Nonagesimus Octavus: August 26, 2008: Stirps
Theme for this week: Words learned through the etymology of A.Word.A.Day
stirps, stirpis f.
Definition: lower trunk and roots, stock; plant, shoot; family, lineage, progeny; origin; ab stirpe utterly
Sententia: Magister dicit necesse esse discipulis investigare de stirpe ut historiam familiae scribant.
The teacher says that it is neccesary for the students to find out about [their] origin so that they might write a history of the family.
The English word which derives from this word is extirpate , found online at http://wordsmith.org/words/extirpate.html. The link to yesterday's English word, which I forgot to give, is http://wordsmith.org/words/nugacity.html. Stirps is found in the syllabi in Book 6 of the Aeneid, and scattered throughout the works of all of the authors off of the syllabi. A note about the ordinal number for today: it IS supposed to be "nonagesimus octavus" for the Oxford Latin Dictionary does not have "duodecentesimus" as a valid word. So, the nice pattern of "duode-" and "unde-" does not continue ad infinitum, as I previously thought. From now on, I shall verify that the "duode-" and "unde-" forms which I use are indeed real words. Sorry about that!
NB: Bold and underline == macron