I generally think of myself as having a fairly good vocabulary, but yesterday at a department meeting Carrie tossed out a term that I hadn’t ever come across before — amanuensis, which she said was a synonym for secretary. We weren’t sure how it was spelled (I had guessed amenuensis, guessing that the amen used at the end of prayers could mean something like ‘the word’ [as in ‘the word of the Lord’], which could tie into a secretarial profession), but Lee was able to look it up and send us the correct spelling via e-mail. I just looked it up on dictionary.com, and here’s what they returned:
amanuensis Aman`uen”sis, n.; pl. Amanuenses. [L., fr. a, ab + manus hand.]
A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. [Latin amanuensis, from the phrase (servus) amanu, (slave) at handwriting :a, ab, by; see ab–1 + manu, ablative of manus, hand; see man-2 in Indo-European Roots.]
I just thought it was interesting, and another two-cent word to toss in every so often. Apparently mom’s been an amanuensis for most of her working life!
Apparently I was pretty off-base about ‘amen’ having anything to do with ‘word’, however — I just looked it up on dictionary.com, here’s the result for that:
amen A*men” (?; 277), interj., adv., & n. [L. amen, Gr. ‘amh`n, Heb. [=a]m[=e]n certainly, truly.]
An expression used at the end of prayers, and meaning, So be it. At the end of a creed, it is a solemn asseveration of belief. When it introduces a declaration, it is equivalent to truly, verily.
I still think my ‘amen/word/word of God’ guess was a good one, though. :)
