Different and Disparate words for Dissimilar

Sometimes you encounter words that are different, but sometimes they’re just dissimilar. Then there are those that are disparate. When is something different, when is it dissimilar, and when is it disparate?

The definitions shed some light: different is defined as “not alike in character or quality” while dissimilar is defined as “…not having likeness or resemblance” and disparate is “distinct in kind”.  

Latin is the ultimate source of all three words. The Latin word differentem (from which we get different through the Old French word different. It essentially means “to set apart.” (As in the Sesame Street song “one of these things just doesn’t belong here.”) It came to English in the late 1300s.

The Latin word similis means “like, or resembling.” There’s actually an Old Latin word (I didn’t even know there was Old Latin) that means “together” from which it may have come – the Old Latin word is semol. The French took similis  and made it similaire. The French had a word dissimilaire, which may be the source, but by the 1620s English was using the word dissimilar.

The Latin word from which we get disparate is disparatus, and disparate didn’t come through French. It arrived in English around 1600. Disparatus is the past participle of disparare, which means “divide or separate.” It was formed from combining the prefix dis-, which means “apart” and parare, which means prepare or get ready. There is a Latin word for unequal or unlike, dispar, which may also have influenced the development of the word. It is the Latin root that helps clarify what I believe the current predominant usage to be: bringing together of unlike things that were prepared separately.

So, disparate words are words that are unlike and come from different places, while different are things that are not alike in character or quality and dissimilar are things that don’t resemble each other.

For instance, olio and oleo are disparate words, olio and medley are dissimilar words, and olio and hodgepodge are different words. And, since I mentioned but didn't explain oleo earlier this month, let's cover that.

Oleo is short for oleomargarine, and has been a word of its own since 1884. In 1854 the French coined the word oléomargarine to describe the butter substitute made from beef fat.They formed the word by combining their word oléine (from the Latin word for oil, oleum, and the suffix from glycerine, -ine) and margarine. Around our dinner table we call oleine glyceryl trioleate. Margarine was invented in 1869 by the French scientist Hippolyte Mège-Mouries, according to etymonline.com. 

Etymonline.com also quotes a "Punch" article from Feb. 21, 1874 as saying "The 'enterprising merchant' of Paris, who sells Margarine as a substitute for Butter, and does not sell his customers by selling it as Butter, and at Butter's value, has very likely found honesty to be the best policy. That policy might perhaps be adopted with advantage by an enterprising British Cheesemonger." We all know who they're talking about, don't we?