Acatar and Cap­ture

The Span­ish Acatar (mean­ing “to fol­low, obey, re­spect”) comes from the Latin captare, mean­ing “to cap­ture, take hold of”. From that root, we get a few Eng­lish words, in­clud­ing:

• Cap­ture — sur­prise, sur­prise.
• Ca­pa­ble — if you’re ca­pa­ble, you take hold of the so­lu­tions!
• Cap­tive — if you’re cap­tive, some­one else has tak­en hold of you!
• Cater — the cater­er is lit­er­al­ly the per­son who takes hold of the food for you.

The c-℗t root is vis­i­ble in all, al­though the ‑p- in the ‑pt- has been lost in a few vari­a­tions.