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#200443 06/13/11 01:25 PM
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I've read the whole story of verbing nouns from today's word and then came etiolate. I still try to find which noun this verb came from as the introduction promised. Is it somewhere? Could someone please tell where I missed it?

etiolate
MEANING:
verb tr.:
1. To make pale by preventing exposure to sunlight.
2. To make weak by stunting the growth of.
verb intr.:
3. To become pale, weak, or stunted.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French étioler (to make pale), from Latin stipula (straw). Earliest documented use: 1791.

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It was verbed in French... the Old French noun esteule, esteulle became the verb (s')étieuler

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Thanks goofy, that was ( to me anyway ) the missing link.
So I could find some other details about it. Thanks!

the Norman French word éteule
derived from the Old French word esteule
derived from the Vulgar Latin word stupula
derived from the Latin word stipula (stalk; stubble; straw)
Date
The earliest known usage of éteule in French dates from the 11th century.
Derivations in French
étieuler
Cognates
Italian stoppia, Provençal estobla
Usage
Word found in Norman French

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So glad I saw this. I think in my mind I've always thought etiolate meant elongate, spread thin. Wonder what I read that made me mis-translate/replace it that way? Probably a writer used it to refer to a sickly child or something equivalent. Good to learn.

Last edited by allisondbl; 06/13/11 08:18 PM.
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Ha, ;-) to me the word is so completely new I never even used or read it the wrong way.

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Alley, I've frequently tried to make it equivalent to attenuate, which can fit some of the same contexts. Maybe you've done something similar.

Peter

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I totally misinterpreted the opening post. I thought you wondered where the noun for etiolate was. It's etiolation, but now I see, after reading the posts, what you were really looking for. Vulgar Latin took many nouns and verbed them. The big difference between what happens in Latin and in English, is that English can verb nouns without modifying the form of the noun, whereas Latin has to add in some morphology.


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Yes, I could not understand the jump from stipula to étioler.
But now I it is clear. :-)

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for many years I wrongly read this word as etoilate, reversing the o and the i. I associated it with etoile (star) and although I knew the meaning, I associated it in my mind with pale as in starlight!


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That's a rather very nice association. But isn't starlight sometimes called bright?

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