The Etymology of Appeal
At its Latin root, an appeal is an act of driving towards someone.βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ The word traces to Latin appellare ('to address, call upon'), a frequentative of appellere, built from ad- ('towards') and pellere ('to push, drive'). The physical force in pellere softened over centuries into social force β addressing someone, calling on them, summoning their attention. Old French inherited it as apeler ('to call'), and Anglo-Norman lawyers gave it its legal teeth: to appeal was to call upon a higher court to revisit a judgement. English adopted both the legal and the general senses in the thirteenth century. The attractiveness meaning β something 'has appeal' or 'appeals to' you β is a relatively late extension, becoming common only in the twentieth century. It completes a neat semantic arc: from physically pushing towards, to verbally calling upon, to silently drawing towards.