Translation
perspective; prospect
Word origin
From medieval Latin perspectiva ars, the art of seeing through, from perspicere: per ('through') plus specere ('to look'). It was the technical name for the geometry of drawing depth on a flat surface long before it meant an opinion.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- perspicere
- English cognates
- perspective, spectacle, inspect, specimen
Examples
.
From my perspective the matter looks completely different.
.
The prospects for the coming year are good.
.
The painter explained the rules of perspective.
No -iv- here, and that is worth stating plainly because -iv- is a real
suffix in Esperanto, just not an official one. Among the
neoficialaj afiksoj it is the one
meaning "able to, tending to": produktiva productive, kreiva creative,
instruiva instructive. Every one of those is built on a verb that exists in
its own right, and that is the tell. There is no perspekti, so there is
nothing for -iv- to attach to, so is not a derivation. It is a
single root, -, and the -o is the only ending in it.
That distinction matters more than the individual word. The unofficial affixes
are productive enough to be tempting and irregular enough to be a trap: you can
usually reverse a genuine -iv- word into its verb and check. If the verb is
not there, the suffix is not there either.
Three senses, all live. First the geometric one in the third example, the
draughtsman's technique of making a flat surface look deep, which is where the
word started around 1400. Second the figurative extension of that, a point of
view: , o. Third, and this
is the one English speakers under-use, the forward-looking one:
in the plural means prospects, the outlook for something. That third sense is
the reason the gloss on this page carries a semicolon rather than a comma.
Perspective and prospect are not two English words for one idea; they are two
ideas sharing an Esperanto word.
For the point-of-view sense specifically,
vidpunkto at rank 1560 is the plainer and more
Esperanto-ish option, built from and the way the language
prefers. Use it when you can. is the right word when the depth or
the distance is part of what you mean.
Where this fits
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perspektivo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 49.