Sorbed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. to become imbued with a particular quality or attribute
2. to undergo a process whereby one material takes up another within its structure
3. To take in a substance or quality by physical or chemical action, often leading to a change in properties

Etymology: "Sorbed" is the past tense of "sorb," a verb meaning to take up a substance, and "sorb" is a back-formation: English speakers worked backwards from "absorb" and "adsorb" and carved out a new verb from their middle. The verb itself therefore is younger than the words it was cut from, and it reads as if it were a shortened form of them. The surprise lies in where that middle came from. The "-sorb" of "absorb" comes from Latin "sorbeō," meaning to suck in or swallow. Those same Latin roots gave a quite different word to the botanical world: "sorbus" named the service tree, and "sorbum" its fruit, the small brownish berry that ripens in autumn. French borrowed these as "sorbier" and "sorbe," and English later took the tree's name from French, so the fruit and the verb share an ancestor while going their separate ways. The verb keeps the old sense of drinking in or soaking up, which is exactly what a sponge or a soil does.