More than meets the eye...

Growing up I used to love watching Transformers on TV, but in my youthful ignorance I never realised that many of the characters had names which were based on Latin. With the recent release of the Transformers movie (which I haven't yet seen, and probably won't) I thought it would be appropriate to share just a few of them.

Optimus Prime was of course the leader of the good guys; his name means 'the best and the first' (an optimist always assumes the best; primary school is your first school). His name echoes that of the god Jupiter who had the title optimus maximus- 'the best and the greatest'.

Rodimus Prime became leader when Optimus died. He started off as 'Hot Rod', and I assume that the creators of Transformers thought 'Rodimus' would be a good way of making his name sound a bit more serious. They probably didn't know that rodimus also means 'we gnaw/peck' in Latin.

Ultra Magnus to tell the truth I have no memory of this character, but his name means 'beyond great', so I thought I'd include him too.

Lost and Found

The common Latin verbs ‘to lose’ and ‘to find’ can both be a bit tricky to remember as they are compound verbs, whose meanings have little to do with their roots.

The verb to lose is amitto, amittere, amisi, amissus, which comes from the basic verb mitto, meaning ‘to send’. I guess the idea is that if you’ve sent something away (a in Latin means ‘from’ or ‘away’), then you’ve lost it.

The verb to find is invenio, invenire, inveni, inventus, which comes from the basic verb venio, meaning ‘to come’. The idea here is if you come onto or across something, then you find it (compare the English word, ‘invent’).

In fact these two basic verbs have many compounds, some of whose meanings are obvious, others less so. Here’s just a short list:

admitto: to let in, admit, receive; grant, permit, let go
amitto: to lose, send away, dismiss, part with
committo: to bring together, unite; bring about; commit
demitto: to drop, let fall; sink; send/cast/go/flow/float/slope down
dimitto: to send away; dismiss (soldiers); dissolve (assembly)
emitto: to hurl; let go; send out; cast; discharge; expel; publish
immitto: to send in/to/into/against; insert; hurl/throw in; let go/in
intermitto: to interrupt; omit; stop; leave a gap
omitto: to lay aside; omit; let go; disregard
permitto: to let through; permit, allow; entrust
praemitto: to send ahead or forward
praetermitto: to let pass; pass over; omit; overlook
promitto: to promise
remitto: to send back, remit; throw back, relax, diminish
submitto: to allow to grow long; put forth, raise; submit
transmitto: to send across; go across; transmit

advenio: to come to, arrive, reach
circumvenio: to encircle, surround
convenio: to be appropriate to; come together; prosecute
devenio: to come to, arrive/turn up (at); reach
evenio: to come out/about/forth; happen; turn out
invenio: to come upon; discover, find; invent, contrive
intervenio: to come between, intervene; occur, crop up
obvenio: to meet
pervenio: to come to; reach; arrive
praevenio: to arrive/occur first; precede; surpass
provenio: to come forth; come into being; prosper
revenio: to come back, return
transvenio: to come from another place or person
subvenio: to come to help, assist; rescue
supervenio: to come up, arrive

[Definitions care of Whitaker's Words]