Word Power: President

Today’s lesson in Word Power is to understand the etymology and history behind the word president.

President (Noun): [pres-i-dent]

1. One appointed or elected to preside over an organized body of people, such as an assembly or meeting.
2. The chief executive of a republic
3. The chief executive of the United States, serving as both chief of state and chief political executive.  (American Heritage Dictionary)

Etymology

Last Tuesday, 51% of the U.S. population celebrated Barack Obama’s massive inauguration as the 44th U.S. president.  Throughout the United States short history as a sovereign state, the president’s role has evolved from simply a position in Congress (during the American Revolution) to the symbol that is known as “leader of the free world”.  With all the buzz flying around about the new U.S. president, it only seemed appropriate to discuss the etymology of the word president.  In order to understand the word president, we must trace the word back to the Latin language, where the Romans used the word praesidens to mean president.

Praesidens, -entis m

Praesidens in the Latin language means president or ruler.  The accusative form of praesidens, is praesidentem, which is the direct root from which we get the word president today.  The accusative form simply means that the noun is the direct object of the subject, for example a Latin sentence could look something like this:

Populus praesidentem audio.

The people listen to the president.

So now that we know that praesidens is the Latin word that gave us the word president, let’s take a closer look and see how the Romans even developed such a word.

Prae

In the Latin language prae serves as a preposition that means “in front of, before, in advance of”.  During Roman times, this preposition became a prefix for many words, such as praecedo (to go before, to lead the way) and praeoccupatio (a seizing beforehand, preoccupation).  Over the course that is the history of language, prae has changed to the more recognizable form pre.  We see this word in almost every word that is to mean something about before or in advance, such as prefix and premonition.

Sedeo, sedere, sedi, sessum

Sedeo is a Latin verb that means “to sit” or “to occupy an official seat”.  This word was commonly used in junction with prepositions and prefixes in the Latin language to take on new meanings, in such words as resideo (to sit back, to remain) and obsideo (to remain, to blockade).  Again we see evidence of the word sedeo in our language today in such words as resident and insidious (from insideo).

Praesideo, praesedere, praesedi, –

Praesideo is a Latin verb that means “to guard, watch, protect, defend”.  The word preside is a direct derrivative of this Latin word, just as the word president is.

Synopsis

Simply put the Romans were all about making their language as easy as possible.  Instead of creating new distinct words to take on new meanings, they would just take pieces of words and attach them to each other in order to get their desired effect.  We can now see that the word president is a combination of the two Latin words, prae and sedeo.  When combined, these words form the verb (praesideo) and eventual noun (praesidens) that gave rise to the word (president) which we use today.  All in all, the literal translation of president is “somebody that sits in front of”.  I can see how this word has evolved to take on the meaning of leader for a leader would be at the front of his/her people.  Even in politics, the president is considered to be the “front man” of government.

Extra Credit

The term president has been used in the United States before there was even the position as we know it today.  During the Revolutionary period and shortly thereafter, any individual who presided over Congress was considered to be the “President of the United States”.  However, in 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the distinct executive office of President of the United States was created.  In order to prevent any type of tyrant from ruling the United States, which was common elsewhere in the world, the judicial and legislative branch were created to keep the President in check.  It wasn’t until the 20th century, especially following WWII, that the President of the U.S. became known as “leader of the Free World”.

Tune into Word Power next Thursday for the breakdown of the word Prophecy.

Image Used in this Post

Mt. Rushmore image courtesy of Flickr user chascar published under the CC license.