Today I’ll be discussing the relative importance of the Latin word root lat, which means to ‘carry.’
The relationship that you develop with another person is how you ‘carry’ back and forth your interactions with him or her. Is it one of love? One of dislike? Or a mixture of both?
Speaking of relationships, you have learned in biology class that your relatives are those who are genetically ‘carried’ back to you. In turn, the relative importance of something is how strongly its influence is ‘carried’ back. When you hear your relatives relating stories to you, they are ‘carrying’ them back for your hopeful enjoyment.
When you collate papers, you ‘carry’ them together for purposes of organization. For instance, you might have to organize a recent translation, or the ‘carrying’ across of words from one language into another, that you have recently completed.
You might be elated, or ‘carried’ out of your normal emotional state to one of jubilation, by doing a great job on a project. Such a superlative job would have ‘carried’ that work over and above normal, everyday efforts.
Just what do legislators do? Yep, you guessed it, they ‘carry’ laws into our society.
A lesser known word that contains the root word lat is ablation, which refers to the ‘carrying’ away of something. Ablation can either be the slow erosion or ‘carrying’ away of parts of a glacier, or it can refer to a surgical procedure in which undesirable parts of the body are ‘carried’ away by cutting them out.
So as not to make you late for your latte, I shall relate no more about lat, lest this turn out to be as long as the commentary on Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, ‘carrying’ you too far away from present concerns!
- relative: one ‘carried’ back to you
- relate: ‘carry’ back
- collate: ‘carry’ together
- legislate: ‘carry’ laws to creation
- translate: ‘carry’ across from one language to another
- elated: ‘carried’ out of a normal emotional state
- superlative: ‘carried’ over and above