discomfit

Disconcerted by discomfit and discomfort? While the two look similar and share some semantic territory, they're etymologically unrelated. Unlike discomfort, discomfit has no connection to comfort, which comes ultimately from Latin com- plus fortis, meaning "strong." Instead, discomfit was borrowed from Anglo-French in the 13th century with the meaning "to defeat in battle." Within a couple centuries, discomfit had expanded beyond the battlefield to mean "to frustrate the plans of; to thwart," a meaning that eventually softened into the "to disconcert or confuse" use we find most often today—one quite close to the uneasiness and annoyance communicated by discomfort. For a time, usage commentators were keen to keep a greater distance between discomfit and discomfort; they recommended that discomfit be limited to "to completely defeat; to rout," but they've largely given up now, and the "disconcert or confuse" meaning is fully established. There is one major difference between discomfit and discomfort, though: discomfit is used almost exclusively as a verb, while discomfort is much more commonly used as a noun than a verb.