Insure vs. Ensure

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tim Daisies from Nashville, Tennessee.

Hi, Tim. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Tim.

What can we help you with?

Well, I got a question for you. It came up when I was looking at the Constitution, as it turns out. It’s the difference between insurer and insurer. And I’ve always been very confident that insurer, that is I-N-S-U-R-E, is to protect against loss or to provide some kind of compensation in the case of loss. And ensure is to make sure that something happens.

So in the Constitution preamble, the word that I think should be is ensure, but it’s actually ensure when you look at the picture. So I-N and E-N, and you have a problem with the Constitution, sir?

Well, I don’t have a problem with the Constitution. But in my understanding, the word that is in the Constitution really is to, well, at least nowadays, it is used to provide compensation for some kind of loss.

Right. That is ensure. But so in my modern day thinking, it should be the word ensure, E-N-S-U-R-E.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of a shock to see that, isn’t it?

I would agree. In the Constitution. Which version of the Constitution were you looking at?

We’re talking about the preamble here. Were you looking at like a reproduction of the handwritten original, or were you looking at just like a modern text HTML version?

I was actually looking at a picture of the original.

Okay. The handwritten one or the typeset one?

Yes, the handwritten one.

Okay. It’s beautiful handwriting, isn’t it?

Yeah, we don’t write like that anymore, do we?

Yeah. So you were taken aback when you saw the version that was there.

I was, but then again, you know, back then it seems like the spelling is a little bit more fluid than it is today. You know, after Noah and his Webster’s Dictionary got put in place.

You’re right. Yeah, if you go to the very end of the Constitution there, they spell independence with an A. Independent.

Oh, kidding.

Yeah. Go to, I think it’s the last line.

Yeah, and it’s not just that. Independence. After the Constitution had been approved and they typeset it for distribution throughout the colonies, they used long S’s as well. They spelled defense with a British C. They had a strange capitalization in the handwritten version where nouns like welfare that we wouldn’t capitalize today were all capitalized.

So what you’ve noticed then is the change of orthography and style and presentation that has come to pass in the last 200 plus years. And it wasn’t really standardized back then, is that correct?

Not nearly as much. Among the educated classes, standardization was beginning to happen. Certainly they were reading each other. It was a very relatively small group of thinking and writing people. And when you got that kind of thinking group all kind of reading each other and writing to each other, then they do develop a kind of consensus about spelling and presentation.

And particularly back then, yeah, ensure and ensure meant pretty much the same thing. They could be used interchangeably. Now they’ve sort of diverged. And you can’t go wrong using I-N for, as you said, paying in advance to make sure that something happens. Or make sure that when something bad happens, you get paid for it, right?

I see. Yeah. And was there not the concept of insurance in general?

There was. It tended to be represented as large pools of merchants, though, like Lloyd’s of London and that sort of thing, where you have a giant pool of money to compensate somebody who does intercontinental shipping should they lose a ship at sea. It wasn’t the kind of thing where you insure your iPod, you know?

I see. Right. So it was big-scale merchant insurance and not like homeowners insurance and that sort of thing.

I see. Very interesting.

Cool, Tim. Thank you so much for your call.

Sure.

All right. Thanks for listening, sir.

All right. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

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