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-.