Word of the Day

Did You Know?

“Our landscapes are changing … they’re becoming less permeable to wildlife at the precise moment animals need to move most,” writes Ben Goldfarb in his book Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. He’s describing the effects of highway infrastructure and at the same time clearly demonstrating the meaning of permeable, a word that traces back to a combination of the prefix per-, meaning “through,” and the Latin verb meare, meaning “to go” or “to pass.” Accordingly, a permeable landscape—such as one where humans have constructed wildlife overpasses—is one that allows animals to pass and spread through unimpeded. Permeable’s relative, the verb permeate (“to spread or diffuse through”) is another commonly used meare descendent, but other relations haven’t managed to permeate the language quite so widely, such as meatus (“a natural body passage”), congé (“a formal permission to depart”), and irremeable (“offering no possibility of return”).