I remember learning somewhere in my pre-college school career the definition of the word "vouchsafe". This word as we all know the meaning of without being too presumptuous means "to condescend". I remember that this was one of the questions on the "SAT' (Scholastic Aptitude Test) that we had to take to qualify for college admission, "What is the meaning of the word vouchsafe?" I have never used this vouchsafe word in a sentence; either through the spoken or written word, and actually rarely use the word condescend either. Maybe we were taught the word "vouchsafe" just to help develop out rote memory skills, or, this word may come in handy if we find ourselves in the presence of English royalty.
I did look up on a "Google search", "using the word vouchsafe (verb) in a sentence" and here is one of the vouchsafe sentence submissions: "But yet vouchsafe to us Tityrus, who is this god of thine."
Maybe, I would see myself using the word "vouchsafe" if I was telling the following story to someone.
Heinrich and Bromhilda Vouch were married for over forty years and operated "Vouch Jewelers" on Main Street in downtown Denton, Texas. They met in a diamond cutting class in Antwerp, married, and moved to Texas as they both shared a love of "American Western movies" and the cowboy lifestyle. They thought that Texas would be a great place to open up a jewelry store with all the wealthy oil men and cattle barons as potential customers. Plus, they found that they liked USA grade prime beef steaks better than the European German Black Forest steaks. So, Texas, it was and they established a comfortable pleasant life for themselves.Broomhilda was often found outside the store sweeping the sidewalk and greeting the "window shoppers". Everyone was so friendly in Texas and they never considered that anyone would ever try to rob their store so they never installed a burglar alarm for the store, they did have a deadbolt lock on the front door; besides, they brought along their huge safe with them to store all their diamonds, gold, and precious stones.
Little did they know however that a gang of MS-13 youths from El Paso went through Denton one day and decided to make plans to rob the vouchsafe. But that, is another story.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
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VouchSafe came to mean a gift conferred by a personage to a lesser person in the Elizabethan era, but it's actually originally meant just what it sounds like: a safe - conduct. It's from the middle English voucher sauf. Since it's generally kings or rulers who bestow a safe conduct, you can see how the meaning evolved over time.
ReplyDeleteI like the word so much, I adopted it for my anti-spam product, with the tagline "we vouch for your traffic to keep your web app safe from spammers".
I figure that while many people may have forgotten the Elizabethan application of the word, they should still pick up on the words "vouch" and "safe".
Interesting, I never learned this much in school about vouchsafe just that I have never ever used or seen anyone ever use this word while speaking or writing so I guess I always wondered why vouchsafe was ever on the SAT test.
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