988: insure and ensure Aug 23, 2017

Anyone who had to learn how to read in English probably has been frustrated by the inconsistencies, and while there is no reason that they had to exist in the first place, we can still look over orthographical oddities and explain why. The prefix 'en-', as explored yesterday, can indicate several meanings including "in something", but so can the prefix 'in-'. Indeed, while these variations usually only necessitate some memorization of what words use which letter, sometimes it can alter the meaning of a word. In the case of 'insure' and 'ensure', there is some overlap in the two meanings; while, 'insure' tends to have the sense of financial compensation for certain problems like health-concerns or property-damage, both words, often followed by the word 'against', mean "protect against or prevent a possible problem". In that case, it is often interchangeable, especially in American writing. As it happens, most often the only difference between words with 'en-' and words with 'in-' is that the former come from French or Spanish, while the latter derive from Latin or Italian, though some may come from Germanic languages, or other ones entirely. In this case, 'insure' is just a variation of the earlier 'ensure' which was adopted from Anglo-Norman French. These words are also related to the English 'assure' and 'secure'.