re + salire

"Resilient" has long been one of my favorite words. But I must admit that it is just today that I sat to ponder its etymology. Well, re- is pretty easy: "again" or "back." I was a bit stumped on sil. I was pretty sure that it was originally Latin, coming to English through French – sounds just like it could end in -ire, doesn't it?

Well, it turns out that it comes from the obsolete French word silir and Latin salire meaning "to jump." Hmmm. In my mind "resilient" had always evoked an image of something like a concrete wall that could be hit over and over but not budge or receive an impression. However, it literally means, "leaping back." This assumes that the thing which leaped back was not totally unaffected by whatever caused it to be knocked into the "back" position. I think I like this word even more.

With further exploration, I found that our word "salient" also comes from salire and means, "most noticeable or important," OR–more interestingly–"the position an animal assumes when standing on its hind legs with the forepaws raised, as if leaping." I would like to amend my previous post and say that the illustration wolf mascot should be in the salient position.

So what word would describe something that leaps forward? Prosilient?