Transcript
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Hey guys, thanks for coming to see me. I can’t stick around too long. I’m in first place. Yeah, I gotta win this. I gotta go. First is the word you guys are gonna say to the guy at the desk. It’s Word Up! The Vocab Show. Starring Dwane Thomas. Word Up! teaches you the Latin and Greek roots of countless English words. Use them to amaze your friends and family members. Now sit back and enjoy the show. That guy thinks he’s gonna win? Pfft, not a chance. Tell you what, if I were in that race with him, I’d be the winner. I’d be in first place. No, no, I still run. I’m still in good shape. I still do all the stretches, even at this age. Check this out. Don’t believe me? Look at this. I can still touch my toes. Huh? Huh? How about that? I can go across. Ah! Oh boy. Okay. Um, maybe I shouldn’t have touched my toes. Uh, hey everybody. Welcome to Word Up. Mmm, let’s go over to the Latin guy. I don’t think I can sit down. Oh boy. Oh, that looked painful. Hey everyone, the Latin word primus means first, and from it we get these English words. The first one is prime. Prime can be an adjective or a verb. We’ll talk about it as an adjective first. If we’re using it as an adjective, we’re going to put it in front of other words, and that means first in importance. It can also mean best or elite. So think of it as best when you go to a restaurant and you order your food, and maybe you want some meat and you ask for prime rib.
You’re asking for the best choice of meat. Prime in front of other numbers creates kind of new definitions or new vocabulary words. So, or prime in front of other words. So for example, prime numbers, which is what I was thinking of when I said that, are numbers that are divisible only by themselves and by one.
So, one is a prime number. Three is a prime number, because you can only divide three by three and by one. Five is a prime number. Seven is a prime number. 11, 13, you’ve learned all of these in math class. Prime minister is the head of a parliamentary form of government. You see prime ministers all around the world. The most famous, probably, the prime minister of Great Britain. Minister comes from the Latin word minister, which means servant. And this is kind of a household servant, an indoor servant. So he would help out or she would help out in the kitchen, maybe cleaning up the house, doing indoor chores. This is not the servant that they would send outside to do the agricultural chores, generally. Prime minister, primus, minister, literally means first servant, which tells us a little bit about what the head of parliament is supposed to be doing.
The next word is prime, and it’s actually not the next word ’cause we’ve been talking about it, but we’re gonna talk about the verb form of it. So if we’re using prime as a verb, think of it as starting something. Remember, primus means first, so this makes sense that when you start something, you’re at the beginning, you’re at the first movement of whatever action you’re taking. So, there were multiple definitions for this, but the first one was priming a gun or priming an explosive. So if you’re gonna blow something up, not sure why you would be blowing things up, but if you’re gonna blow something up, the first thing you have to do is prime the detonator. To get the bomb ready, you’ve got to prime the detonator. You can also prime an internal combustion engine. So you probably don’t notice this when you start your car, but I bet you do notice it if you ever mow the yard or if you use a weed eater.
These engines often have to be, these smaller engines often have to be primed. You push a little button that injects fuel into the carburetor, starts the engine, so that you can then do the landscaping around your house.
And if you wanna paint, you can also prime. Let’s say you have a room in your house that has dark walls and you wanna change it to light walls. Well, you can’t just put the final coat on, the color that you want, because the dark walls will probably show through. So before you do that, you’re going to have to prime the walls, which means you’re going to put a special coat of paint on to cover the dark walls first. Ironically, that special coat of paint is called a primer, which is not one of our words today, but I’m going to give it to you for free. So when you put the primer on the wall, you’re priming the walls, You’re putting first coat of paint on and then you can add the final coat and you can have a room with light walls. The next word is primary. Primary means main or chief. So you have primary colors, these are the main colors from which other colors are derived and you might have a primary job that you go to every day.
That’s your main job, that’s your chief job. What if it’s not enough and you decide, you know, my primary job is not bringing in enough income, so I need more income, then you would go take a secondary job.
