A Word A Day — dissimulate

with Anu Garg

“They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs, they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them!” boasts Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s 1872 classic, “Through the Looking Glass”.

If verbs are in fact as conceited as Humpty-Dumpty claims them to be, perhaps they can be forgiven for their hoity-toity ways — after all, they are the ones that bring a sentence to life. How many of this week’s five verbs can you manage?

dissimulate

(di-SIM-yuh-layt)

verb tr., intr.: To disguise one’s intentions, thoughts, motives, etc. by pretense.

From Latin dis- (apart, away) + simulare (to simulate), from similis (like). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sem- (one) that is also the source of simultaneous, assemble, simple, Sanskrit sandhi (union), Russian samovar (a metal urn), and Greek hamadryad (a wood nymph).

“Charles Clarke added: ‘We need to talk straight to people, engaging the concerns and questions that they have, rather than appearing to evade and dissimulate.’”
Andrew Grice; Clarke: Brown Succession Is Not A Done Deal; The Independent (London, UK); Mar 29, 2007.

O, what a world of vile ill-favoured faults, / Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year! -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)