If you say you’re going to repair to the drawing room after dinner, meaning that that you will “go” to that room, you’re using a word that’s completely different from the verb repair meaning “to fix.” These words come from different roots. The repair that means “to go” derives from the Latin word repatriare, a relative of English repatriate, meaning “to return to one’s own country.” The other repair meaning “to mend” comes Latin reparare meaning “to restore.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “To Repair to Another Room”
You know how sometimes in a novel a character might say,
Let’s repair to the kitchen or let’s repair to the drawing room?
I never could understand why it was repair.
And I found out just recently that it’s a different verb,
That there are two different repairs.
One of them is from the Latin reparare,
Which means literally to prepare.
And the other one goes back to late Latin repatriare, which means to go home again, like repatriate.
Right.
How cool is that?
That’s very cool.
Two different repairs.
Perfect.
It makes more sense now.
I never could figure out, you know, what are you going to do?
Repatriate oneself to the country of the library where the books are.
That is my home.
I know.
This is where I belong.
Yes.
Well, that’s what I always thought was that, you know, you’re repairing to the library so that you can sort of repair, you know, knit up your rabble sleeve of care or something.
Nice.
You know, a repair to the kitchen to repair your hunger or something.
But it’s a totally different repair.
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