A WORD A DAY.

Southland Times, Issue 21362, 7 April 1931, Page 8

A WORD A DAY.

COMPASS. This word is perhaps more familiar to us as a noun than as a verb. As a noun its principal use is to designate either the draftsman’s device for drawing a circle, or the engineer’s apparatus for discovering direction. As a verb, however, we may employ it in three senses: “to go about or entirely around,” as "Ye shall compass the city seven times” (Joshua 6: 4); “to inclose on all sides, to surround,” as “Mercy shall compass him about” (Psalms 32:10); and “to get within one’s power, hence, to bring about, accomplish,” as “He endeavoured to compass the destruction of sin.” The word comes to us from the late Latin compassare, “to measure a circumference,” compounded of cum, “together,” and passus, “a step,” but which later took on the additional meaning of “a way, route”; whence the noun compassus, "a route that comes together, or joins itself.” Com-pass is accented on the first syllable and is pronounced as though spelled kumpass, in which the u is as in up, a as in sofa. ? “For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield” (.Psalms 5: 12).