Indigitate

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic verb meaning to point out or indicate something ; to call upon or invoke a god or deity by name
2. An old word for showing or pointing something out ; a rare sense of calling on a divine power by naming it
3. To direct attention to something by pointing ; to summon or address a god through a formal invocation

Etymology: Latin "indigitare" meant to call upon a deity or to proclaim something, and it has nothing to do with fingers at all. The Roman priests who used it would invoke the gods by name in ritual formulas, so the verb carried a religious, almost formal, sense of summoning and naming. English took the word from the stem of that Latin verb, and over time it picked up a second sense of pointing that the original did not have. That shift happened because "indigitare" was later associated with "digitus," the Latin word for "finger." Readers who knew the Latin word for finger began to hear a gesture in it, and "indigitate" came to mean indicating or pointing out with a finger. The link is a case of association rather than descent, so the finger meaning is a later layer laid over the original ritual sense.

Synonyms: indicate, point out