You know those words whose meanings never seem to stick in your mind, no matter how many times you flip back to the dictionary? Martha wrestles with the term atavistic, meaning “the tendency to revert to ancestral characteristics.” She now remembers it by the Latin root it shares with the Spanish word for “grandfather,” abuelo. Grant, in turn, shares his revelation that upwards of actually means “more than,” not “up to.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Atavistic Words”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
I was reading a magazine article the other day, and I came across the following sentence. There’s a strangely atavistic slant to British political culture at this moment. And I had to put down the magazine, go to the dictionary, and yet again look up the word atavistic.
Grant, I think there ought to be a word for those words that keep sending you to the dictionary again and again and again because you can’t remember the meaning. Tell me that I’m not the only person who has this problem.
I know you’re not the only person. Everyone has this problem, right? Because it solves the problem for the moment, but for some reason it doesn’t stick. It doesn’t stick. Why doesn’t it stick?
You know, I’ve learned to just sort of stop and wrestle that word by the seraphs. I mean, in the case of atavistic, I finally thought, okay, this is it. I’m going to figure out this word and I’m going to make it my own. It means reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type. And the way that I made it stick in my head is that I figured out that the AV in atavistic is related to the Latin word spelled A-V-U-S, which means grandfather. It’s a relative of the Spanish word abuelo, which means grandfather. So if you think of grandfather, then that helps you so often. That’s a previous era.
Yeah, the etymology. But do you have words like that that send you back to the dictionary?
Mine’s a little different. I just wanted to share this. This happened to me recently. I found out that I’ve been using a word wrong my whole life.
Really?
I’m 40. It’s a little different. And it’s the kind of thing that you can only find out by looking it up. I didn’t know that upwards of means more than.
Really?
Always thought that upwards of meant up to. And so I’m reading this and talking with a colleague, and we’re talking about something like upwards of 30,000 books in the library, and I’m thinking up to 30,000 books in the library.
Oh, wow.
And it actually means more than 30,000 books in the library, like a little more, not a lot more, right?
Yeah.
And so I’m like, whoa, how does that happen? How do I get this far and not know that? That’s kind of what you’re saying. That happens. How do I get this far and not have that in my head? That happens.
We know there are words that you have this problem with. We know there are words that you keep having to look up. We know there are facts that you should have known by now and you only just figured out. Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
