What do you make of this plant? (f89v)

[stellar]

In the present study, the characterization of the soybean retrotransposon, Diaspora, provides evidence for a relatively rapid transition between enveloped retroelements and non-enveloped retrotransposons. Our phylogenetic analysis suggests that the Diaspora retrotransposon emerged from a lineage of plant endogenous retroviruses that possesses an env-like gene.

I wonder how many of those words Dee would have been able to understand without a dictionary?

Diaspora as a word didn't appear until the 18th century - and initially referred to populaces fleeing their homelands.

Ironically enough, one of the more amusing examples returned in Stellars's word list he linked was "bad example".

Hi David,

My beliefs in John Dee have vanished and my cipher is getting a tweak!

Thanks for the response, I looked up etymology and I would not take this as gospel for how long words have been around.

This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.

c. 1300, from Old French transmigracion "exile, diaspora" (13c.) and directly from Late Latin transmigrationem (nominative transmigratio) "change of country," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin transmigrare "to wander, move, to migrate," from trans- "over" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) + migrare "to migrate" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Originally literal, in reference to the removal of the Jews into the Babylonian captivity; general sense of "passage from one place to another" is attested from late 14c.; sense of "passage of the soul after death into another body" first recorded 1590s.
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