Root of the Week: CAP (Tuesday)

TUESDAY Capture (verb)

From the Latin verb “capere,” meaning “to grasp” or “to take hold of,” we get the English word capture.  If you are a humane person who has mice in your kitchen (ew!) you will buy the kind of mouse traps that capture the little beasts unharmed so that you can release them somewhere where they belong (i.e. not your kitchen).  We also use the word capture to describe what a picture does (it perfectly captures the way light beams through a birch forest) or what a great writer can do (nobody captures the euphoria of first love as well as Shakespeare).