{"id":6442,"date":"2024-02-02T10:44:19","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T10:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6442"},"modified":"2024-02-02T10:45:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T10:45:56","slug":"word-of-the-day-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/02\/02\/word-of-the-day-smart\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is smart<\/em>, and it may surprise you. Smart<\/em> can be an adjective, a noun, or a verb. On the www.dictionary.com<\/a> website, it has over 20 different definitions, though some are pretty to close to each other. As a verb, it basically means to cause a sharp pain or to feel a sharp pain. As an adjective, it can mean to be quick, or to be intelligent, or to be witty, or to be shrewd, or to be elegant (particularly in appearance), or to be brisk, or to be active, or to be severe, or to be sharp (as in a pain), or to be equipped with microprocessors, or to be easily adaptable to the environment, or even to be large. As a noun, it refers to a sharp physical pain, to mental anguish, or to the gift of intelligence. That\u2019s a lot possibilities for one simple word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The verb form of smart<\/em> comes from the \u201cMiddle English smerten<\/em>, \u2018to cause pain, to suffer pain,\u2019 from Old English smeortan<\/em> \u2018be painful,\u2019 in reference to wounds, from Proto-Germanic *smarta<\/em>– (source also of Middle Dutch smerten<\/em>, Dutch smarten<\/em>, Old High German smerzan<\/em>, German schmerzen<\/em> \u2018to pain,\u2019 originally “\u2019to bite\u2019). The Germanic word is perhaps cognate with Latin mord\u0113re<\/em> \u2018to bite, bite into,\u2019 figuratively \u2018to pain, cause hurt,\u2019 and both might be from an extended form of PIE root *mer-<\/a> \u2018to rub away, harm\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/smart#etymonline_v_24152<\/a>). Clearly the oldest meaning of the word has to do with causing or feeling pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adjective form also goes back to the Old English: \u201cMiddle English smert<\/em>, from late Old English smeart<\/em>, in reference to hits, blows, etc., \u2018stinging; causing a sharp pain,\u2019 related to smeortan<\/em> \u2018be painful\u2019 (see smart<\/a> (v.)). The adjective is not represented in the cognate languages\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/smart#etymonline_v_24152<\/a>). It\u2019s interesting that the adjective form doesn\u2019t exist in Dutch or German.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can see the gradual broadening of the meaning in this entry: \u201cOf speech or words, \u2018harsh, injurious, unpleasant,\u2019 c. 1300; thus \u2018pert, impudent; on the impertinent side of witty\u2019 (by 1630s). In reference to persons, \u2018quick, active, intelligent, clever,\u2019 1620s, perhaps from the notion of \u2018cutting\u2019 wit, words, etc., or else \u2018keen in bargaining.\u2019\u201d So the meaning changes from \u201cpainful,\u201d as in a wound, to \u201cpainful,\u201d as in words, to \u201cimpudent,\u201d to \u201cclever.\u201d One thing we should keep in mind about the dates in these etymologies is that we can document when the words, with particular meanings, appeared in print. The words with those meanings likely appeared in the spoken language well before they appeared in print but we have no way of knowing precisely when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an adjective, etymonline also adds \u201cFrom 1718 in cant as \u2018fashionably elegant;\u2019 by 1798 as \u2018trim in attire,\u2019\u201d and \u201cthe sense of \u2018behaving as though guided by intelligence\u2019 is attested by 1972 (smart bomb<\/strong>, also the computing smart terminal).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The noun form of the word also goes back at least to Middle English: \u201clate 12c., smerte<\/em>, \u2018sharp physical pain,\u2019 from smart<\/a> (adj.). Cognate with Middle Dutch smerte<\/em>, Dutch smart<\/em>, Old High German smerzo<\/em>, German Schmerz<\/em> \u2018pain.\u2019 Of mental pain or suffering from c. 1300. In old cant, \u2018a dandy,\u2019 1712. Smarts<\/strong> \u2018good sense, intelligence,\u2019 is recorded by 1968.\u201d By the way, cant<\/em>, while now it refers to hypocritical or sanctimonious speech, originally referred to the whining of beggars but broadened to referring to the peculiar speech or slang of people in the underworld, particularly in London. A variety of writers, including Robert Greene and Thomas Middleton, took some delight in revealing the thieves\u2019 cant of Elizabethan England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1907, Dmitri Mendeleev died in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was born in 1834 in a village in Siberia. He did not come from a wealthy or upper-class background, though his father was a teacher and school principal and his mother from a family of merchants. After the death of his father, Mendeleev\u2019s mother moved the family first to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg. Mendeleev was rejected by Moscow University but then accepted at a school in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendeleev is best known as a chemist who created the Periodic Table. In the 1860s, he was teaching chemistry and even wrote what became the standard chemistry textbook. At that time, there were 56 recognized elements. Other chemists had been working on a way to categorize these elements, partly according to atomic weight and partly by other characteristics. But Mendeleev came up with the first table that not only categorized the known elements but also predicted elements that had yet to be discovered. For his work on the Periodic Table, Mendeleev almost won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1906\u2014he fell one vote shy. Apparently, the work of one of the people on the committee had been critiqued by Mendeleev, and the grudge kept the Russian from receiving the prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendeleev did more than just create the Periodic Table. For instance, he studied the origin of petroleum, and he concluded that it has an abiotic origin. The traditional and widely accepted story of the origin of petroleum is that it comes from the decayed material of animals, large and miniscule, that through the process of decay turns into gas\u2014hence the term fossil fuels. Mendeleev argued that oil is produced by natural but inorganic processes that take place far inside the earth. The discovery of methane on other planets seems to support his theory. And the argument has resurfaced in the media recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s telling when a scientist\u2019s work leads to accurate predictions. It is a way of gauging the quality of such work. Dmitri Mendeleev must have been really smart to accomplish all he accomplished, though I think a lot of us found having to memorize the Periodic Table to be the other kind of smart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today is Dmitri Mendeleev\u2019s Periodic Table of the Elements, updated (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Periodic_table<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day is smart, and it may surprise you. Smart can be an adjective, a noun, or a verb. On the www.dictionary.com website, it has over 20 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,284,532,531],"class_list":["post-6442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-periodic-table","tag-smart","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6444,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442\/revisions\/6444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}