Word of the Day: Frust

A long long time ago, when I was in school, I used to think that 'frust' was a convenient way of shortening the word 'frustrated'. Little did I know how appropriate this particular formation really was.

The word 'frustrate' comes from the Latin fraus, which means 'injury' or 'harm'. That word descends into English as 'fraud'. Fraus was the Latin goddess of treachery and deceit; essentially, if something failed to happen or some objective was not reached, it was her fault — you were 'Fraused', I suppose.

However, the intermediate stage between fraus and 'frustrate' is the word frustum. Whether in Latin or English, the word means 'a piece broken off, normally the lower remnant of a perpendicular object'. That is, if you have something upright, and you break the top and bottom apart, the remaining stump is the frustum. In mathematics, this applies to cones; you divide a cone in two by a plane parallel to the base and remove the top (apical section) — what remains is a frustum, a frustrated cone which no longer has an apex.

And that really is the definition of 'frustrated': you are chopped off and prevented from progressing towards your apical goal. The emotional state that you are in when you have been frustrated is best described as 'frust'.

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Note: 'To frustrate' is in some ways synonymous with 'to disappoint'. You will note that 'disappoint' can mean 'to remove a (better, higher) point (that was already given)'; it is very similar to chopping off the top of a cone.