The word vetting or extreme vetting, even, meaning the detailed investigation in someone's background, has been in the news this year, really, with President Trump suggesting extreme vetting for refugees or other people, other immigrants, into the United States. And so Alan Williams tweeted in to say, "where does the verb to vet come from? Does it have anything to do with amimals?" Andcthe answer is yes. The political verb forges a slightly strange link with those animal doctors. And the word is a 17th-century borrowing, so quite late, but it comes from Latin veterinarius, meaning the cttle doctor, or one who tended beasts of burden. Some people, in fact, think that that may be linked to our word veteran because oxen could only be used after a certain age where they were strong enough to draw the oxen. More likely, I have to say, veteran comes from the Latin vetus, simply meaning old, like senex, which also meant old man and gave us senile, senate and senior, etc. But back to vet. Veterinarian was clipped to, indeed, to vet, and that became a verb as well. And originaly, to vet somebody or something was to submit them to a medical examinationand it was using unsurprasingly of rece horses, originally. There's a quote in the Oxford English Dictionary from the late 1800th - "Beau is shaking on his forelegs. I shall have him vetted before the races". So all of that make sense. But within a few years, the word was being applied to any kind of examination, and during World War II in then entered the national security lexicon, meaning to investigate the truttworthiness, really, of any individual, and it stayed there ever since and, as I say, has become very, very topical this year. But, yeah, it does all go back, very simple, to the vets, that tender animals still today.
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