Post by t-bob on Mar 27, 2019 10:27:35 GMT -5
Impedimenta
plural noun
1. baggage or other things that retard one's progress, as supplies carried by an army: the impedimenta of the weekend skier.
Quotes
Games impedimenta--hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out--lay all over the floor ... -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 Every man was piled up with impedimenta--broken, torn, soiled and cobbled impedimenta. -- Arnold Bennett, Over There, 1915
Origin
Scores of millions of Americans will smile (or moan) at the recollection of reading (with the assistance of a pony or trot) Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War in their sophomore year high school Latin class, and seeing their old friend (or nemesis) impedīmenta “baggage train, traveling equipment” loaded with ablatives absolute and subjunctives in indirect discourse. Impedīmenta is a neuter plural noun formed from the verb impedīre “to restrict, hobble, impede” and -mentum, a neuter noun suffix for concrete objects. Impedīre is a compound of the preposition and prefix in, in- “in, into” and ped-, the inflectional stem of the noun pēs “foot”; impedīmenta therefore being the things that get caught in your feet, weigh you down. Impedimenta entered English at the end of the 16th century.
plural noun
1. baggage or other things that retard one's progress, as supplies carried by an army: the impedimenta of the weekend skier.
Quotes
Games impedimenta--hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out--lay all over the floor ... -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 Every man was piled up with impedimenta--broken, torn, soiled and cobbled impedimenta. -- Arnold Bennett, Over There, 1915
Origin
Scores of millions of Americans will smile (or moan) at the recollection of reading (with the assistance of a pony or trot) Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War in their sophomore year high school Latin class, and seeing their old friend (or nemesis) impedīmenta “baggage train, traveling equipment” loaded with ablatives absolute and subjunctives in indirect discourse. Impedīmenta is a neuter plural noun formed from the verb impedīre “to restrict, hobble, impede” and -mentum, a neuter noun suffix for concrete objects. Impedīre is a compound of the preposition and prefix in, in- “in, into” and ped-, the inflectional stem of the noun pēs “foot”; impedīmenta therefore being the things that get caught in your feet, weigh you down. Impedimenta entered English at the end of the 16th century.
