View source for Valedictory - valetudinarian

Do not confuse these two words. Although they share an [[etymological root|root]], they have moved far apart from eacg other in current English.
::'''''[[etymology|Etymological]] note''''': The [[Latin]] [[verb]] ''valÄ“re'' means 'to be well'. The [[singular]] [[imperative]] is '''''vale''''', and the [[plural]] '''''valete'''''. These were used as a standard parting, [[literal]]ly 'Be well' - closely equivalent to the archaic English '[[Fair - fare|Fare]]well'.
*When this root is combined with 'diction' (saying', from [[Latin]] ''dÄ«cere'', it yields '''valediction''', and the related '''valedictory'''. The [[noun]] '''valediction''' means '[saying] farewell [goodbye]'. (The poet [[John Donne|Donne]] wrote a famous poem to his mistress when he had to go abroad called 'A Valediction', Forbidding Mourning'.) The [[adjective]] '''valedictory''' describes such things: a departing Vicar may preach a 'valedictory sermon', or a failed one may leave 'valedictory curses'. 
**In American, more than British, English 'a '''valedictory'''<nowiki>'</nowiki> is 'a speech made to mark a parting, most particularly 'a speech made at the end of a course in [[College]] or University by a representative of those who are graduating'. Such a speaker is a '''Valedictorian'''.

*When ''vale'' is combined with the [[abstract noun]] [[suffix]] ''-tude'' and the [[adjective|adjectival]] [[suffix]] ''-arian'', it gives '''valetudinarian'''. This [[noun]] means 'a person who is very interested in her [''or'' his] his own health'; often 'someone "who enjoys curiously bad health" ([[Oscar Wilde]]; 'someone who takes great pains with his [''or ''her] own well-being'. Mr Woodhouse, in [[Jane Austen]]'s ''Emma'' (1815) is a '''valetudinarian''' in literature. It can be used as an [[adjective]] as well.
**The rather older form '''valetudinary''', oddly, originally meant 'not well'. (''[[OED]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s earliest citation is from 1581: "Either it is sickly,..or it is healthy,..or it is '''valetudinarie, neither pure sicke nor perfit whole''' (Mulcaster, Richard (1581) ''Positions, wherin those primitive circumstances be examined, which are necessarie for the training up of children'' 1581 (1887) xxx., 110. This is perhaps the better adjective; but as a noun, it is archaic, and used to be used for what is now called a 'hospital' - 'a place where people go in hopes of being cured'.) The adjective is now more often used "[In later use freq.] implying anxious attention to the state of one's own health" (''[[OED]]'', meaning '''1.b.'''. 



[[category:disambig]]
[[category:typos]]
[[category:etymological curiosities]]
[[category:AmE]]
[[category:English Literature]]