|
Sometimes you hear a word quite a bit in everyday speech. It comes up over and over in different rooms with different crowds. I heard blatant for probably the fourth time in a short period of time on a podcast. I knew someone was saying somewhere, "Please investigate!"
How much do you know about this word? Get ready to find out more about connotation and denotationalongside a syntactic test for adjectives. We'll sort out the difference between bound and free bases while we determine when to add a single, final, non-syllabic (SFN) to a base. Several times we'll revisit a pair of homophonic suffixes that can give students spelling issues. Hopefully you'll learn a "rule of thumb" you can pass along.
|
Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
When you are being blatant, you are being obvious, and not usually in a good way. That part, "not in a good way," is a connotation. Sometimes people might want you to be blatant but in an honest way. They might use a word like transparent or forthcoming. These words have more positive connotations. Connotations are particular to a culture in the ideas or feelings, some say "shades of meaning," it invokes.
On the other hand, a dictionary, like Collins, will provide the definition, or denotation, of a word. In the entry for blatant, it states that this word "describes something bad done in an obvious or open way."
The word is an adjective. Adjectives can be inflected for degree by adding the suffixes <-er> or <-est>. In English we can also show degree by adding more or most to longer words: It was the most blatant display of misogyny I'd ever seen.
Adjectives modify nouns. Most of the time they appear before the noun ("blatant display"). However, they can also come after a linking verb: The misogyny in his speech was blatant.
|
Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
One of the suffixes is a clue that this word can function as an adjective:
blat + ant
The suffix <-ant> appears on other adjectives like important and fragrant.
If I consider that the single, final, non-syllabic . Otherwise, we would be forced to double the
blate/ + ant
Let's check out our evidence for that bound base. I know it is bound because it must have an affix to have meaning in English. Other bases are free and do not need affixes, like rain or house.
When I look up evidence in the Etymonline entry for blatant, I see this word comes directly from a book that was published in 1596. This was the first century of the period linguists consider Modern English. Some said this word may have been inspired by the Latin blatire, "to babble."
If I remove the infinitive ending, <-ire>, then I'm left with
|
Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
Given that our word may have been coined from this book, there aren't many relatives that would share an etymological matrix. We could go with the noun form blatancy. We have the adverb blatantly.
|
Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
I've had students who might spell this word *blatan, leaving off the cat.
And then I'll have students who may spell it *blatent. Unfortunately, the related suffixes <-ant> and <-ent> are homophonic. In Latin, you could rely on the infinitive form to guide you. If the infinitive ended in <-are>, then <-ant> and <-ance> were your suffixes. If the infinitive ended in <-ere> or <-ire>, then <-ent> and <-ence> were your suffixes. But then Latin became French, and French began using <-ant> and <-ance> in their own way. It only grew more twisted with time. For now, the infinitive ending is still a "rule of thumb" I share with students with caution.
|
Next Steps
What concepts from this investigation can we explore next to learn more about the English orthographic system?
|
You can use synonyms and have students place them on a semantic gradient from least positive to most positive. This might spark more discussion about connotations. |
|
You may want to do a deep dive into the suffixes <-ant>, <-ent>, <-ance>, and <-ence>. What word classes do they create? Are there any patterns you see? (Big Idea #4) |
|
In the early Modern English period when blatant was first coined, Shakespeare was said to have invented many words that have become part of the English lexicon. You may have students who enjoy finding those. Start here. (Big Idea #6) |
I never imagined the history of this word would wind up coming from a poem published in 1596. I had an inkling it might be related to blab or blather (a frequentative of blab). However, you can never be too sure. As with many word investigations we've done together, we know what you discover about a word isn't always so blatantly obvious.
Stay curious,
Brad
Sign up for the newsletter!
Join the community!
PS. We have some slide shows on the suffixes <-ant>, <-ance>, <-ent>, and <-ence> inside our Creating English Orthographers (CEO) Community. Come to think of it, we have videos on connotation and an activity on semantic gradients too along with the complete 4 year archive of these word investigations. Subscribe here.
PPS. Have you ever heard of a hapax legomena? These are words used only once in an entire body of work. Shakespeare had around 6500 across all of his writing, including sanctuarize from Hamlet and honorificabilitudinitatibus from Love's Labor's Lost.
|
|
|
|
