The Suffix -ic: The Suffix -ic, Part 3

The Stoics were philosophers, led by Zeno, who gave speeches on a colonnaded porch, or stoa, in Athens.

Laconia is a region in Greece. In ancient times, the people from there were evidently not given to long speeches, because laconic means concise and short.

Lingua means "tongue" in Latin — and we still use "tongue" as a synonym for "language" — so linguistics is the study of spoken language.

You probably recognize the hydro- root, meaning "water," from words like dehydrate and hydroelectric. Hydraulics are pistons that move when pressurized with a liquid, like those that operate the big shovel arm on a backhoe.

Didaktikos means "instructive" in Greek, and while didactic means "educational," it also carries the sense of being too much so — whether overly dry, boring, or insistent.

Pathos means "feeling," and the a- prefix means "without," so apathetic means "uncaring."

Nomas means "pasture" in Greek, so nomadic was first used to describe migratory animals.

In Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes in the early 1600s, the title character is a knight, somewhat insane, who embarks on a one-man quest to restore chivalry to the world. Because he's deranged — in the book's most famous scene he battles with a windmill — the word quixotic came to mean anything that's impractical or impossible but usually motivated by a noble sentiment.

The Latin word parasitus was built from two Greek words meaning "alongside" and "food." Originally it referred to a person in a position of power who would dine for free at other people's homes or businesses. Now it describes an organism that lives on or in a larger host, digesting some of its food.