You could — and should — look it up

5 comments May 20th, 2008

A reader asked about the use of “emplies” in a recent cartoon dialogue balloon. There is no such word, although “imply” came to us from the Old French “emplier.” But its older Latin ancestor is “implicare.”

There are no all-encompassing rules for determining which of the four prefixes, “im-,” “em-,” “en-” or “in-,” is correct in any particular circumstance. Likewise, good luck guessing whether a word should end in “-able” or “-ible.”

Some things just need to be looked up. There is no shame in it. And even if you could memorize all the various permutations of such words, imagine what your brain could do with all the space taken up by that.