Chapter 4

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There is a Latin word that has ultimately ended up as part of absolutely loads of Modern English words, and it's this:

facere - 'to make' or 'to do'

You might look at this word and think 'Well I've never seen that word in any Modern English words!' - but it is in fact in lots of them - in a very different form.

Let's look at the word verify. Verify is from the Old French verifier, which is in turn from the Latin verificare, which is in turn a combination of the Latin verus meaning 'true' (and is related to the Modern English veracity meaning 'truth' or 'truthfulness') and ficare, the combining form of facere, meaning 'to make' or 'to do'. So verus + facere means 'to make something true', which carries over to its Modern English sense of 'to determine whether something is true'.

So over the centuries, and as words passed around the continent, verificare eventually became verify. -facere got shortened to just -fy.

But this ending -fy (or -ify as most people intuitively know it (this is like the -logy / -ology distinction in chapter 3)) appears in lots of words: magnify, classify, solidify, intensify, commodify, and so many more. In every case it's from the Latin facere.

The suffix appears so much in Modern English that most people know the -fy or -ify ending to mean some kind of process - to 'something-ify' a thing is to make that thing into a something. And people will often make up new words using -fy and -ify to describe processes that may not have other names yet - for example, most people would understand that to 'pizza-ify' something would be to 'make something into a pizza' or to 'make something like a pizza'.

Other words derived from facere

factor and factory

these two words are thought of as having quite different meanings in Modern English - factor being one of the reasons why something happens (or in maths, a number by which another number is divisible), and factory being an industrial building that produces things for sale - but in a more general sense, the meanings are quite similar - a factor is a thing that makes something happen, and a factory is a place where things are made; both words come from the Latin factor, the agent noun of facere, meaning 'someone who makes something' (also, in a sense, this means that someone who works in a factory could be called a factor); also, manufacture is from facere - manu from Latin manus meaning 'hand' - to manufacture something is to make something by hand

Anything that ends in -ficent or -ficient

words like maleficent or efficient; -ficent / -ficient is also derived from -ficare and thus facere

Anything that ends in -ficial

words like superficial; same as -ficent and -ficient

As you can see, tons of words are derived from facere. It's useful to know words like this, as it allows you to more easily guess the etymologies of words you've not looked up the etymology of.

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