One Step Now Education

July 12, 2024

decrepit

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What if I told you this word came to me while listening to a video about this year’s presidential election in America?

Meaning

What is this word’s meaning and how does the word function?

​Years ago, I read Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan. This resource changed how I taught vocabulary. I then heard Margaret McKeown speak at a conference where she mentioned the resource she used for student-friendly definitions. Since then, I have always turned to the Collins Co-build dictionary for my definitions. The Longman dictionary is also an excellent resource, so for the sake of novelty, I’ll turn there today.

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That entry says that something decrepit it is “old and in bad condition.” The Longman will then jump to examples from the Corpus, where I get great sentences like

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“In the windows of the decrepit houses, gas lamps were beginning to be lighted.”
“One by one, the aged tottered in, each one seemingly more decrepit than before.”

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The Corpus is a collection of real-life examples from books, newspapers, magazines, and other print materials. When I am using a word from a book we are reading, I will use the exact sentence where we found the word. Otherwise, these are good examples to use.

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This word as you can see from these example sentences is functioning as an adjective often does, modifying a noun like house. We know that adjectives can be inflected for degree. They may use the suffixes <-er> and <-est> to do this, or they may use the words more and most, as we see in our second sentence.

Structure

What are the elements that make up this word’s structure?

So my hypothesis is:

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de + crepe/ + it

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I’ve seen a suffix <-it> before on words like credit and habit. I’ve also seen a prefix <de-> in words like depart and demoted. I smile to myself when I think of a potential relationship here of this base and the same base for crepey, as in crepey skin. Surely, crepe paper is wrinkly like a decrepit person, eh?

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My smile fades quickly as I realize I’m not getting any younger myself.

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Turning to Etymonline, I see in the entry for decrepit that this word has had a journey through French:

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OF decrepit​
L. decrepitus​
L. de + crepare “to crack or break”

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There is an asterisk before crepitus, which gives me pause. I know an asterisk usually refers to an unattested form, meaning one that hasn’t shown in print. I then go to Lat-Dict to find the four principal parts:

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crepo/crepare/crepui/crepitus

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When we have a Latin verb, we obtain the English base from the second principal part (the infinitive) and/or the fourth principal part (the perfect passive participle usually). I can then remove the Latin infinitive suffix from the second principal part to obtain <crep>. I can also remove the Latin suffix <-us> from the fourth principal part, along with the Latin stem suffix <it> to also obtain <crep>. Sometimes, this process reveals two different forms that are referred to colloquially as “twin bases.”

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I will add a single, final, non-syllabic <e> to this base to arrive at <crepe>. Otherwise, the <p> would double before a vocalic suffix. We do not spell it * decreppit.

Relatives

What are the word’s relatives and history?

To form a matrix, we include members of the word family that share the base <crepe> from the root crepare, “rattle, crack.” We could put that root into the search engine of Etymonline to get a list of entries that refer to that Latin verb. We then will have to look at each entry to see if the word actually belongs to our family. Pete Bowers calls this the Structure & Meaning Test. Does it share the same structure (base)? Does it share a similar meaning to our root?

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The first word on the list is crepitation. This entry says that it is formed on crepitare, “to crackle,” which is a frequentative of crepare. We are good to go to add this word to our matrix. A frequentative is a verb that expresses repeated or intense action. Often, Latin will add an <it> to the infinitive to create a frequentative, as in agitare “put in constant motion” from agere, “set in motion.” This frequentative is where we derive agitated.

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We have frequentatives in English as well. In fact, the word crackle is a frequentative of the verb crack.

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The next entry is increpation. I’m unfamiliar with this word. If I’m going through this process with a student, I’ll say as much. “I’ve not heard of this word. Have you?” I may look into it if I’m interested in adding a new vocabulary word or two to the mix; however, I’m cautious of my student’s bandwidth at the moment. I want to keep my focus on the lesson at hand. This word is a candidate for our matrix.

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The next word is discrepancy. Wow. I never even considered this word being related to decrepit. Sure enough. They share the base and the root.

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The next two entries are crevice and craven. Obviously, we couldn’t include these words in our matrix, as they do not share the base <crepe>. However, might they share a root? If so, then we can include them in an etymological family with decrepit. Sure enough, they do. In the journey through French, the <p> shifted to a <v>. This is not surprising as both [p] and [v] are made with the lips. This happened often with [b] as well in French. Some refer to these phonological changes as “Frenchifying.”

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We also find raven, decrepitude, and cracker in this list. The first word is not related morphologically or etymologically, as it is from an Old English root. The third word is a derogatory term. Both of these entries say “compare to” crepare. This doesn’t mean it is derived from crepare. The word decrepitude belongs in our matrix, but we still double-check the entry just to see.

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And crepes? Sorry, everyone. This word, whether referring to party streamers or thin pancakes is completely unrelated.

Graphemes

What can the pronunciation of the word teach us about its graphemes and phonology?

I’ve seen so many students (and instructors) who refer to affixes by pronouncing them. In this case <de> as [di:]. However, our word decrepit shows why this isn’t a great idea. The <de-> in this word is pronounced with an unstressed vowel, a schwa. We always spell out the elements that make up a word’s structure.

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de.c.r.e.p.(replace the e with). it

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Notice how affixes get one beat when “spelling it out.” Spelling it out gets students more in tune with structure. It also is less threatening than “sound-it-out” because there’s no question of whether the <e> is pronounced as [ɛ], [i:] or [ə]. We just say the grapheme.

Next Steps

Where do I go next?

What other words have the suffix <-it>? Are they all adjectives like decrepit? What is the purpose of the suffix?

What are other frequentatives in English? Hint: they often end with <-le> or <-er>.

What are other words that had a /b/ or /p/ in Latin that were “Frenchified” into a /v/?

Well, now that I have finished with another investigation, I shall rest my weary bones. I hope I haven’t put you to rest, however. I hope this investigation has inspired you to investigate words with your students over this next week.

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Stay curious,

Brad

One Step Now Education

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