𝘼𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙨𝙢—Or, How I Got The Idea for My Book

By Patricia Metzner

Many years ago, in a kingdom known as the Gold Roc diner, now an IHOP, I was

enjoying a weekend breakfast with some friends. To place it in the proper time

frame, Madeline Murray O’Hare had recently brought suit against the

government to have the phrase “Under God” removed from the Pledge of

Allegiance on the grounds that it violated the constitutional mandate of the

separation of Church and State.

At the time, I was a tutor with an SAT prep company, an observation not

unrelated to the epiphany that occurred as we were making our way to the exit. A

gentleman was pontificating in one of the aisle booths. He had an arm flung over

the back of the seat and was clearly bent on impressing the woman seated

opposite. The remark that caught my attention en passant was “We have

something in this country called “antidisestablishmentarianism. We believe in the

separation of Church and State.”

I managed to suppress my gag reflex while exclaiming “You are not only wrong; you are ignorant in both language and history.”

First, the word comes from the English movement in the eighteenth century

defending the Church of England as the official, state religion. Proponents of

separation of the Church from the government/monarchy were known as

“disestablishmentarians” and it followed logically that members of the opposition

were known as “antidisestablishmentarians.”

The speaker was wrong on two counts: the location of the movement and the

meaning of the word. Once I got outside and cooled off somewhat, I realized that,

if the word had been broken down into its component parts, the meaning would

have been clear:

Anti – a negative

Dis – also a negative—and two negatives make a positive

Establishment – a permanent civil, religious or other organization

Arian – a person who supports a certain belief

Ism – a belief

This in turn triggered the connection in my mind between the breakdown of

words among their parts—prefix, root and suffix—and improving performance on

the verbal section of a standardized test. This is turn led to the compilation of

Latin prefixes, roots and suffixes, with a smattering of Greek, in my book, Words

for the Wise, which may be found on my website, verbumsapien.com.

Patricia Metzner is an independent author and researcher. She is also part of our CT State community, serving as a notetaker.