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In How to Winter, Dr. Kari Leibowitz's exploration into how the winter months affect our psychology, she explains that she has a "reticence to ride my bike instead of my car." The word reticence is one I'm quite familiar with, but I'm not familiar with its structure. Could it be related to reticular? Let's find out.
Explore why we put the elements in words in angle brackets. We'll look at how nouns can be confusing when looking at lists of affixes and how adjectives can function as subject complements. We might have an example of medial vowel weakening, or stem vowel shift. We will touch briefly on diminutives before heading off to see another example of palatalization.
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Meaning
What is this word's meaning and how does the word function?
I know that when you are reticent, you are reluctant to do something. In fact, those two words match so closely in spelling, I wonder about a relationship between those words as well.
The Collins dictionary entry for reticence wasn't helpful. "The quality or state of being reticent." It was a classic case of defining a word with itself. That phrase, "the quality or state of" is one I often see on lists of suffixes my students receive from school. There are so many suffixes that supposedly have that "definition," like <-ion>. That phrase means nothing to my students. With suffixes like these, it is more helpful that my students know they derive nouns. Semantically, nouns are defined as "people, places, things, and ideas." Those ideas are "qualities or states" and are abstract. I've even had a student say to me, "A state? Like Ohio?"
So let's look at the entry for reticent instead. Someone who is reticent "does not tell people about things." For synonyms, the entry lists silence, reserve, restraint, and quietness.
Adjectives may function as subject complements. A subject complement will follow a linking verb to tell us more about the subject of the sentence.
He seems sad.
We will be late.
Our new car is red with a tan interior.
Meryl feels reticent about her awards.
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Structure
What are the elements that make up this word's structure?
The fact that we have reticent and reticence tells me that we can peel off both the <-ent> and <-ence> for our hypothesis:
retic + ence
Now I'm wondering if that is a prefix
re + tic + ence
I could put a replaceable
(We use a
When I go to the entry for reticent in Etymonline, I notice that this word comes to us in 1822. In the 1500-year history of English, that's fairly recent. The entry traces it to the Latin present participle of reticere, "keep silent." The next "from" identifies a prefix intensive prefix lends a sense of "thoroughly" or "completely" to its base. The entry also says the second element is from the Latin verb tacere, "be silent." So "completely or thoroughly silent."
The entry tells us to then look at tacit. When I click on that link to get more of the story, I obtain information about the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root which can be helpful when considering etymological relatives. Since PIE roots are reconstructed and unattested in written form, we cannot use them as orthographic evidence. However, we can look at them to understand the semantic connections across words from different daughter languages.
re + tic + ence
But how did the tacere become reticent?
In Latin, as words were compounded or affixed, the stress would shift. The same phenomenon happens in English, as with the vowel in the base of child and children. Occasionally, this shift in pronunciation also appeared in the orthography. Some label this as stem vowel shift or medial vowel weakening.
Another example of this stem vowel shift, or medial vowel weakening, is the perfect which is from the Latin verb facere, "do; make." In a form without the prefix, facile, the base retains the same vowel as the root. When prefixed, as in confection, we see the medial vowel "weaken," or reduce to
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Relatives
What are the word's relatives and history?
How can we find relatives for this word? One option is to put the root into the search engine of Etymonline. When I type tacere in Etymonline, I get the following entries:
reticent
reticence
tacet
tacit
tace
The words tacet and tacit are from the fourth principal part of tacere. The last word is unfamiliar to me, but it is an imperative form of tacere. Therefore, all of these words are related. When using this method to find relatives, always verify each entry traces back to the same root.
Since these last three words do not share the same spelling of the base, they are etymological relatives and would not go in a matrix with reticent and reticence.
Initially, I had a question about a relationship to the word reticular, "network." A look in Etymonline tells me this word is a "double diminutive" of the Latin rete, "net." Diminutives are words that indicate a smaller version. The suffix <-ule> can often be diminutive, as it is in globule or capsule. Something that is reticular is a "little net." A double diminutive might be like saying teeny-tiny instead of just tiny. The word reticular is unrelated to reticence, as the word sum is rete + ic + ule + ar, with
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Graphemes
What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about the relationship of its graphemes and its phonology?
One of the teaching practices I use is to pronounce the elements when discussing them. The prefix is Angle brackets are there to remind us to spell out what's inside them. This word is a perfect example of why this is not the prefix /ri:/. It is not pronounced that way in this word.
In Classical Latin, the grapheme palatalized to /s/. In English, a cement), (city), or cycle) will often palatalize.
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Next Steps
What concepts from this investigation can we explore next to learn more about the English orthographic system?
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Learning that a word is an adjective is one thing. Learning how adjectives function is another. Try a study on subject complements. Are they always adjectives? |
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What are some examples of intensive prefixes? (And while you're at it; ditch the pre-made lists and develop lists with your students). (Big Idea #4) |
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Bases that have gone through medial vowel weakening can be in the same etymological circle as bases directly from the root; however, they cannot be in a matrix together. For more examples, look at the relatives of the verb facere, specere, "see," and sedere, "sit." |
In this investigation, I got to explore nouns and adjectives. I saw yet another example of medial vowel weakening, and was led down a rabbit hole to discover a "double diminutive." Who would have guessed that a word about keeping silent would tell us so much?
Stay curious,
Brad
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Into Practice: Adaptation for Younger Students
This week and last we worked with the suffix pair, <-ent> and <-ence>. They can be paired with the suffixes <-ant> and <-ance>. What about students who aren't familiar with iridescent or reticence?
You could try investigating the word difference instead. Although the full analysis of difference is dif + fer + ence, it is not necessary to do a full analysis as long as you correctly identify the elements. When you analyze it as differ + ence, then it becomes workable for those in younger grades or early in their scientific word study.
You could look at
Our math work is different this week.
How does it differ?
Can you explain the difference?
You might even talk about how the syllable spelled with
How far could you take this investigation?
P.S. Things like diminutives and medial vowel weakening are nice to know, but to learn about the Big Ideas of English Spelling, you can purchase the book I wrote with Dr. Jen Petrich, Investigating English Spelling: An Interactive Guide to Understanding How English Spelling Works.
P.P.S. Another diminutive suffix to know is <-ette> from French. We can see that a kitchenette in a hotel room is just a "little kitchen," and a cigarette is a "little cigar."
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