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Topic: Note & notate

A woman who described herself as an avid fan asked about the difference (if any) between the verbs note and notate.

We'll begin by noting the noun fan is believed to be a shortening of fanatic, naming "an enthusiastic devotee or an ardent admirer or enthusiast." The noun fanatic developed from the adjective fanatic, which comes from the Latin term meaning inspired by a deity; frenzied, and which dates to the fifteen-hundreds, more than a century before fan came along.

Now let's look at our fan's question comparing note and notate. Note comes from the Latin notare, meaning to mark; note; in English, to note is to record or preserve in writing; to make special mention of or remark on.

Then there's notate. Notate is a back-formation of notation, which, like note, comes from the Latin notare. To notate is "to put into notation": originally, notation named "an etymological explanation or denotation." That sense is now obsolete, but notation lives on with similarly explanatory senses: it can mean " the act, process, method, or an instance of representing by a system or set of marks, signs, figures, or characters;" and it can name "a system of characters, symbols, or abbreviated expressions used in an art or science or in mathematics or logic to express technical facts or quantities."

And while note and notate are sometimes used interchangeably, the verbs do in fact connote slight differences, which our correspondent quite correctly took note of.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

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