Comments on How did "put under" shift to signify "cause to take the place of", then "enough"?
Post
How did "put under" shift to signify "cause to take the place of", then "enough"?
+0
−1
-
How did "put under" shift to signify "cause to take the place of"?
-
Then how did "cause to take the place of" shift to signify "enough"?
sufficient [14]
_Sufficient _originated as the present participle of Latin sufficere ‘be enough’ (source also of English suffice [14]). This was a compound verb formed from the prefix sub- ‘under’ and facere ‘do, make’ (source of English fact, factory, etc). It originally meant literally ‘put under’, and the notion of ‘enough’ evolved via ‘cause to take the place of’.
Word Origins (2005 2e) by John Ayto. p 487 Right column.
1 comment thread