Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Enervate
Many people find a summer hot spell enervating. The word enervate means to weaken or drain of energy. It is the opposite of “invigorate,” which means to strengthen or energize. The word invigorate is from the Latin root “vigor,” which means “force” or “energy,” as found in the words vigorous and reinvigorate. “Enervate” is from Latin and means “to remove the sinews of” which would indeed be weakening, since sinews are the part of a structure or system that bind something together. In a body, sinews are the tough fibrous cords that bind muscle to bone and bone to bone, also known as tendons.
The word enervate is estimated to be misused by more than half of college graduates. It appears on the list of the top 50 most misused English words, along with affect/effect, insure/assure, accept/except, and compliment/complement. It may be that the “en” in enervate echoes the word “energy,” but there is no relation between the two word’s roots.
During a CNN interview, Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Ben Affleck said, in referring to the 2004 Democratic convention, “On the whole, I believe it’s been a very successful and enervating and exciting convention.” It may be that he found the excitement draining, but I suspect that what he meant was energizing. Affleck might have benefited from Merriam-Webster‘s useful limerick to remember the definition of enervate: “There once was a term that could vex, bewilder, and really perplex; This word, enervated, Is close to deflated; Once you get it, it’s not so complex.”
