Significant | Vocabulary

- [David] Wordsmiths, hello. We've got important work to get to, so I won't keep you. The word we're looking at in this video is significant. Significant, it's an adjective. It means important, worth paying attention to, a large amount. Something can be emotionally significant, right? Emotionally important. Or there can be a significant scientific development, a development worth paying attention to. Or maybe someone has just given you a significant amount, which is to say, a lot of old vinyl records, which you have no way of playing. This word comes to French by way of Latin, so its derivation is a little complicated. Sign means what it means in English, it's the same deal as the English word sign. It's a marker, it's a thing with meaning. Fic comes from a Latin verb, meaning to make. And ant comes from French, and it makes words into adjectives and sometimes nouns. So we have significant now, right? And when we put all of those word parts together to form significant, we get a word that describes something that is making meaning. You can think of it as being something so important or so large that it would merit its own sign, like the world's largest rubber band ball having its own billboard along the highway. That's significant, for a given value of significance. So what can you think of that uses some of these word parts, sign, fic, or ant? What words can you assemble using those word parts? Let's throw 10 seconds on the clock, and I'll put on some music, here we go. (pleasant music) Here are three words I came up with, signature, your name in handwriting. It comes from the Latin for a thing that has been marked with a stamp or a sign, like an official document. Signify is a verb that means to make meaning, to make clear, or evident. This eight sided red sign that says, stop, signifies that it's time to stop. Insignificant, which is merely the opposite of significant. I've just taken the prefix in, which here means not, and popped it onto the front. This is, in my opinion, a super villain word, you insignificant worm. It feels like a villainous thing to call someone. You gotta sneer when you say it, insignificant. If you were worms, wordsmiths, I do not think you would be insignificant worms. I think you are very important worms. So follow me, wiggly friends, over to the sentence sandbox where I'm going to use significant in some examples. The giant squid's suckers did significant damage to the hull of the good ship Undertow. So I'm using significant here to mean a lot. The squid really messed up the good ship Undertow. Those poor sailors, they've been through so much. Now, let me use significant to mean important or noteworthy. The most significant change Elisa made to her bike is definitely the wings, right? That change is the most notable, most motorcycles don't have magnificent wings of steel. It is their presence, and indeed their magnificence, that is notable. Wordsmiths, you too can soar on wings of steel if you hold fast to one truth, you can learn anything, David out.