IATE term of the week: Vote

July 8, 2016 10:19 am

The IATE term this week is, “vote”. Such an easy word, right? We all voted at least once in our lifetime, in presidential elections, or local elections. On a lighter note, we voted on where to go for drinks, or which movie to pick. To vote, then, is to express your choice in a matter. The definition of a vote is “a formal indication of a choice between two or more candidates or courses of action, expressed typically through a ballot or a show of hands or by voice”.

The reason why “vote” is the IATE term of this week is that recently, the results of the second round of voting were annulled in Austria, because the Constitutional Court of the country found that electoral rules had been disregarded, and that over 77,900 absentee votes had been improperly counted. The second round re-vote will take place on October 2nd 2016.

I am Romanian, so in my language a vote is not that different from English. We say, “vot”. From IATE, I found that in French a vote is “voix electorale”, in Portuguese is “voto eleitoral” and in Italian is “voto”. It is easy because all of them are Romance languages and vote comes from the Latin: “votum”. The verb in English dates from the mid 16th century.

I was surprised to see that in IATE this tiny word is not completed in all the languages, so I would kindly ask you to contribute.

Sources:

• Austrian Presidential Election
• Austria presidential poll result overturned
• Photo

Written by Raluca Caranfil
Journalist & Communication Trainee at TermCoord

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Categorised in: All posts, IATE Term of the Week, Linguistics, Terminology