Word Origins: Conserve: Latin servāre meant ‘keep, preserve’ (it was not related to servus ‘slave’, source of English serve and servant). Among the compounds formed from it were praeservāre ‘guard in advance’ and, using the intensive prefix com-, conservāre. This passed into English via Old French conserver. Amongst its derivatives are conservation, conservative (first used in the modern political sense by J Wilson Croker in 1830), and conservatory (whose French original, conservatoire, was reborrowed in the 18th century in the sense ‘musical academy’)
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 13:34:07 +0000
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