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Words you might be tempted to emend

This week’s words
evert
villein
rosery
mordent
decedent


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PRONUNCIATION:

(di-SEE-duhnt)

MEANING:

noun: A person who has died.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin decedens (departing), from decedere (to depart, to die), from de- (away) + cedere (to go, yield). Earliest documented use: 1599.

NOTES:

Decedent is used chiefly in legal contexts, especially in matters of wills and estates. In the case quoted below, Charlotte Stafford provided $100,000 in trust to ensure a decadent lifestyle for her cat, Kissie Meouw Stafford, and deliberately excluded her three nephews from her will. They challenged the will and lost. The cat got the cream; the nephews got lawyers.

Decadent ultimately comes from Latin decadere (to fall away), built on cadere (to fall). Decedent comes from Latin decedere (to depart, to die), built on cedere (to go). The words share a prefix, but their roots take different paths.

USAGE:

“By all accounts, decedent was a very intelligent, private, and strong-willed woman who ‘ran her life the way she wanted to run it.’”
Matter of Stafford; New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department; Nov 27, 2013.

See more usage examples of decedent in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: