You might be amazed, if you stopped to consider it, how ...



You might be amazed, if you stopped to consider it, how much sitting is going on around you, day after day after day.

Word Power

Session 13- Part I

Think, for just a startled moment, of typists, bank presidents, bus drivers, crane operators, airplane pilots, television viewers; of motorists creeping bumper to bumper on I-75 or 94; patients in doctors’ crowded waiting rooms; students in class; audiences in movie theaters, and sporting events.

There is a Latin word meaning “to sit,” namely sedeo. See the syllable sed- in an English word and you have every right to suspect that there is some kind of sitting going on.

1. If, for example, you work at a sedentary occupation, you do a lot of ______________ at your job.

2. A bookkeeper, secretary, truck driver, sewing machine operator, or any kind of desk work, leads a fairly __________________ life for eight or so hours a day.

3. “You must get more exercise,” says the doctor to the middle-aged, pot-bellied patient. “Walk a mile a day, swim six laps in your pool every morning, play some golf, mow your own lawn. Even take up jogging if you’re that much of a masochist. You spend too much time on your duff.” Translation: “You are leading too ________________ an existence.

4. Sediment is any matter that settles to, or __________ at the bottom of liquid.

5. There is a good deal of __________________ at the bottom of many lakes.

6. People who are sedate________________ maintain an observable dignity, do not lose their temper, are never giddy and rarely frivolous; by etymology, their emotions _________ quietly instead of jumping all over the place. (Such people are probably also quite dull, but they are welcome when you need quiet!)

7. Little girls in adult company are, by our cultural stereotypes, usually _______________; little boys, on the other hand, are stereotypically active and restless, and need repeated warning looks. (Of course, stereotypes are rarely active.)

8. We tend to think, again stereotypically, that society ladies act more _______________ly than the young college crowd.

9. A drug that soothes, that quiets worry, anxiety, violent emotions, or pain is a sedative. Etymologically, a sedative keeps pain, worry, etc. _____________ing quietly.

10. A __________________ in the form of a tranquilizer is prescribed by some doctors who don’t know what else to do when they suspect that a patient’s symptoms are psychological in origin.

11. In the terminal stages of cancer, a morphine derivative is often administered as a ___________________ for excruciating pain.

12. One can even say that a person who has a calming, soothing effect on others acts as a _____________________; too much of such a person, however, and you drop off to sleep.

13. Super- is a Latin prefix meaning above or over. Your superior in an organization is _______________ you; a supervisor is one who ___________sees operations; supernatural __________________ natural.

14. If one thing supersedes another, by etymology it _____________ above it.

15. Note the spelling of the last syllable of supersede, the only word in English ending in –sede. This pattern indicates the derivation of the word from the Latin verb sedeo, to _____________.

16. Supersede means “to take the place of.” If one thing sits above another, it pushes that other off the seat and takes its place. (Get the picture?) So every midnight of December 31, the new year _________________s the old; in times of economic recession, business stagnation _______________s activity; a new and easy divorce law ________________s a former law that made divorce difficult.

17. Sedeo means to _____________; super means ____________ or ___________________.

18. “Does the new method of calculating dividends completely throw out the old one?” is a translation of “Does the new method ______________ the old one?”

19. Sedeo appears in some English words in the variant spelling –sid (instead of –sed). Your residence, for example, is the place where you can ________________ back in comfort, or at least so the etymology tells us. Residence is an elegant and formal word for “home.”

20. The word residence combines sedeo with the Latin prefix re-, back. That is, the direction back, not the anatomical back. (Re has additional meanings, but you need not concern yourself with them at this time.) When waves recede they go _______________. When light waves are reflected, they are bent _______________. When you reject someone’s offer, you etymologically throw it _____________________.

21. Recede is a combination of re- ______________________, with cedo, to go. (Hence the spelling –cede, rather than –sede.)

22. The ocean tides ___________________; this is actual, literal, physical movement back. Or business activity can ____________________; here we are talking in a figurative sense.

23. To change the verb recede into a noun, follow the pattern of concede—concession; namely, recede-- ___________________.

24. When economic activity falls sharply (i.e. moves or goes back), we say that we have a business _____________________.

25. During severe rainstorms, rivers may swell over their banks and flood miles of lowland. You can imagine the relief that inhabitants of river regions feel when the rain finally stops and the floodwaters __________________.

26. Reject is a strong word because it is built on a Latin verb denoting strong movement—jacio, to throw. (Internal vowels of Latin verbs change; sedeo may become sid-, jacio may become ject-). By etymology, to reject is to throw ___________________.

27. To _________________ something is to refuse to accept it, to throw it back in someone’s face, as it were.

28. “I do not accept what you say—in fact, I won’t even consider it.” This is a long-winded translation of “I ________________ your statement.”

29. Re- is a prefix meaning _______________; jacio (ject) means to ________________; the prefix in-, as in interior, means ___________________.

30. So inject, by etymology, means to _______________ in.

31. “May I ____________ my ideas into the discussion?” Translation: “You people have been going at it hot and heavy and I can’t get a word in edgewise. Let me throw something into the pot!”

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