WORD EVOLUTION: APPREHENSIVE


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"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood" - 
this quote is credited to Nobel Laureate Marie Curie.
 

What is the connection between the above quote and this article?

The primary meaning of the word, "Apprehensive", during the current times is the following,

"viewing the future with anxiety or alarm : feeling or showing fear or apprehension about the future"


It also has a set of secondary meanings namely discerning, having knowledge/awareness of something, though the word is primarily used to imply the first meaning nowadays.

If that were the case, do you know that this word that originated from the Latin word, "Prehendre", which meant "To Seize" had a totally different meaning at the early onset of this word?

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, “And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive”, this word was used to capture the meaning, "capable of quickly understanding, ability to have deep insight and understanding". 

 

Apprehensive appears to have originated from the word, Apprehension, which then meant, "the act of learning" or "the ability to grasp with the intellect".

 
Over the course of seven hundred years or so, this word's meaning switched from a positive, assuring word to a word with a relatively negative meaning.
 
REFERENCES
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apprehensive
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/apprehensive
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/apprehensive
 
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