Viv

Hello everyone, 

I’m Hamidreza Ahmadi, and this podcast is brought to you by Lingophoenix. In today’s podcast we will be taking a look at the root word, viv, which is the origin word for a good number of words in English. 

Well, I don’t wanna reveal too early on what this latin root word means just to create a feeling of suspense. If you don’t like suspense just google them. 

In my classes I’ve heard a lot of my language learners use the word vivid in collocations like vivid colors , a vivid imagination, a vivid dream, or a vivd description, etc. Vivid colors used in a painting are so real as if alive. A vivd imagination is so powerful that can reconstruct things the way you see them in real life. Also, a vivid dream is so life-like that you need to take your time after waking up to realize it was all just a dream. And if someone gives you a vivid description of an event, they do it so well that you can relive the experience. 

The word vivacious shares the same root. Listen to this by Thomas Hardy “ She could follow every word that the ramblers uttered. They were talking no secrets. They were merely indulging in the ordinary vivacious chat of relatives who have long been parted in person though not in soul.” a vivacious chat is full of life and energy. You can also use this adjective for people who are full of beans and life, typically of women though. The following is a good example for the last definition, “an outgoing, vivacious girl who became a successful sales representative.” This word can be translated to سرزنده in Persian, which is quite fascinating to be fair. It’s honestly pretty much the same thing. 

You are told in your English classes to stop using the word important over and over again. Instead, one of the alternatives that are given to you is the word vital. Listen to this example, it is vital or حیاتی that every group work together in unison if they want to produce the best of results. Or, when someone has life-threatening injuries, it is vitally important to check their vitals or vital signs, or their علایم حیاتی. 

Another word with the root viv whose meaning is life - as you must have guessed - is revive. Revive is the combination of ‘re’ which means back or again and ‘vive’ which means life as I explained. Revive means to bring back to life. After Jamal was saved from drowning, my uncle who is a doctor was able to revive him. Listen to revive used in this example: The efforts to revive the economy was in vain due to corruption and sanctions.  

Next on the list is CV. You’ve heard it, we all have. CV is short for Curriculum Vitae. A CV is a brief account of your life and your professional career. Curriculum Vitae is latin for ‘course of life’. As you can probably guess Vitae here means life, and curriculum is what runs through your life. 

We all know how vital it is to have enough vitamins in our bodies. Vitamin is a word that can be parsed into two words Vital and amine (or amino acids). With enough vitamins in our body we can revive or maintain our health and energy. 

A year ago, there was a plane crash and nobody survived except for a little baby girl. Samantha was the sole survivor of the crash and she knows that her life will never be the same. In this example we can see the word survive and begin to have our suspicion. You’re right. survive comes from the same root. Sur comes from Latin ’super’ which means ‘in addition’ and of course viv. If you survive a plane crash or an accident, you don’t die and are lucky enough to keep on living. You can also use it metaphorically to mean that despite the dire circumstances you could manage to get something done. For example, if you can survive training, you will be promoted to Sergeant. 

A word that refers to a quite controversial phenomenon is vivisection. section is the shortened form of dissection which is defined as cutting up animals to study their internal organs for the purpose of experimentation or scientific study. Please note that only those who oppose such practices use this word. An example by Oxford Dictionary of English reads “The abolition of vivisection” The second meaning of vivisection is also interesting. Vivisection can mean a sharp and ruthless criticism or analysis. For example, the vivisection of Britain’s colonial culture. 

The list goes on and on, so I leave it to you to do further studying on this topic. Thanks for listening, and I sincerely hope that we can gather around convivial dinner parties soon with no masks on in a pandemic-free world. Bye for NOW, and take care.