Anhauncer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Something or someone that improves, intensifies, or raises the value, quality, or appeal of another thing
2. An agent or substance that boosts the strength, effect, or attractiveness of something it is added to
3. A person or thing that heightens or augments the worth, power, or desirability of an object or situation

Etymology: Before it meant to increase something, the root of this word meant to make something taller. Its ancestor is the Old French verb "enhaucier," built from "en-" and "haucier," "to raise," which itself descends from the Latin "altus," "high." The literal sense of lifting upward survives in the family's oldest meanings. The later sense of making something greater came from the figurative extension of that physical lifting. A person or thing raised in rank, value, or amount was, in effect, lifted higher. Forms like this one, with an "an-" spelling, are older English variants of the same verb, and they show how the word's spelling wandered before settling into the modern "enhance."