BFF Just Doesn't Suffice

For the second time I came to a paragraph in my dictionary that elucidates the difference between similar words. I was looking up amicable and amiable, and at the end of the entry for amicable was this paragraph:

Amiable and affable suggest suggest qualities of friendliness, easy temper, etc. that make one likeable, affable also implying a readiness to be approached, to converse, etc.; a good-natured person is one who is disposed to like as well as be like and is sometimes easily imposed on; obliging implies a ready, almost cheerful desire to be helpful [the obliging clerk took my order]; genial suggests good cheer and sociability [our genial host]; cordial suggests graciousness and warmth.

The paragraph doesn’t tell the shade of difference between amicable and amiable. In common usage I’ve noticed that amiable is friendlier than amicable, which has a sense of agreed upon friendliness in the midst of discord that amiable doesn’t infer.

Sometimes you get two words with slightly different meanings from the same root word because of the path that they took to get to English. Amicable and amiable are two of those words. They both come from the Latin root word amicabilis, which means friendly. Amicable obviously came directly from Late Latin, while amiable had a more circuitous path. Interestingly, amicable arrived in the 1530s, while amiable arrived in the mid-14th century.

Amiable’s path came through the Old French and Middle English. What’s interesting is that one of my sources indicates that it was confused in Old French with amable, which means loveable, which resulted in this formation. In addition to these two words, the Latin source has given us the name Amy.

Obliging was formed in the 1630s as a form of the word oblige, which had been around since the 1300s. It originally meant to bind by oath, and came from the Old French obligier, which came from the Latin obligare which was formed from ob-“to” and ligare “to bind.” It took its “modern” meaning of “to make someone indebted by conferring a benefit or kindness” in the 1560s.

Genial is also from the 1560s, having arrived directly from the Late Latin genialis, meaning “pleasant, festive” although it literally pertained to marriage rites. Its current meaning of cheerful and friendly was first recorded in 1746 and is listed in my dictionary as the third definition, after the original (related to marriage or procreation) and “promoting life and growth.” How nice it would be to have the older definition to add to our spectrum of words; if common usage was that genial meant promoting life and growth our language would be a little richer.

Cordial comes directly from a late 14th century Middle French word, which came from the Middle Latin word cordialis, “of or for the heart”. Originally the word was used of medicine, food or drink that is meant to stimulate the heart, and some drinks retain that meaning. The adjectival meaning formed in the late 15th century, and retains the sense of “heartfelt, from the heart.”