It's the word of the day for February 17th.

Today's word is pertain, spelled P-E-R-T-A-I-N.

Pertain is a verb. To pertain to someone or something is to relate, refer, or have a connection to that person or

thing. Here's the word used in a sentence from The Cut by Amelia Madden. There are certain

rules of conduct that pertain to office dressing no matter how lax your HR department may be. No shirt,

no shoes, no job. But keeping it professional doesn't have to mean

feeling stuffy or boring. The word pertain comes to English via Anglo-French from the Latin verb pertineere,

meaning to reach to or to belong. Pertenere in turn was formed by combining the prefix pair,

P-E-R, meaning through, and tenere, meaning to hold.

Tenere is a popular root in English words and often manifests with the T-A-I-N spelling that can be seen in pertain.

Other descendants include abstain, contain, containain, maintain, maintain, obtain, obtain,

and sustain, to name a few of the more common ones. Not every T-A-I-N word has Teneri in its ancestry,

though. Ascertain, attain, and certain are certainly exceptions.

And a few tenary words don't follow the usual pattern, including tenacious and tenure.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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