But your primary job is your main or chief job that you spend the bulk of your time doing each day. The next word is primitive. Primitive is, we use primitive when we’re talking about the early stage of something. So if we’re talking about a primitive society, we’re talking about a group of people before modern technology. We’re talking about back when they lived in huts, and they hunted, and they gathered, and they lived off the land. We can also use primitive to talk about a simple way of life. So some people, even today, would choose to leave the city, and they would choose a more primitive form of life. It means they’re going back to the land. Maybe they’re gonna live in a cabin, raise their own food, and get themselves off the grid. No electricity. That’s a primitive form of life. The next word is primogeniture. A primogeniture is an ancestor. Comes from the Latin word, geniere, which means to bear. So primus means first, geniere means to bear. So way back in history, your ancestors bore children until eventually you showed up. Anyway, if you went to study them, you would be studying your primogenitors. Then there’s a word that sounds a lot like primogenitor that is a word we use to talk about the passage of an inheritance down to a son.
This is primogeniture, kind of like the pronunciation of furniture. Primogeniture is the passing of the inheritance to traditionally the firstborn son. This was more common in ancient history than it is now. These days, if we’re talking about primogeniture, we’re probably talking about the passage of power from a king to his firstborn son, to the prince. Prince comes from the Latin word princeps, meaning chief or prince, and princeps comes from the Latin words primus, meaning first, and capere, meaning to take.
So the prince is the one who takes power, right? He’s the one who takes first position when the king or the queen dies or abdicates their power. If there isn’t a prince, if there isn’t a son, then the power will go to the princess, which is the female version of prince. Or if the prince marries, his new wife will become the princess. If he marries, he’s gotta make sure that he doesn’t marry a prima donna. Prima donna is actually an Italian word. Donna in Italian means lady. Prima means first, from the Latin word primus. A prima donna is the first soloist or singer, the main soloist or singer in an opera or a theatrical play. So it wouldn’t be, there’s nothing wrong with the prince marrying a soloist. That’s not a problem. except that the word has changed. These days, a prima donna describes someone who is vain, temperamental, high maintenance, high strung, difficult to get along with because he or she is needy.
We can actually apply the word prima donna not just to females, but to males as well these days. So, the prince has gotta make sure he doesn’t marry a high strung temperamental prima donna. And the last word is prima facie. Prima facie means at first glance, or at first observation, or on first impression. So let’s say the police in your neighborhood have heard about a robbery, and they go investigate it. And they’ve heard that it’s a robbery, but they’re not sure. And they walk in to the house. And sure enough, they look around. And prima facie, they’re like, yeah, this is a robbery. And then one of the police officers says, I don’t know, guys. at this and he points out some evidence that makes them think maybe something else is going on maybe something deeper is going on then they have to investigate more to find out but prima facie it looks like a robbery at first impression on first glance it looks like a robbery those words all come from the latin word primus we’re done i’m gonna send I’ll send you back over to my friend at the desk. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I’ll be fine. It’ll pass. Thanks for that, Latin guy. Greek guy, your turn. Is there an ice pack around here? I don’t know, let’s check. (groans) Should probably get that checked out. That looked painful. Hey everyone, the Greek word protos means first, it we get these English words and the first one is proton. A proton is a tiny sub atomic particle found in the nuclei of all atoms. It has a positive electric charge. You probably know all this from science class. The next word is protagonist. A protagonist is the leading character in a literary work. So if you’re reading the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, then Hamlet is the protagonist. It comes from the Greek word “protas” meaning first, and “agonistis” which means combatant or hero. In this case, Hamlet’s kind of the hero. Anyway, you can figure that out when you read that one and make that decision yourself. The next word is “protocol.” “Protocol” comes from “protas” meaning “first” and “chola” meaning in Greek “glue” which doesn’t help you with the word really at all. “Protocol” is a list of rules or procedures. So, if you are going to a formal dinner, there are manner rules called “etiquette rules” or “protocol rules” that you have to follow. There are certain things that you don’t do or you’ll break protocol. If you break protocol at work, then your boss will probably come and talk to you because you’ve violated some of the rules and procedures. So what does it all have to do with glue? Well, in the beginning of this word, when they were writing down these lists of rules and procedures, they were gluing them into books, which is in part how books are made.
