Continuing last Tuesday's football theme, if a player resigns, has he left his club, or has he written his signature on a document agreeing to stay with it?
Unless we can all agree that some hyphens are necessary, we're never going to know.
Word To Use Today: resign. This word comes from the Old French resigner, which means to renounce. Before that it came from the Latin word resignāre, to unseal, cancel or give up, from signāre to seal, or to make an entry in an account book. The Latin word signum means a sign.
The confusion has come about because re- at the beginning of an English word usually means again (as in rebuild or retrace) but in this case means pretty much the opposite. This difficulty goes right back to Roman times, when re- could mean again, against, back, or anew.
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