{"id":337,"date":"2002-02-07T09:11:42","date_gmt":"2002-02-07T17:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/02\/07\/word-of-the-day-amanuensis\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T14:37:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T22:37:34","slug":"word-of-the-day-amanuensis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/02\/07\/word-of-the-day-amanuensis\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day: amanuensis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16566,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.dictionary.com\\\/cgi-bin\\\/dict.pl?term=amanuensis&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.dictionary.com\\\/cgi-bin\\\/dict.pl?term=amanuensis&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16567,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.dictionary.com\\\/cgi-bin\\\/dict.pl?term=amen&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.dictionary.com\\\/cgi-bin\\\/dict.pl?term=amen&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>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&#8217;t ever come across before &#8212; <em>amanuensis<\/em>, which she said was a synonym for secretary. We weren&#8217;t sure how it was spelled (I had guessed <em>am<strong>e<\/strong>nuensis<\/em>, guessing that the <em>amen<\/em> used at the end of prayers could mean something like &#8216;the word&#8217; [as in &#8216;the word of the Lord&#8217;], 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/cgi-bin\/dict.pl?term=amanuensis\" title=\"Dictionary.com: amanuensis\">dictionary.com<\/a>, and here&#8217;s what they returned:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  <strong>amanuensis<\/strong> A<em>man`u<\/em>en&#8221;sis, n.; pl. Amanuenses. [L., fr. a, ab + manus hand.]<\/p>\n<p>  A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. [Latin amanuensis, from the phrase (servus) amanu, <em>(slave) at handwriting<\/em>  :a, ab, <em>by<\/em>; see <strong>ab<\/strong>&#8211;<sup>1<\/sup> + manu, ablative of manus, <em>hand<\/em>; see man-<sup>2<\/sup> in Indo-European Roots.]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I just thought it was interesting, and another two-cent word to toss in every so often. Apparently mom&#8217;s been an amanuensis for most of her working life!<\/p>\n<p>Apparently I was pretty off-base about &#8216;amen&#8217; having anything to do with &#8216;word&#8217;, however &#8212; I just looked it up on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/cgi-bin\/dict.pl?term=amen\" title=\"Dictionary.com: amen\">dictionary.com<\/a>, here&#8217;s the result for that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  <strong>amen<\/strong> A*men&#8221; (?; 277), interj., adv., &amp; n. [L. amen, Gr. &#8216;amh`n, Heb. [=a]m[=e]n certainly, truly.]<\/p>\n<p>  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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I still think my &#8216;amen\/word\/word of God&#8217; guess was a good one, though. :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;t ever come across before &#8212; _amanuensis_, which she said was a synonym for secretary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}