In an article about soccer Saudi-style (“Protest against performance and royal interference has had the most far-reaching effect in Saudi Arabia where princes are known to phone during a match to order the change of a player.”), a writer falls into the impregnable/impregnate trap.
Football is defeating efforts by wealthy Gulf States to impregnate themselves against the wave of protests that have swept the Middle East and North Africa in the past two years and sparked a brutal civil war in Syria.
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Explanation of problem:
The two words have very different etymologies.
Impregnate comes from Latin impraegnare, which means ‘to be imbued or saturated with’.
Impregnable comes from Middle French imprenable, itself derived from Latin prehendere, which means ‘to take, grasp’.
That they have come to look so similar in English today is just coincidence.
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SOS never merely curses the darkness. She always lights a candle. So: The writer might instead use:
fortify
defend
protect
May 13th, 2013 at 8:39PM
That’s the second witty usage of the word “impregnable” encountered today.
The first was in an article by John Sullivan in National Review.
“Remember, however, the great Prussian general von Moltke, of whom it was said that he had smiled only twice in his life: once when his mother-in-law died, and a second time when told that a certain fortress was impregnable. ”
I think I’m spending too much time on the web. Two good nuggets today, but a lot of panning.