Here’s a quote from Twitter using the word immediately: “Last night there was a crash in the other room. My 9-yr old immediately yelled ‘It wasn’t me. It was Dan the tree kangaroo.’”

SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

I’ve mentioned before that the Wordnik website cleverly integrates a twitter feed into each entry it provides.

That tweet about the immediate blaming of a tree kangaroo caught my eye as I was looking at the etymology of immediately. Not only is it a cute little story it demonstrates our understanding of what the word immediately means.

I guess that’s what the designers of Wordnik wanted.

Immediately means “right now,” “instantly,” “without delay.” It’s that third meaning “without delay” that leads us into the etymology for immediately.

I was tipped off to this by what The Oxford English Dictionary has to say about immediately; “the reverse of mediately.”

I don’t think mediately is a word most of us use too often but if I tear the ly off the end of it you’ll recognize it; mediate.

So the reason that immediately means instantly is because the first bit im means “not” and the second bit mediately means “with intervention,” “through a mediator.” Thus immediate literally means “without anything intervening.”

This word first showed up in English in the early 1400s and had been assembled from its parts back in Latin. But we can go further back.

The med in mediate is the same as the mid in middle and certainly traces back to Indo-European origins.

As well as saying immediately means “right now” and “without delay” I said it means “instantly.” Looking at that word instantly made me go look up it’s etymology. Perhaps it came from in meaning “not” and stant meaning “standing still” in a parallel to the etymology of immediate.

But no, although stant does mean “stand” in the case of instant the in means “in.” The sense here is “in your face” or as the Century Dictionary puts it “stand upon, press upon, urge, pursue, insist.”