Pining for My Opinion?

It has been a hiatus of a couple of weeks since my last post – my travel schedule has made posting most difficult. (I have only been at home six days this month, although the last six have been a vacation, so I am not complaining.) It is time to catch up on words related to previous posts

In a previous post I included the word abjure. But in reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry I ran across the very similar word adjure. It means to charge, bind, or command earnestly and solemnly, often under oath or the threat of a penalty. It can also mean to entreat (I would have used the word ask or plead) or request earnestly.  It came to English in Latin in the late 1300s from the word adiurare (no letter J in Latin), and meant to confirm by oath, or add an oath or swear in addition. It had the sense of another oath, although the prefix ad- meant to swear and the iurare is the word from which we get jury. But now adjure can mean oath or a very strong assertion or entreaty. And if you renounce what you formerly adjured, you abjure it.

Even further back is a post on rapine, which is not to be confused with repine or opine. Rapine is the taking away of someone’s property by force. Repine is a verb that means to fret or complain. Opine is the verb for having an opinion. And while we’re on the subject,  the words to the song from Evita could have easily been “Don’t pine for me, Argentina,” because the verb  pine means to yearn deeply for. So how do words with pine in them have such different meanings?

Let us go back to Old English, where the word pinian (not to be confused with pinion, a gear with a small number of teeth that often interfaces with another gear known as a rack) meant to torture or cause pain (not to be confused with the medieval form of torture known as the rack). It may have come from the Latin word  for punishment, poena, or the Greek word poine, from which we get words like punishment and penal (not to be confused with penile). The idea of pining causing a languishing or a wasting away came into use in the 1300s. To yearn deeply or suffer with longing is now the primary definition.

A couple of hundred years later, in the mid-1500s, someone added the prefix re- to the very pine and formed the word repine. It has come to mean to be fretfully discontented, although I have seen it used to describe a positive experience of pining, or longing in a good way. I would use pine in a negative sense and repine in a positive and less intense sense.

Opinion and opine also go back to the 1300s and 1500s. While the noun opinion also came into use in the 1300s it was not until the mid-1500s that the verb opine came into English. Both words came from French, opinion from the Old French word of the same spelling and meaning, and opine from the Middle French word opiner, that came directly from the Latin word opinari. Opinari means to have an opinion while opine means to express that opinion. We have not come far from the original meaning with this set of words.

Now you know my opinion; don't pine for me....