• endue •
Pronunciation: in-du, in-dyu, en- • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. Invest, endow (with), bestow (on). 2. Assume, adopt, put on (clothes), clothe.
Notes: This word, sometimes spelled indue, is teetering on the brink of extinction. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 17 definitions of it and claims that all but the two above are "obsolete". It also claims that the personal noun, enduer, and the passive adjective, enduable are obsolete. The OED lists enduement as a result noun in the sense of "a qualification, accomplishment; adornment" that is current;y active.
In Play: You might read endue today in sentences like this: "Kenny Bunkport was able to exhaust the wealth his father had endued him with in less than a decade." "Maude Lynn Dresser arrived at the party endued in an outlandish outfit of grossly mismatched pieces."
Word History: Today's Good Word, as usual, was borrowed from Old French enduire, a slight remodeling of Latin induere " to put on, assume, dress in". The Latin word contains in "in(to)" + do "I give", dare "to give". The neuter singular past participle of dare is datum, plural data, which English simply helped itself to. Dare is based on PIE do-, du- "give", source also of Greek doron "gift", Albanian dashe "I gave", Lithuanian duoti "to give", Latvian dot "to give", Russian dat' "to give", Serbian dati "to give", Hindi dena "to give", Bengali dite "to give", and Marathi dya "to give". (Double thanks again to Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, long-time contributor and editorial board member, for finding this lovely Good Word and sharing it with us.)
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