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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I have several examples of decern for discern ; more are easily available on the Internet.
Linguistically, there is morphological processing, with a decernible difference between derivational and
inflectional structures,
Renew my mind every day and teach me to decern what is your will. Because of the mercy, you have shown me I desire to live out my life in complete surrender [interesting comma placement]
It was hard to decern what the author was trying to convey.
Parentadvicepart1 | How are sporting parents to decern what is best … https://ne-np.facebook.com […] How are sporting parents to decern what is best for their parenting & family
When I came across it again this morning I suddenly wondered about the etymology of discern itself. As I suspected, it turns out to be from the (Latinate) prefix dis- “apart, so as to separate” plus a cernere or cernire (it is cernir in Spanish), which means “to sift”, so discerning is dis-sifting, sifting into separate categories. De-sifting, sifting one substance “out of” a mixture with (an)other(s) could easily be called de-cerning , I suppose. To the extent that a single object, the substance you sift the mixture in order to single out, is represented grammatically, de- even makes more sense than dis-. (E.g. in the second example above, it would be reasonable to discern good prospective actions from bad ones generally, sifting them into two piles, but then to decern God’s unique will, singling it out from all other possible actions.)
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Last edited by DavidTuggy (2022-12-04 01:54:41)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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It is interesting to discover these sifting and separating operations at work within de/discerning, especially as many of us probably know CERN only as the world’s largest particle physics lab built at enormous cost to sift and single out ghostly events few of us can even guess at. I was disappointed then to find that the acronym CERN was not a clever reference to its function but stands for Conseil Europeen pour Recherche Nucleaire.
‘Disearning’ suggests itself as a simbling, meaning, if anything at all, something like objective in that the observation is unearned, not worked for?
A marvellous item for the disearning re-enactor who does not wish to risk his No.1 genuine mask being damaged or lost!
Gift for my brother who is very disearning with his sandalwood soaps, this hit the mark saying this one of the best he has come across in the past 10+years.
A boozer which strikes the right balance between being genuinely friendly, traditional, and yet one you could bring disearning guests too.
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