So in the last post, I talked about terrific and how it came to have a positive meaning, when all other words relating to terror; terrify, terrible, terrifying and so on, have negative meanings. Now, I want to address that suffix on the end. The –fic, to be precise. It comes from the Latin suffix -fico, which is a form of the verb faciō, meaning “to make, to do, to build” etc. It’s the same root of –fy in terrify, so the latter literally means “to make terror”. The -fic suffix, on the other hand, means something more like “making”, so etymologically, terrific would mean “making terror”. Of course, this is not the case, but the pattern works for words like horrific “making horror”, calorific “making calories”, scientific “making science”, and so on.

There are other interesting ways that the -fic suffix has been used. Take pacific, which today mostly brings to mind the Pacific Ocean. It’s not hard to spot that this has the same root as pacify and pacifier, “to make peace” and “someone who makes peace” respectively (although pacifier has been used in America to mean “a piece of plastic for babies to suck on” (what we Brits call a dummy) since 1904.) They all derive from the Latin pax, or “peace”. Pacific used to also mean “peaceful”, in the sense of “making peace”; personally, I almost never encounter this sense, although the OED tells me it survives in this form up until the year of my birth:

“The Mongols resisted pacific overtures from the Ming and continued to raid.” (1995, Sept. 847, OED)

The Pacific Ocean, though, was so-named by the explorer Magellan in the 1500s, who supposedly found it calmer than other seas. (Etymonline). I’d wager that the “peace” has been lost from the “Pacific” in most people’s imaginations today; certainly it wasn’t the first thought that came to mind when I thought about the Pacific.

But I want to return to the -fic suffix, because it goes a lot further than just a few odd words. That Latin verb faciō, in its infinitive form facere, has turned up dozens of descendants in Modern English. When it combined with the Latin prefix ad-, it became afficere, or affect in Modern English. Combined with ex-, it became efficio, or effect. In fact, any word that ends in -fect is a descendant of this word, this includes defect, perfect, infect and disinfect; even prefect, from the Latin praefectus, meaning “overseer” or “superintendent”, as someone who comes “before”, pre-, those who “make” things, facere. There are multiple stories here, but we’ve only just gotten started. You want to know what else comes from facere? Facts.

A fact used to mean “an action or something done”, a sense which etymonline says goes back to the 1530s, but the OED attests a quotation from the late 1400s:

“And in the mene season he seith how among theire cronycles wherin the Parsians were accustumed by studious diligence theire yerely factes and actes to register of record, he founde out writyng of old memoriall historious and brought it over vnto the Grecians.” (c1487 J. Skelton tr. Diodorus Siculus iii. 179, OED)

Interesting to note that “factes and actes” not only rhymes, but is roughly synonymous in this context, as here it means “actions” rather than “something that is true”, as we use the word today. The OED and etymonline again disagree about when the modern “truth” sense came about, with the latter saying it started in the 1630s, and the OED again citing a quote from 1542, although the sense may have originated longer ago than that:

“Here may all men se, that both the aungell and Christ are on my syde, & agree with me in facte.” (1542 T. Becon Newes out of Heauen Prol. sig. C.vv, OED)

So facts were originally actions or doings, deriving from the Latin factum, meaning “an event, occurrence, deed, achievement”, and of course, from the verb facere. The sense is preserved in the English word feat, meaning “actions or deeds”, which has the same origin, but was adopted into English earlier. It’s also the root of the Modern French verb faire, “to do, to make”. The sense of making is seen in the word olfactory, meaning “relating to smell”, which ultimately compounds the Latin verbs “to smell” (olere) with “to make” (facere) to make olfacere “to get the smell of/to sniff”.

And with fact, we have its offsprings: faction “a group”, comes from the Latin factionem, meaning “a political party”, but before that “a making or doing”. Similarly, factitious, today meaning “artificial” or “related to art”, came about from the sense of making something. A factor used to be a person in the same way an employer or creditor is: it meant “an agent who buys and sells goods” (essentially the same thing as a merchant,) from the 15th century. Here’s an example from 1954:

“The merchants could now hand over the task of transportation.., while previously they or their factors had staked lives and fortunes on the delivery of goods.” (1954 G. Ohlin tr. E. F. Heckscher vi. 246, OED)

Interestingly, this is why we have the word factory. It’s not (directly) related to the action of making things in a factory, but it was so-named in the 1550s for being the office of the estate manager, or the place where factors – the people who made things – worked. Now, a factor is more abstract, meaning “something which influences a fact” or “a part of something”, as in:

“This Book..is so essential a factor in the spiritual life of men.” (1845 R. C. Trench i. 17, OED)

There are other maybe-less-obvious descendants of facere. If you remember back to French, the Latin word became the French word faire, meaning “to do”. When you combine this with the preposition à, à faire became afaire. This carried over into Old English as afere, and washed up on the shores of Modern English as affair. This was originally (and still is,) an innocent word meaning “an activity, a thing done”, as in this example from 2001:

“Letter writing as a private affair constituted an interiorization of the written word.” (2001 T. Newlin ii. 53, OED)

But by far the more interesting sense of the word comes from the phrase affaire de coeur, meaning “an affair of love”. It was borrowed whole into English, which you can see from this adorable 19th century quote, by the novelist George Eliot:

“My unfortunate ‘ affaire ’ did not become one ‘du coeur’.” ( 1845 ‘G. Eliot’ 6 Apr. (1954) I. 185, OED)

So there was always much ado about a-doing, at least in English.

There are endless stories to be told about making and doing, and I would love to go into detail about all of them (sacrifice, from sacer “sacred rite” + facere “making”; or prolific, from Latin proles “offspring” + facere “making”; or office, from Latin opus “work” + facere “doing”, etc.) but the list is simply too long to exhaust. At the heart of it, I’d say there are seven basic patterns showing where the Latin facere ended up in English:

Words ending in -fect (perfect, infect, affect, defect)

Words ending in -fy (terrify, amplify, qualify, objectify)

Words ending in -fic (terrific, horrific, prolific, scientific)

Words ending in -fice (office, sacrifice, edifice, artifice) Words ending in -ficial (official, artificial, sacrificial)

Words derived from fact (fact, factor, factory, faction, factitious)

Words derived directly from facere (affair, feat)

To me, it’s simply incredible that one tiny suffix, -fy, contains so much hidden depth, and I really enjoyed researching this word, and all the rabbit-holes it opens up. It’s a true fact: the making of English was no small feat.