Apedia

Verb Instruct Improve Meaning Latin Speakers Late Figurative

Edify is a verb meaning to instruct in order to improve the mind or character.

Edify es un verbo que significa instruir para mejorar la mente o el carácter.

Front edify \ED-uh-fye\
Back verb
To instruct in order to improve the mind or character.

[The Latin noun "aedes," meaning "house" or "temple," is the root of "aedificare," a verb meaning "to erect a house." Generations of speakers built on that meaning, and by the Late Latin period, the verb had gained the figurative sense of "to instruct or improve spiritually." The word eventually passed through Anglo-French before Middle English speakers adopted it as "edify" during the 14th century. Two of its early meanings, "to build" and "to establish," are now considered archaic; the only current sense of "edify" is essentially the same as that figurative meaning in Late Latin, "to instruct and improve in moral and religious matters."]

“If [translator Jay Rubin’s] suggestion [not to read literature in translation] were to be heeded, most of us would not be edified by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Italo Calvino, and Saadat Hasan Manto.” - G. Seetharaman; Despite Pitfalls, Publishers Bet on Translated Vernacular Indian Literature; The Economic Times (New Delhi, India); Dec 16, 2013. 

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