Search us!

Search The Word Detective and our family of websites:

This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase.

To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments are OPEN.

We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years.

Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

 

 

shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

Pertinent & Impertinent

The whistleblower’s conundrum.

Dear Word Detective: What’s the connection, if any, between “pertinent” and “impertinent”? I’ve always used “pertinent” to mean “relevant” and “impertinent” to mean “disrespectful” or “insolent.” But shouldn’t “impertinent” simply mean “irrelevant”? — Rob, Miami, FL.

Hey, you’re right. It sure should. And life would be simpler if it did, because then we’d be using a language that builds all its words by snapping bits together, like building them out of Lego pieces. You snap a negative bit (im-, un-, non-, dis-, etc.) on the front of a word, and bingo, you’ve got its opposite. The English language actually has many words that work that way, “relevant” and “irrelevant” being a good example; “irrelevant” means simply “not relevant.” But there are many other cases where what seems to be a negative prefix (the “dis” in “disgruntled,” for instance) is actually playing a completely different role. In “disgruntled,” for instance, the “dis” in this case means “thoroughly.” So a “disgruntled” worker is extremely “gruntled,” an archaic term meaning “moved to grunting,” i.e., angry and dissatisfied.

The case of “pertinent” and “impertinent” illustrates yet another pitfall of the “Lego” school of etymology: where the prefix signaling negation (“im-“) does just what we expect it to by making “impertinent” mean “not pertinent,” but then the resulting “impertinent” wanders off and ends up meaning a whole lot more than simply “not relevant.”

“Pertinent” first appeared in Middle English, around 1390 in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, drawn from Anglo-Norman and Old French roots ultimately traceable to the Latin “pertinere” (“to be appropriate, suitable, relevant”). That was the original meaning of “pertinent” in English, and, apart from a legal sense of the word meaning “something belonging to an estate,” that’s pretty much the way we use “pertinent” today.

“Impertinent” also appeared in the late 14th century, based on the Latin “impertinens,” from “pertinens” (“belonging, relevant”) plus the negative prefix “im-” (a form of the more familiar “in-“). Its initial meaning in English was, predictably, “not belonging or relevant to” or “irrelevant.” But “impertinent” quickly broadened its meaning to encompass “not appropriate to the circumstances” (“Many ignorant practicioners … [have endeavored] to cure this infirmitie with many impertinent medicines.” 1583). By the 17th century, “impertinent” was being used to mean “irrational,” “absurd,” “trivial” and just plain “silly” (“For my part, I think a Woman’s Heart is the most impertinent part of the whole Body.” 1706).

Applied to specific people and their actions and attitudes, “impertinent” came to mean “meddling in things beyond their expertise or social station,” “intrusive or rude,” “showing lack of respect or proper manners,” and “behaving in a rude and insolent manner” (“He thought the stranger’s tone rather impertinent.” 1847). This is the sense most commonly heard today.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please support
The Word Detective


unclesamsmaller
by Subscribing.

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

Makes a great gift! Click cover for more.

400+ pages of science questions answered and explained for kids -- and adults!

FROM ALTOIDS TO ZIMA, by Evan Morris