Word
Of
The
Day
opine
opine • \oh-PYNE\ •
verb
To opine is to express an opinion about something.
// Many people
opine that social media platforms should be better regulated.
See the entry >
Examples:
“Entertainment will always be inherently social. This latest age has prompted society to take a page out of video game culture, which has long relied on building a digital community. We text those we care about after a cliffhanger season finale and jump on social media to
opine on the latest movie or show, sharing views on the best scenes or even recording oneself watching an intense scene for posting on social media.” — Geir Skaaden,
Variety, 28 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
We are not opining—that is, expressing our opinion—when we say that
opine is not a
back-formation of
opinion, though the two words do share a common ancestry. A back-formation is a word formed by the subtraction of part of an existing word; for instance, the verb
bartend is a back-formation of the noun
bartender.
Opine and
opinion, however, both entered English independently, taking different routes from their mutual roots in the Latin verb
opīnārī, meaning “to have in mind” or “to think.”
Opinion arrived in the 14th century, while
opine followed about a century later.
