I’m still reeling a bit over my realization about the word realize.
When you finalize something, you make it final. It wasn’t final to you before, that is to say, it wasn’t what you understood to be complete.
When you realize something, you make it real. It wasn’t real before, that is to say, it wasn’t part of what you understood about reality.
I just realized.
It’s fun, to me, to discover new nuances about familiar old words and gain a deeper understanding about their meaning.
Sometimes the discovery is a correction, as the time I referred to a colleague as my “erstwhile” co-worker, having always understood it as a synonym for “esteemed,” only to learn the word may indeed refer to an esteemed colleague but more accurately refers to a former colleague.
And sometimes, as this time, it simply tells where the word came from. I always knew what realize means, but I hadn’t noticed its kinship to finalize, with the “ize” performing essentially the same function in both cases.
Your reaction may be, “Yeah, so?” What can I say? I’m a word nerd. Are you just now realizing that?
Sounds like you might be interested in Latin. So many words (in the Romance languages, but also in English) have their roots in Latin. The etymology website etymonline is also very cool for researching word origins.
Sincerely,
A fellow word nerd 🙂