New word – Invigilating

New word – Invigilating

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I was pleased the other day to learn a new word that is part of the English language, but not used here in the US. The word was “invigilating.” Hang on, I’m going to use some grammar terms here. Invigilating is what’s called gerund. A gerund comes from a verb but functions as a noun. In every case I can think of, you add an “ING” to the end of the verb to form a gerund. That means the word I was really interested in was invigilate. I couldn’t find it in any dictionary published for use here in the United States, but it shows up in all the British dictionaries. The definition is to supervise during an exam. We would say “proctor” an exam. Interestingly, proctor can either be a verb or noun. It means we have no need to turn the word proctor into a gerund by adding ING since it already functions both ways; i.e., either a verb or noun. Back to invigilate, it comes from the Latin verb vigilare, which means to stay awake. It’s easy to see we get the word “vigilant” from this Latin verb. This is another word you can add to your vocabulary, but I suspect unless you’re in Great Britain, it has little value to you.

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” I am a writer and as a writer, I do not neatly fit into any category. I have written magazine articles, feature news articles, restaurant reviews, a newspaper column, and several book length nonfiction projects aimed at people interested in particular health problems for foundations and companies. As to novels, I have published some Kindle novels.”