Basic Guide to Using Etymology for Word Choice
Every great book builds sentences that were seemingly destined to be written, made of words that were carefully plucked out of the master writer’s toolbox to ellicit the exact image they intended.
That toolbox is called diction, and it is split into four categories
Etymology
Phonetics
Rhythm
Semantic prosody
In this essay I’ll be covering the basics of etymology, and we’ll save the other categories for future essays.
Root types
What I am referring to when I say the word “root” is technically called a morpheme, which is where the meaning of a word originates from.
For example: the word ‘confidence’ contains the Latinate root/morpheme confidentum which means “trusting, bold”
Latinate
(multi-syllabic, abstract, cerebral)
This root includes words in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Essentially, if you can imagine Dracula whispering in this language from the shadows, it’s probably Latinate.
When overused, these words are distancing, clinical, detached, and institutional. They tend to feel lofty and academic, often used by people who are trying to sound like they’ve read Infinite Jest. They flow beautifully, which is why they arise like freeway billboards in purple prose. So, I like to think of them as a seasoning: When used correctly and with intention, they can make almost anything taste good. However, if you blindly use them in excess or not at all, the prose will under/overwhelm readers’ palates.
Example words: passion, dissociate, inescapable, rage, ancestral, phenomenon
Germanic
(monosyllabic, concrete, primal)
This term includes words that are rooted in Old English, German, Dutch, Yiddish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese (the language of the Faroe Islands). In other words, if you can imagine saying it during a moment of primal panic, it’s likely Germanic.
These are sentient words that carry weight and hit you in the chest. I think of them as the food upon which seasoning is placed; words which viscerally impact us, that feed our hunger for raw and carnal imagery.
Example words: Dead, sex, young, fear, sin, pus, gag, blood, food
Function:
In narration, these two roots can be similar to the zoom function on a camera. They excel at increasing or decreasing the mental distance between the reader and the world they are inhabiting.
If you want to keep a clinical, detached distance in third or second person, use Latinate.
Example: “He contemplated the eminent abyss.”
If you want to create intimacy, intensity, or emphasis, use Germanic.
Example: “He surveyed the nothingness before him.”
In dialogue or first person, use latinate for emotionally detached, arrogant, clinical characters, or characters who are intellectualizing to avoid emotions. Use germanic for emotionally intense moments, or for characters who are very connected to or reactive to their emotions
How You Can Use This for Specific Effects:
Zoom: Start latinate and slowly graduate into germanic to execute a slow zoom in. Vice versa to zoom out.
Hard cut: A sudden shift creates a tonally jarring hard cut effect that can feel like sudden dissociation if you step into latinate, or like the ground collapsing under you if you step into germanic.
L into G: “He discards his lighter into the compartment of a tattered sweater that I’ve not encountered until now, but I know it from a source I can’t name.”
vs.G into L: “He drops his zippo into the pocket of an old sweater that I’ve not seen him wear before, and yet faint recognition of the thing creeps out of entombed memories.”
Uncanny: You can produce a subtle uncanny valley effect by switching roots but retaining the distance of the original sentence.
Normal sentence: “Gregory listened to me cry through the door.”
Uncanny effect: “Gregory had been monitoring my sobs through the door.”
Infection: You can ‘contaminate’ the ethereal or revered by contrasting long stretches of latinate prose with germanic words at the end of the sentence or paragraph, pulling the sublime down to earth. Vice versa to elevate something ‘mundane’.
e.g. “The seraph ascended from an abyssal perdition, its flesh stained with death.
Temporal Control: Expand time by using long and abstract latinate words to force reflection. Contract time with short/punchy germanic words.
Without expansion/contraction: “The man made a face at him and the boy sped around the alley corner, crying .”
With: “The man made a face at him and the boy sped away, veering out of the alley, panicked and whimpering.
List of Helpful Tools
The gold standard for finding roots and derivatives is the Oxford English Dictionary. However, access to their etymology feature is paywalled… Personally, I think it’s a tad excessive that even dictionaries are demanding subscription fees now, but I guess they gotta profit through online avenues somehow.
This is a site that contains over 1,750 latinate english words, which is fantastic for finding roots that mean specific things. It also has quizzes on derivatives, if that interests you. This is compiled by a foreign language teacher named Eugene R. Moutoux.
This is an etymology dictionary that can search almost any word to find the root, or it can at least give you the information you need to find the root for yourself elsewhere. Academics didn’t compile it, just language nerds. It lists the sources they use on their introduction page.
Wiktionary is a great hub to discover almost anything related to linguistics, grammar, syntax, and anything else related to language. However, this site is open-source, so be cognizant of that and either use it as a fun rabbit hole to fall into or as a mere starting point for your research. Don’t accept anything in it as gospel.
List of Reading Materials
This is an intro to Morphology by Dr. Jirka Hana. Definitely a bit dense and sterile, but a good jump-off point if the subject interests you.
This is another, more comprehensive look at morphemes by the University of Nevada
If you want to learn more about etymology and how it works, I highly suggest ‘The Oxford Guide to Etymology 1st Edition’ by Philip Durkin
