Vestige: analysis

[forthright]

I can't recall having heard the word 'vestige' pronounced with second-syllable stress and the long vowel [i:], until a couple of months ago when I heard it used in a podcast. I immediately wondered whether it was a dialectal variant or an 'eye-dialect' related to the more common prestige, which has these features, and which is the only other

Comments

Prestige, Vestige

[ankhorite]

Magician's trick? Now I need to go look up prestidigitation. M-W online says:

Etymology: French, from prestidigitateur prestidigitator, from preste nimble, quick (from Italian presto) + Latin digitus finger - more at digit. Date: 1859

Eh, nothing else at digit, and not enough here to show me the magical connection between prestige and prestidigitation. My big dictionary is on the other side of the house; might as well be in France.

Podictionary.com gots nothin' - he hasn't treated any of the three words yet.

[jinian]

I am strangely happy to have the derived-by-analogy pronunciation for a change.

[a_d_medievalist]

That makes a lot of sense.

[neurotic_orchid]

Very interesting. Thanks for the write-up!

[pbickart]

In an interview (I've temporarily forgotten where), Priest says he made up "prestige" as a term of art for the climax of a magic trick, in order to provide a parallel for the title of an earlier one of his books, The Glamour.

[forthright]

He certainly didn't make it up; at best he narrowed the original sense of 'magician's trick' to refer to the climax specifically.