Today's Word "Abeyance"
Published in Vocabulary
abeyance \eh-BEY-ehnts\ (noun) - Suspension, temporary inactivity; also, a lapse in succession between political leaders or a legal condition of non-ownership, when ownership of an estate has not been assigned.
"The executive board meeting was left in abeyance when the police arrested the chairman."
This word comes to us most recently from Anglo-Norman, the language that grew in England after the Norman Invasion of 1066. The Normans brought their legal system with them, along with nobles to run the newly conquered country, and installed their codes into the Anglo-Saxon system. The Old French was abeance "desire" from abaer "to gape at" itself from a- "at" + baer "to gape." "Baer" apparently comes from Vulgar Latin "*badare" but little is known of the origin of this word. In Middle English, the English that evolved from the pairing of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon, baer turned into baee "an opening" and, finally, to "bay" in the same sense.
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