A Friend in West Virginia, Part Eleven

So my Clarksburg, West Virginia friend went and bought the new F-150 truck. He kept in touch with me, even before the place opened for business that day, as he went to their lot and saw the truck from a distance, letting me know what he thought about it. Later, when he met with the sales person (people?), he emailed me to let me know how things were going, eventually saying that the place was getting the paperwork together and that he had decided to sign on the dotted line. He felt he had made a pretty good deal, trading in his old F-150, and I was so happy for him, and even proud of him for the way he had handled everything. He hoped that he would be able to sleep and start feeling better, as medical problems persisted. Now, having some anxiety before signing a payment plan for a pretty expensive new vehicle is far from uncommon, but his level of anxiety, and the fact that he told me such feelings were common for him, speaks volumes. 

WORD HISTORY:
Rate-This word, the noun form, related to "reason," goes back to Indo European "reh," which had the notion of "to reason, to figure, to reckon." This gave Latin "reri," which meant, "calculate, reckon," thus also, "judge," and its participle form was "ratus," the grammatically feminine of which was "rata," "which meant, "(already) calculated;" thus, "fixed, final calculation/amount." This gave French "rate," with the meaning "value/price." English borrowed the word from French in the 1400s. The verb form, meaning "to calculate a value or standing of something," was derived from the noun, circa 1500.