discriminate

The word 'discriminate' entered English in the seventeenth century from Latin 'discrīminātus,' the past participle of 'discrīmināre' (to divide, to separate, to distinguish).‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‌​‌​‌​‍​‍​‌​‌​‍​‍​‍​‌​‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌ The Latin verb derives from 'discrīmen' (a separation, a distinction, an interval, a turning point), which in turn comes from 'discernere' (to separate by sifting), composed of 'dis-' (apart) and 'cernere' (to sift, to separate, to decide). The PIE root is *krey- (to sieve, to separate), a root whose descendants include some of the most important words in the vocabulary of judgment, distinction, and decision.

The original English sense of 'discriminate' was neutral and intellectual: to perceive distinctions, to differentiate between things. A 'discriminating palate' can tell one wine from another. A 'discriminating eye' notices fine differences. 'Discrimination' in its original sense meant the faculty of making fine distinctions — a positive intellectual quality. This neutral sense persists in technical and aesthetic contexts.

The pejorative sense — to treat people differently based on prejudiced categories — developed in the nineteenth century and became dominant in the twentieth, especially after the American civil rights movement. 'Racial discrimination,' 'gender discrimination,' 'age discrimination,' 'employment discrimination' — the word became inseparable from injustice. This semantic shift was so powerful that the original neutral sense often requires qualification: one must say 'discriminating taste' to avoid the negative connotation that now adheres to the bare word.

The PIE root *krey- generated an enormous English word family through Latin and Greek. Through Latin 'cernere' (to sift): 'discern' (to separate by seeing — to perceive clearly), 'concern' (to sift together — to relate to, to worry about), 'certain' (separated, decided — hence sure), 'decree' (a thing decided), 'discreet' (able to separate — showing prudence in speech), 'discrete' (separated — individually distinct), and 'secret' (set apart, separated from knowledge). Through Latin 'crīmen' (a charge, an accusation — a thing decided): 'crime,' 'criminal,' and 'incriminate.'

Through Greek 'krínein' (to separate, to judge): 'crisis' (a separation, a turning point — the moment of decision), 'critic' (one who judges by separating good from bad), 'criterion' (a standard for judging), 'critique,' 'critical,' 'hypocrite' (one who judges under — who pretends to judge by standards they do not follow), 'diacritic' (a mark that separates — distinguishing similar letters), and 'endocrine' (secreting within).

The existence of both 'discreet' and 'discrete' in English — both from the same Latin word 'discrētus' (separated, past participle of 'discernere') but with different meanings — illustrates how a single etymology can fork into distinct words. 'Discreet' (prudent, circumspect) entered through Old French with a behavioral sense. 'Discrete' (individually separate and distinct) was borrowed later directly from Latin with a logical/mathematical sense. They are doublets: same origin, different imports.

The word 'discriminate' thus stands at the intersection of cognition and ethics. Its root meaning — to sieve, to separate, to tell apart — describes one of the mind's most basic operations. The ethical question is not whether to discriminate (in the sense of distinguishing) but on what basis, and to what end.