• impertinent •
Pronunciation: im-pêrtn-ênt, im-pêr-tê-nênt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Not pertaining to the matter at hand, unrelated, irrelevant. 2. Rude, insolent, disrespectful, presumptuous, interfering somehow into something that is not one's business, particularly the personal affairs of someone else.
Notes: Today's word has wandered off course, for the first, original sense of the word is rarely used outside legalese. The adverb is impertinently and the noun, impertinence.
In Play: Impertinence usually refers to inappropriate reference to a personal topic: "The married senator visibly blushed when the press corps became so impertinent as to press him about his girlfriend." The topic is usually something that the victim doesn't want exposed: "Those who recognized themselves in Rhoda Book's new novel thought it highly impertinent of her to have treated them so unfairly."
Word History: Today's Good Word shifted its meaning somewhere between Latin and its descendants, the modern Romance languages. When English borrowed this word from French, the shift had already occurred. Impertinent originated in Latin impertinen(t)s "not reaching, not extending (to), irrelevant", the negated present participle of pertinere "to reach, lead to a result, pertain". This word is made up of per "forward" + tenere "to hold". Tenere was created from PIE ten-/ton- "to stretch", reflected in Sanskrit tantram "loom" and tanuh "thin", Persian tar "string" (as in sitar, a Persian stringed instrument), Greek teinein "to stretch", tetanus "stiff" and tonos "string", Lithuanian tankus "compact", Russian tonkii "thin, lean", Swedish tunn "thin", German dünn "thin", Danish tynd "thin", and English thin. (Now let's thank Tomasz Kowaltowski, an active Agoran and regular contributor, for yet another pertinent Good Word.)
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