenable to legislation'.

Notes: Today's Good Word appears to come from a verb amen but, although English has such a verb, it means "conclude, ratify", so is unrelated. The underlying verb remained in French (see Word History). The adjective comes, as usual, with a noun, amenability, and an adverb, amenably. It is also amenable to the negative prefix, as in unamenable.

In Play: The first sense of this word often finds its way into discussions of negotiations: "Congress is now stymied by congressmen who are not amenable to compromise." The second sense of today's word is often met in medical discussions: "Ron Rico was told by his doctors that his headaches are not amenable to any kind of medical treatment."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Anglo-French amenable, based on Middle French amener "answer (to the law)". The word is a combination of à "to" + mener "to lead", from Latin minare "to drive (cattle)", a variation of minari "threaten", which also underlies the English borrowing menace. Latin obtained its verb from Proto-Indo-European men- "to project". We also find evidence of the PIE word in prominent and promontory, not to mention mount and mountain, ultimately from Latin mon(t)s "hill, mountain". Finally, the PIE word entered the Germanic languages independently, giving German Mund, Swedish mun, Dutch mond, and English mouth, all with the same meaning. (English was careless and lost the N along the way.)

I'd be amenable to winter starting on December 21/22 instead
of in mid October.

I'm more amenable to our roller coaster weather, 70 yesterday, 50 today. I also hate standard time. We went out to eat about 5:30 last night and it was already dark. People wandering the streets in dark clothing, invisible.

I'm with you on Standard Time, Keep Daylight all year long.
We had rollercoaster weather for awhile, but now it's in the
20's and too darn cold.

A shout out to our English friends. From reading, I discover it's sometimes still light a 10 p.m. I know our relatives in KY keep the daylight longer than we do, because they are on the western edge of their time zone. I can even find perhaps a half hour difference at my son's place four hours west of us.