Apprising

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Making someone aware of important information or facts
2. Communicating details to a person to update their knowledge
3. Giving notice or telling someone about relevant matters

Etymology: "Apprising" is the present participle of "apprise," and the verb itself is a puzzle: it looks like a relative of "apprehend," but it actually descends from the same Latin family as "price" and "prize." The key is that English "apprise" was borrowed from French "appris," the past participle of "apprendre," meaning "to learn" or "to teach." That French verb came from Latin "apprehendere," which is also the source of "apprehend," so the two English words are doublets: separate borrowings of one ancestor that took different routes. The meaning we use today, to inform someone, comes from the sense "to teach" and "to make known" that the French word carried. Yet English also picked up "apprise" from a different source, Middle English "aprisen," meaning to set a value on something. That line runs through Old French "aprisier" back to Latin "pretium," meaning "price" or "worth." So the same verb form ended up carrying both the idea of informing and the idea of valuing, and the valuing sense is now the one that survives in "appraise."

Synonyms: informing, notifying