So the word protocol, which means first glue, became attached to the rules. The next word is proto-history. Proto-history is history that deals with the earliest period of a tribe or a group or a people or a civilization. So when the Romans invaded ancient France under Julius Caesar, they encountered a people called the Gauls. But the Gauls had an oral history and they had oral tradition and oral rules. They didn’t write things down. So what we know about early Gallic history, proto-history for the Gallic people, actually comes from the writings of the Romans. The next word is proto-language. A proto-language is a hypothetical language that’s reconstructed, and it’s from this proto-language that linguists believe our modern languages derive. For example, there’s a language called Proto-Indo-European, which linguists believe is, they believe that this is where Sanskrit and Greek and Latin and ultimately German and English and all these languages that we speak in the modern world come from.
Not all languages. In Asia, they have different proto-languages, but in the European, on the European continent, in Proto-Indo-European would be the proto-language. Remember, it’s hypothetical. There aren’t books that they can read in Proto-Indo-European, and there aren’t proto-language books that you can read. They are reconstructed by linguists. The next word is protoplasm. Protoplasm comes from protos, which you know is first, and plasma meaning something molded. So what is protoplasm? Protoplasm is the transparent jelly-like substance that is contained in all cellular plant life and animal life. Speaking of cells, a protein is an organic compound made up of amino acids essential for life that a cell will use to create something new or it’ll turn protein into energy. It’s essential for all human and plant life and it’s also found in all animal, human, and plant life. The next word is prototype. A prototype is a first type or a first model. So let’s say that you’ve come up with an idea for an electric car, and you think it’s going to revolutionize the automobile industry. So the first thing you do is call in the engineers, you guys draw out the plans, but before you mass produce this thing and create 50,000 of them and try to sell them, you’re going to create a prototype, a model, a precursor, something that you can test to work out all the problems. Once you’ve got all the problems worked out of the prototype, then you can create, you can mass produce this car and sell them to all of your friends.
The next word is proto-martyr. Martys in Greek means witness. The proto-martyr is a first witness. Really, this is the first person to die for a belief or a worldview. So in the Bible, and that’s kind of where this word comes from, the proto-martyr was St. Stephen. St. Stephen was one of the early followers of Christ. He was brought before the authorities. They didn’t like what he was saying, and they stoned him to death. He became the first martyr or the proto-martyr for Christianity. But you can have proto-martyrs in other regions as well. One of the apostles, Thomas, went to India to spread the gospel there, same thing happened. Somebody got offended by what he said, and he was killed there. He was the proto-martyr for Christianity in India. And the last word is protean. This one comes from Greek mythology. There was a god named Proteus, who was one of the gods of the ocean, The main god, of course, is Poseidon, but Proteus was one of the gods of the ocean, and Proteus was a shape shifter.
He could change his shape. He could change his form, just like the ocean. Sometimes the ocean is flat and glassy. Sometimes it’s choppy. Sometimes it’s turbulent and wild with high waves. Proteus could do the same. He could change his shape. Now, we use the adjective protean to describe someone who is a shape shifter, not literally, but maybe they’re inconsistent. So it can be used in a negative way or a positive way. If you have an inconsistent friend that you can’t depend upon because he’s protean, that means he’s always changing, always shifting, always erratic, and you can’t count on the guy. That would be the negative use of the word protean. On the positive side, if someone is protean, sometimes you wanna be protean because you might be put into a situation where you need to be flexible.
So let’s say you’re traveling. Well, if you go to a new country and you’re rigid and unbending and unyielding, then you’re gonna have problems in that new country because you’re gonna be dealing with a new language, new culture, new food, new currency. But if you’re protean, you’re good to go because you can shift to the culture, you can shift to your surroundings, You can flow with disorder. You can roll with it. It’s a good thing. Okay. There you are. Ten new words from the Greek word “protos,” meaning “first,” and I’m going to send you now back over to my friend at the desk. Oh, it hurts. Thanks for that, Greek guy. Okay, guys. You’re 20 words smarter and all that. Whoop-de-doo. I got to go find a chiropractor. I wonder if chiropractor’s a Greek word. Ah, who cares? (laughing)