Lenaya and I spent another session enjoying the sumptuous language of Steinbeck. Growing up on the East Coast, I I had certainly heard of The Grapes of Wrath, but I had not spent much time exploring the author's writing. So it was with great pleasure that I explored The Red Pony with this delightful middle schooler.
Lenaya paused after reading the words <immense> and <tremendous>. Were they related to one another? She has some understanding of twin base (alternant) elements from Latin, so she thought the words might share a <mend/mense> base. They both seem to have the connotation of being "really big." In context, the pony Gabilan "aimed a tremendous kick at the boy." As the horse galloped, it "went thundering and enjoying it immensely." Thinking of prior explorations of words such as <extend> and <extension>, where the Latin 4 principle parts are <tendo, tendere, tetendi, tensus>, the 2nd and 4th principle parts come into English as the twin base alternants <tend> and <tense>. Might there be a similar connection with <immense> and <tremendous>? The possibility of a <mend/mense> base was intriguing, and in this case, seemed like a reasonable hypothesis, so we tried to analyze the words with a word sum to see if we could discover the structure. We tried: <im + mense> *<tre + mend + ous>. We looked next in etymonline to check our hypothesized word sum for the first word. The term <immense> was fascinating. It appears to have started as 18th century slang, meaning "without measure" and eye rolls ensued when it was used to intensify words. I can imagine it could be compared to "hella" as in "That was hella good pizza"--a standard (but somewhat dated) usage in my adopted home state of California. Before looking up <tremendous>, we tried to find evidence of a *<tre-> prefix. We couldn't think of any, so we entered the letter sequence <tre> in Wordsearcher. Finding a few tenuous candidates, we did a structure and meaning test with <trepidation> and <tremulous> <temblor> and <trembling>. In etymonline, we discovered they all have a denotation of "shaking" from the Latin tremere and ultimately the PIE root *trem. And similarly, <tremendous> was used in exaggeration, just as <immense> was. Huh. So, the two words are not related at all, but share a connotation of extraordinarily good! That was certainly a surprise, but a happy one. After analyzing the words <immense> and <tremendous>, we discovered that looks can be deceiving. Just because two words might look like they are related doesn't mean it is so. Structured word inquiry is a scientific way of looking at a word's meaning, how it is built, discovering its relatives, and finally looking at the phonemes and graphemes that are apparent in the word. The cautionary tale here: beware WYSIWYGery! What you see on the surface is not necessarily the whole story. What was the outcome? We discovered the story of two new words, along with a host of relatives. It was time well spent in leisurely scholarship.
3 Comments
Gail Venable
11/11/2019 06:34:33 am
What a great discovery! Thanks for sharing it, Susie.
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Gail Venable
11/11/2019 06:40:38 am
Thanks for this, Susie. I love the way you followed your student's thinking and came to a solution that surprised both of you.It's a great way to show that it can be just as exciting finding evidence to disprove a hypothesis as to suppport one. And I was amazed by the etymonline entry so thanks for taking me there.
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11/19/2019 06:31:47 am
What a wonderful journey you took us on -- thanks for giving us a glimpse into a moment in time that was so fruitful.
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