Unless anyone raises serious objections, today we are going to talk about the Latin root word ject which means ‘throw.’
Do you remember when your classroom teacher used a projector, which ‘threw’ images up on a screen for a presentation? Sometimes students would object to this, or ‘throw’ their thoughts against it. Often students feel subjected to too many presentations, being too often ‘thrown’ under their boring burdens.
Do you remember as a child getting an injection at the doctor’s office, where a nurse would ‘throw’ medicine into your arm with a shot? You might have tried to reject this attempt by ‘throwing’ it back at the shot giver. Often scared children interject or ‘throw’ between the shot and their bare arms many cries of terror and alarm, hoping to interrupt the progress of the painful syringe!
Interestingly, our word jet comes from ject as well, for a jet plane is ‘thrown’ through the air by its engines. Jets often follow trajectories, or the paths across which they are ‘thrown.’ Sometimes a jet, or more often a ship at sea, is forced to jettison unwanted baggage, thereby ‘throwing’ it overboard. Another word for ‘throwing’ something out is ejecting it, such as ejecting a DVD or CD-ROM from a computer.
Sometimes during a test we have to make a conjecture, or guess that is ‘thrown’ together based on the best available evidence. If we don’t guess correctly, we might become dejected, that is, ‘thrown’ or cast down, thus becoming depressed or blue.
Now you’ll never have to reject or make a wild conjecture about an unknown word that contains the root word ject, for it has been permanently ‘thrown’ into your awareness of word roots!
- projector: that which ‘throws’ forth
- object: ‘throw’ in the way
- subject: ‘throw’ under
- injection: a ‘throwing’ in
- reject: ‘throw’ back
- interject: ‘throw’ between
- jet: ‘thrown’ across the sky
- trajectory: path ‘thrown’ across
- jettison: ‘throw’ out
- eject: ‘throw’ out
- conjecture: guess ‘thrown’ together
- dejected: ‘thrown’ down or off kilter