create

Create comes from Latin creare, "to make, bring forth, produce, beget," and English took it in the early 1400s straight from the Latin past participle creatus. That -ate ending is one of the most recognisable Latin suffixes in English, and it usually marks exactly this kind of borrowing: a verb built off a Latin participle by scholars rather than inherited through the slow wear of French.

The Latin word is related to crescere, "to grow, arise, be born," and to the name of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and grain. One scholar notes that the original sense of creare was "to make grow," which is still visible in older Latin texts. So the word underneath create is agricultural rather than divine — not making something out of nothing, but causing something to increase.

create
(v.)
"to bring into being," early 15c., from Latin
creatus
, past participle of
creare
"to make, bring forth, produce, procreate, beget, cause," related to
Ceres
and to
crescere
"arise, be born, increase, grow," from PIE root
*ker-
(2) "to grow." De Vaan writes that the original meaning of
creare
"was 'to make grow', which can still be found in older texts ...." Related:
Created
;
creating
.
also from early 15c.

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