essay
Before "essay" meant a literary form, it meant a weighing. From Late Latin exagium — the act of putting a thought on a balance and watching it move. Montaigne kept the original sense.
The modern essay is a kind of argument with the lights on — thesis at the top, conclusion at the bottom. The word does not mean that. Essay comes through French essai, "a trial, an attempt," from Late Latin exagium, which means literally a weighing. The act of putting a thing on a scale to find out what it weighs.
Montaigne knew this when he coined the genre in 1580. He called his book Les Essais and meant the word literally: these are attempts. Not arguments arriving at conclusions — trials of his own thinking, watching it tip. The closest English cousin is assay, which kept the metallurgical sense: the assayer melts the metal to test its purity. The essayist writes the prose to test the thinking. Same root, same work.
- assay — essay's metallurgical sibling; testing metal for purity
- exam, examine — from exāmen, the tongue of a balance
- exact — weighed-out precisely; what the needle settled to
- exigent — demanding, requiring weighing
- act, agent, agile — the doing-and-driving family from agere
- prodigal — to drive forth one's wealth
- navigate — to drive a ship
- agony, antagonist — the Greek branch — struggle, the driven-against
- ambiguous — driven about both ways