Origins
The word 'elect' entered English in the fifteenth century from Latin 'ēlēctus,' the past participle of 'ēligere,' meaning 'to pick out' or 'to choose.' The verb is composed of 'ē-' (a variant of 'ex-,' meaning 'out of') and 'legere' (to gather, to choose, to read). The Proto-Indo-European source is *leǵ-, meaning 'to gather' or 'to collect,' one of the most semantically fertile roots in the Western lexicon.
The history of 'legere' is a study in how a single concrete action — gathering — can generate an entire civilisation's abstract vocabulary. In its most physical sense, 'legere' meant to gather or harvest: to pick olives, to collect fruit. From this came the sense of choosing or selecting — to gather is to pick out what you want. 'Ēligere' (to elect) is to pick out from a group. 'Sēligere' (to select) is to pick apart, to choose carefully. 'Colligere' (to collect) is to gather together. 'Neglegere' (to neglect) is to not bother picking up — to fail to gather what deserves attention. 'Dīligere' (to value highly, to love) is to pick out with care, to esteem — and from this came 'diligent,' meaning careful, attentive.
A second branch of 'legere' produced the sense of reading. To the Romans, reading was a form of gathering: the eye collects letters from the page and assembles them into meaning. From 'legere' in this sense came 'lēctiō' (a reading), which gave English 'lecture' and 'lesson.' 'Legenda' (things to be read) gave English 'legend' — originally saints' lives read aloud in monasteries. 'Intellegere' (to understand) combines 'inter-' (between) and 'legere' — to choose between, to discern meaning — giving English 'intelligent' and 'intellect.'
Latin Roots
A third branch produced legal vocabulary. Latin 'lēx' (law) is generally connected to 'legere' — law as what is gathered, collected, or chosen as binding. From 'lēx' came 'lēgālis' (English 'legal'), 'lēgitimus' (English 'legitimate'), 'lēgislātor' (English 'legislator'), and 'prīvilēgium' (English 'privilege,' literally 'a law for an individual,' from 'prīvus' + 'lēx'). 'Lēgāre' (to depute, to send with a commission, to bequeath) gave English 'legate,' 'legacy,' 'delegate,' and 'allege.'
The specifically political sense of 'elect' — choosing leaders by vote — reflects Roman Republican practice, where magistrates were elected by citizen assemblies. The Latin title was reinforced in Christian theology, where 'the elect' (ēlēctī) referred to those chosen by God for salvation. Calvin's doctrine of predestination made 'election' a theological term of enormous weight: God's sovereign choice of who would be saved. This theological sense coexisted with the political one, and both remain active in modern English.
The adjective 'elect' in phrases like 'president-elect' preserves the original Latin participial sense: someone who has been chosen but has not yet assumed the position. This usage dates to the fifteenth century in English and remains standard in political and ecclesiastical contexts.
Word Formation
The compound 'elegant' also descends from 'ēligere' — 'ēlegāns' meant 'choosing carefully, discriminating in taste,' and thus 'tasteful, refined.' An elegant person or solution is one that has been picked out with discernment — the quality of careful choosing made visible.
From gathering olives to choosing presidents, from reading books to understanding the world, the journey of 'legere' through 'elect' and its siblings maps the expansion of human activity from the physical to the intellectual to the political.