Eminent, Imminent, and Immanent
Tricksy Triplets
‘Tomorrow, everyone will see the royalty that has always been in you, and know that you are the true king,’ said Merlin to the prince. Arthur thumbed through his thesaurus, thought a bit, and said, ‘So, the moment of the when all realize the immanence of my eminence is … imminent?’
‘Indeed.’
‘And yet Wise Wizard, something troubles me?’
‘What is that, My Almost Liege?’
‘How will I be able to distinguish immanent from imminent, and both words from eminent?’
‘Let’s do the easy bit first. Eminent starts with e, which makes me think of enormous, egregious, and excessive.’
‘And’, added Arthur, ‘egotistical’.
‘And that’s what you’ll be if you let the imminent immanence of your eminence go to your heard.’
‘Now for the hard part …’
‘Indeed. The only thing that separates the word meaning “almost there” from a fancy way to say ‘always there’ is a single vowel, and that’s a very small thing’.
‘An iota, so to speak …’
‘Well done, My Prince. You have been listening.’
‘I try.’
‘Speaking of trying …’
‘Yes, Merlin?’
‘I’ve been racking my brain to find clever ways of helping you remember the difference between immanent and imminent.’
‘I even asked a large language model for help?’
‘A large language model? Is that a kind of elf?’
‘Yes, especially helpful, when he wants to be, but also a bit of trickster. He loves to tell me things that just ain’t so.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He composed a rhyme ..’
Imminent things come very fast —
Like danger, doom, or news broadcast.
Immanent means ‘right inside’ —
Like truths or gods that always bide.
‘It doesn’t scan’.
‘No. But we can fix that.
Imminent things come very fast —
Like danger, doom, or a news broadcast.
Immanent means ‘it’s right inside’ —
Like truths or gods that always bide.
‘That’s better. Still, I don’t think it will help me remember which vowel matches a particular meaning.’
‘Indeed. I blame the Great Vowel Shift.’
‘The …’
‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen for eight hundred years.’
‘But what will it do, this mighty modification of the sounds at the center of syllables?’
‘It will turn aristocratic a’s, elegant e’s, and impressive i’s into soggy schwas.’
‘That’s awful. What will people do?’
‘For one thing, they will replace immanent with in-born and imminent with upcoming.’
‘You mean that they will speak like … Saxons?’
‘I’m afraid so’.
‘That’s awful.’
‘It could be worse.’
‘How so?’
‘They could talk like Jutes’.
