• replete •
Pronunciation: ri-pleet • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Well supplied, abounding, copiously filled with. 2. Having your appetite excessively satisfied, gorged, stuffed, satiated.
Notes: Today's Good Word is very similar in spelling and meaning to complete, but the difference in meaning is significant. They differ in their derivations, too. The noun for complete is completion, but the noun for replete is repleteness.
In Play: We begin with an example from appurtenance, enhanced by today's word: "Val Halla's yacht is 150 feet long and is replete with all the appurtenances of luxury travel." In case you get bored with full in reference to your stomach, here is a use of today's word I'll bet few of you know: "After such a meal I am replete; no room for dessert."
Word History: Today's Good Word entered English from Old French replet "filled up", inherited from Latin repletus "filled, full", the past participle of replere "to fill, refill". Replere is made up of re-, here an intensifier, + plere "to fill". Latin inherited this word from PIE pel-/pol-/ple- "fill". No one knows what function the various 'ablaut' forms had. We can only trace the various words back to these forms: English full, Russian polny, French plein, and Latin plenus—all meaning "full". English plenty is an adopted granddaughter of plenus, and Greek polus "much, many", origin of English combining form poly-, comes from the same source as plenus.
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