Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

How did 'in-' + 'putare' compound to mean 'to attribute, credit to'?

+0
−1

I quote Etymonline on impute (v.):

early 15c., from Old French imputer, emputer (14c.)
and directly from Latin imputare "to reckon, make account of, charge, ascribe,"
from assimilated form of in- "in, into" (from PIE root *en "in")(2)) +
putare "to trim, prune; reckon, clear up, settle (an account)," from PIE *puto- "cut, struck," suffixed form of root *pau- (2) "to cut, strike, stamp" (see pave).

  1. Please see the title overhead, which is my first question. How does putare's semantic field appertain to the meaning of "to attribute, credit to"?

  2. To wit, how did the prefix in- transmogrify "trim, prune; reckon, clear up" into "attribute, credit to'?

  3. What exactly does the prefix 'in-' in imputare mean?

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

1 comment thread

x-post https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitivelinguistics/comments/o1cezs/how_did_in_putare_compound_to_me... (1 comment)

1 answer

+1
−0

Let's digress by looking at how the meaning of "computer" developed during the 20th century. A "computer" used to be a person, somebody doing computations; devices eventually took over the job. This unlocked an explosion in the complexity of business applications that required a lot of highly reliably computing power, from, say, payroll accounting, to sophisticated modelling of all kinds of processes.

You could paraphrase compute, the verb, in its various old and new flavors as "count together" or "evaluate together".

Now, let's tackle your sub-questions backwards.

Re 3: The prefix means "into".

Re 2: There's a semantic overlap, which is "reckon" (or "think"). No shift of meaning appears strictly necessary, although derivation always involves at least a little bit of semantic specialization.

Re 1: Evaluating something (or somebody) may be as simple as adding together (and ticking off) some numbers, or it may involve much more complex modelling (of that person). It's a mental process either way. When such an evaluation is finished, somebody may impute its conclusions to the person who was the subject of the evaluation: treat the conclusions as a fact firmly sticking on that person.

(This way of using our brains is so boringly common among humans, that the mere mention of anybody "imputing" anything typically implies the the conclusions weren't necessarily accurate or universally shared, and that somebody else may eventually dispute them, or try to come up with a different account.)

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

Sign up to answer this question »