• concessation •
Pronunciation: kên-si-say-shên • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass
Meaning: Loitering.
Notes: Here is a word that has been confused with concession on several web pages. In fact, not even the Oxford English Dictionary has an example sentence, only an entry from a 17th century dictionary. I don't know who the contributor of today's Good Word, the ever-mysterious Grogie of the Agora, talks to or reads, but he must have a very arcane library and/or coterie of friends.
In Play: Why anyone would prefer today's word over loitering, I don't know. Perhaps, if you just tire of using the latter word, you could try something like this: ''Many cities prohibit concessation of women in certain neighborhoods.'' Of course, you shouldn't use today's word with anyone but Grogie and his (or her) friends. Don't expect "No concessation" signs to replace "No loitering" signs anywhere soon except, maybe, in front of Grogie's house.
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Latin concessatio(n) "stopping, resting", a noun based on concessatus, the past participle stem of concessare "to stop temporarily, to rest". This word consists of con- "(together) with" + cessare "to cease" -io(n) "-ion" an action noun suffix. Cessare is the frequentative (= repeated action) of cedere "go away, withdraw, yield", whose past participle is cessus. It comes from a Proto-Indo-European word, ked-/kod- "to go, come", which turned up in Greek as hodos "way" and hodites "wanderer, way-farer". It is the imperfective form of the word for "go, come" in Russian today: khodit'. How the meaning moved from "go" to "stop" is as great a mystery as today's contributor. It did become "stop" by the time of Latin, for English borrowed the Old French version of cessare, cesser, as cease. We also picked up the French version of cedere for all the verbs on -cede (accede) or -ceed (succeed). (I suppose we should now thank the mysterious Grogie, a Lexiterian in the Alpha Agora, for finding this word and recommending it.)
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