Alienated | Vocabulary

0:00- [David] Hey Wordsmiths. Just checking in. You doing okay? The word we're talking about today is alienated, ay-lee-en-ay-ted. It's an adjective and it means feeling excluded and apart from other people. Kind of a bummer word, but at the same time, a fascinating one.

0:17I can hear the question I imagine some of you are asking, "David, does this have anything to do with aliens like from outer space?" And the answer is, well, kind of. It's all the same word. Follow me Earthlings to the derivation station. Let's talk about this word's origins.

0:35Did it come from outer space? (mysterious alien-like music) No, it comes from Latin. Alios or al in Latin means different, other, or something that is alien is different, strange, new and foreign. An alien is someone from another country or in more modern language, a being from another planet.

0:59And then ate, A-T-E is a verb forming suffix. It turns nouns and adjectives into action words. This robot is not active. I will activate it. Someone needs to assign a value to this artwork. I will evaluate it, right? A very powerful suffix. So let's put this knowledge to work.

1:21What are some words you can think of that contain that al root? That root that means other. Or A-T-E, ate, the verb forming suffix. Okay, here we go. People of earth. Ten second music break. (relaxing elevator music) Here are some words that I came up with. Altruism, which means caring about other people, doing work for the sake of others.

1:54An alias, a word that means an assumed name, another name, and captivate to capture someone's imagination or attention, to fascinate, to charm. When you feel alienated, you feel like a stranger in your own country. Like all the clocks are running backwards and the world is just wrong.

2:15I dunno why I'm trying to explain this to you, wordsmiths. Nobody understands the feeling of alienation better than the young. Alone in a crowd is the vibe, basically. Let's use alienated in some sentences, shall we? The intergalactic tourist felt alienated by the strange food stuffs of this curious new planet.

2:36Oh no, the alien feels homesick and sad when they try to eat pizza. They don't know how to do it. Here's one that hits a little bit closer to home. Noemi didn't get cast in the play and it left her feeling alienated from her friends who did. There they are in the background, all crowded around the cast list.

2:53An awful feeling, all your friends have something to do together after school and you can't be a part of it because you're not in the play. I, I certainly don't know what that's like, anyway. Another word for alienation is estrangement, the feeling of being made strange, being made to feel far away.

3:14May you never feel that feeling, wordsmiths. Or if you do, may you never feel it for long. You can learn anything. David out.