900: record (re-) May 26, 2017

This is the 900th Word Facts, if you were keeping a record; thank you for all the likes, comments, and shares. The subject today, 're-', has a few different uses explored on this blog, including its function to express intensive force which you may remember from, 'remember', and to refer back to something such as with 'refer' coming from Latin meaning 'bring back'. With the word 'record', before technological means to document things, could mean "repeat to commit to memory". The word has a Latinate verbal prefix, but now the word when accented differently can be a noun, this sense came about later. By that time, the word already connoted written documents and laws, but originally what has now become a 'record' was oral, and meant in the English translation of Latin, in essence, "back to the heart" ('re- cord'), not terribly dissimilar to the expression, "remember something by heart", as was the original understanding of the word. 'Cord' has its own interesting relationship to the English word 'heart' which has already been discussed here several times.