Today's Word "putative"
Published in Vocabulary
putative \PYOO-tuh-tiv\ (adjective) - Commonly thought or deemed; supposed; reputed.
"Someday... our species will again send out interstellar explorers, just as we did in the twenty-second century. Maybe those future spacecraft will finally confirm that we are not the only putative intelligence in the universe." -- Gentry Lee, 'The Tranquility Wars'
Putative comes from Late Latin putativus, from Latin putare, "to cleanse, to prune, to clear up, to consider, to reckon, to think." It is related to compute, "to calculate" (from com-, intensive prefix + putare); dispute, "to contend in argument" (from dis-, "apart" + putare); and reputation, "the estimation in which one is held" (from reputatio, from the past participle of reputare, "to think over," from re-, "again" + putare).
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