Palp-

Palp-

Palpate means to examine by the sense of touch. This is easy to understand for those who know the English word “palp”, which means “to touch” as a verb and “an appendage of an animal or insect” as a noun. The word originally comes from the Latin word “palpō”, meaning “I touch softly”.

Another similar word that is quite commonly used is palpable. This literally means “perceptible by the sense of touch” or simply “tangible”. The word is more commonly used to derivatively mean “noticeable or obvious”, in the same way as tangible means “easily grasped by the mind”.

When your heart palpitates, it beats rapidly or irregularly. This meaning doesn’t really make sense at first for me. It can be interpreted as “you can beat something with your hand, and beating something with your hand is related to your heartbeat”, but I don’t think it is a good explanation. Here, there is also the latin “palpitāre”, which is the frequentative form of “palpō” (note that frequentative form can be created by adding the suffix -itāre), and it has a similar spelling. The frequent form makes it mean “to move frequently and quickly”, which is similar to the meaining of palpitate.