Dear Word Detective: I have been greatly enjoying your word sleuthing for many years now. I have come across what might be deemed an odd request. It is the word “request” and what is origin is. Typically when a word has the prefix “re” it is meant to do something again, but this doesn’t seem to work in this situation. I don’t feel that when I “request” something I am “questing” for something again, it is usually my first time around. Any insights would be greatly appreciated. — David Feinberg.
Many years, indeed. In fact, I’ve been writing this column for almost fifteen years. Whew. Then again, my parents had been writing it since 1954 when I took over, so I guess I still have a ways to go. The most amazing thing about this column, by the way, is that it’s still running on its original tires. No wonder I’m afraid to hit the brakes.
Incidentally, The Word Detective Online (www.word-detective.com) just snagged its two millionth visitor, so stop by any old time for a piece of cyber-cake.
If you don’t associate the word “request” with repetition, you must have been dealing with a different and radically more efficient universe than I do. I can’t even get our dogs to come to dinner without calling them several times, and they’re usually sitting only five feet away. But you’re correct in noting that the prefix “re” usually means “again,” which would make calling one’s first expression of a wish or demand a “request” somewhat illogical.
Unfortunately, that sort of illogic is par for the English language, which operates by the motto “All the rules apply except when they don’t.” That “re” can be tricky. I answered a question a few months ago from a reader whose daughter’s teacher insisted that when the kids learned something new, they were “membering” it, and only when they later coughed it up for a test was the process properly called “remembering.” The teacher was wrong. In the case of both “request” and “remember,” the “re” initially signified “again,” but that sense faded in both words over time.
The root of “request” is the Latin “requirere” (“re” plus “quaerere,” the root of “quest” and “query”), meaning “to seek or ask for again,” which was also the source of the English “require.” In fact, “require” also originally carried the sense of “to ask for again,” which passed at some point into meaning simply “to need.” But both words reached English after a long trip through both Vulgar Latin and Old French, and along the way the “again” element faded away, and “request” came to mean “to ask” while “require” settled down to mean “to need.”
So your instincts are sound; “re” usually does indicate that the action is happening again (as in “rerun” and “revisit”). But exceptions to that rule are far from rare.
