Significant | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Wordsmith, hello! We've got important work to get to, so I won't keep you. The word we're looking at in this video is "significant."

It's an adjective. It means important, worth paying attention to, a large amount. Something can be emotionally significant, right? Emotionally important. Or there can be a significant scientific development, a development worth paying attention to. Or maybe someone has just given you a significant amount, which is to say a lot of old vinyl records that you have no way of playing.

This word comes from French by way of Latin, so its derivation is a little complicated. "Sign" means what it means in English; it's the same deal as the English word "sign." It's a marker, it's a thing with meaning. "Thick" comes from a Latin verb meaning "to make," and "ant" comes from French, and it makes words into adjectives and sometimes nouns.

So we have "significant" now, right? And when we put all of those word parts together to form "significant," we get a word that describes something that is making meaning. You can think of it as being something so important or so large that it would merit its own sign. Like the world's largest rubber band ball having its own billboard along the highway— that's significant for a given value of significance.

So what can you think of that uses some of these word parts: sign, thick, or ant? What words can you assemble using those word parts? Let's throw 10 seconds on the clock, and I'll put on some music here. We [Music] go!

Here are three words I came up with:

1. "Signature" – your name in handwriting; it comes from the Latin for a thing that has been marked with a stamp or a sign, like an official document.
2. "Signify" – is a verb that means to make meaning, to make clear or evident. This eight-sided red sign that says "stop" signifies that it's time to stop.
3. "Insignificant" – which is merely the opposite of significant. I've just taken the prefix "in," which here means "not," and popped it onto the front.

This is, in my opinion, a super villain word: "You insignificant worm!" That feels like a villainous thing to call someone. You got to sneer when you say it: "Insignificant!"

If you were worms, wordsmiths, I do not think you would be insignificant worms. I think you are very important worms! So follow me, Wiggly Friends, over to the sentence sandbox where I'm going to use "significant" in some examples.

The giant squid's suckers did significant damage to the hull of the Good Ship Undertoe. So I'm using "significant" here to mean "a lot." The squid really messed up the Good Ship Undertoe—those poor sailors, they've been through so much.

Now let me use "significant" to mean important or noteworthy: The most significant change Alisa made to her bike is definitely the wings. Right? That change is the most notable—most motorcycles don't have magnificent wings of steel. It is their presence and indeed their magnificence that is notable.

Wordsmiths, you too can soar on wings of steel if you hold fast to one truth: you can learn anything.

David out.