Topic: Subject

A recent email had the intriguing subject heading: subject to, king's subject, school subject.

The subject? The connection—if any—between the subject that sparked our correspondents' curiosity (that is, the roadsign warning drivers that a particular area was subject to flooding) and two other subjects in our lexicon: the subject who answers to a king or queen and the subject that is taught in school.

The connection is easy to find. All these subjects trace back to the Latin subjicere, meaning "to bring under; throw under." (Remember the Latin sub means "under" and jacere means "to throw"). That verb gave Latin two other words too: subjectus, meaning "subject; inferior;" and subjectum, meaning "foundation; subject of a proposition."

Someone thrown under another is surely subject to that person; the noun and adjective senses of subject are easy enough to understand. But how does the department of learning or knowledge sort of subject fit in? Remember the ancestor of subject that meant "foundation?" Well, subject once referred to "the material from which a thing is formed;" the "material substance." Although that sense has since disappeared, subject went on to form another, longer-lasting sense: "something that forms a basis , such as a basis for action, study, discussion, or use."

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