Cutting Up

Let’s stay in the c section this week. I’m not talking about the method of delivery, I’m talking about the dictionary.

However, it might interest you to know a little about what is now commonly referred to as a c section. Its full name is Caesarian section, and its etymology is unknown. There are, according to Wikipedia, at least three options. But since this isn’t really our word for today I won’t get into them. You’ll have to look them up for yourself. Suffice it to say that the procedure has been known since Roman times, when there is a reference in some of Pliny the Elder’s writing to an ancestor of Julius Caesar being delivered by this method. The Latin word for cut is caesus, and may also provide the source for this description. But if that is the case, the phrase Caesarian section becomes redundant because the word section in this usage refers to the cut, too. (It is also redundant to refer to an ATM machine, since ATM means Automated Teller Machine.) Caesarian section came into English in 1615 and the procedure, which is the delivery of a baby by cutting through the mother’s abdomen, was fatal for the mother until 1500, the first recorded instance of a mother and baby surviving. As recently as 1865 in Great Britain and Ireland the mortality rate was 85% (again, thank you Wikipedia.)

Back to the original thought for the day. Other c words for today are conduce and conflate, both of which I’ve encountered numerous times in my reading of National Review.

Conduce means to tend or lead (to an effect) or to contribute (to a result). Conflate means to combine, and usually refers to the combining of two written texts. A conflation of the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble to the Constitution might conduce to a phrase such as “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, of the people, by the people and for the people…”

Conduce came to English in about 1400 from the Latin word conducere, which is formed from the prefix con- meaning “together”, and ducere meaning “to lead” (we also get the title Duke from this Latin word through Old French duc in the 12th century; it came to mean a nobleman of high rank a couple of centuries later, replacing the Old English term earl).

What’s the difference between conduct and conduce? As is often the case, they come originally from the same Latin root word, but from different forms of the word. Conduct came from the past participle form of conducere, which is conductus. In the early 15th century they needed a word for “convey,” and adapted this word for that usage. Over time it changed meanings, taking on the sense of direct or manage in the 1630s and in about 1710 added the meaning of behaving in a certain way. It still has several meanings, only in the musical sense meaning “to lead together” and that’s different from conduce.

Conflate is from the Latin word conflare, which is the stem of a word that literally means “to blow together”, and is also used to mean kindle or light. It came into English in the 1540s.