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elect

ih-LEKT · verb

LatinEnglish

Origin

Elect was borrowed from Latin ēlēctus, the past participle of ēligō, meaning "to pick out, choose," itself built from ē- ("out") plus legō ("to pick out, gather, collect").

Journey

The facts here don't trace a change in meaning over time — elect has carried the sense of choosing or picking out since it entered English from Latin.

Related words

It's cognate with eclectic, though that word arrived through Ancient Greek rather than Latin, which is why it uses the Greek prefix ἐκ (ek) instead of the Latin e-.

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From Latin

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