The handy German neologism Impfneid literally means “vaccine envy.” It’s one of many German words coined during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neid in German means “envy” and Impf, meaning “vaccine,” derives from the horticultural metaphor of grafting part of one plant onto another. The same idea informs our word inoculate, from Latin oculus, “eye,” the source of English ocular, or “having to do with the eyes.” In Latin, oculus also applied to small, round things that might resemble an eye. The Middle English derivative inoculate means “to graft a bud from one plant onto another,” and later extended to the idea of grafting a live vaccine into another creature. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Impfneid, Vaccination Envy”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Here’s a handy German word, impfnite.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m going to totally use that one.
Well, you might. It’s I-M-P-F-N-E-I-D, impfnite, and it means the envy of those who have been vaccinated. Obviously, it’s a neologism, but it’s making the rounds and I really like it.
But you know what? I had a really cool aha moment when I started digging into the etymology of this word. The night means envy in German, and the inf has to do with the horticultural metaphor of grafting, you know, grafting a vaccine onto somebody.
And that’s when I had the aha moment because that’s the same idea in our word inoculate. It is related to our word ocular having to do with eye because it comes from the Latin oculus, which means eye, and was sometimes applied in Latin to things that were small and round and look like eyes, like buds.
And so inoculate in Middle English actually meant to insert a bud in a plant. And then later it was applied to other forms of grafting or implanting, including grafting a vaccine into somebody to prevent disease.
How cool is that?
That is cool.
So you are literally putting one creature inside another.
Yes.
Yes, you’re grafting.
That’s pretty cool.
All of that wrapped up in this one little two-syllable word.
Well, we love to talk about other languages on the show. And if you speak more than one language, hey, bring us your favorite word or an expression they say in your family or just something wonderful that you think we ought to know.
Or you can explain it in email to words@waywordradio.org, or share it on Twitter @wayword.
