The BFD Word of the Day

The word for today is…

suffrage (noun):

1: a short intercessory prayer usually in a series
2: a vote given in deciding a controverted question or electing a person for an office or trust
3: the right of voting : franchise

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : Why would a 17th-century writer warn people that a chapel was only for “private or secret suffrages”? Because suffrage has been used since the 14th century to mean “prayer” (especially a prayer requesting divine help or intercession). So how did suffrage come to mean “a vote” or “the right to vote”? In answering that question, we get a lesson about the ways Latin words enter English. The Latin word suffragium has a number of vote-related meanings, including “a vote cast in an assembly” and “the right to vote.” In Medieval Latin, this same word had expanded to mean “vote, selection, aid, support, intercessory prayer,” and it’s this suffragium that gave us the prayer kind of suffrage in the 14th century. It wasn’t until the 16th century that English speakers mined the older—the classical—Latin suffragium for a word to use with regard to voting, and especially to refer to the right to vote.

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