/səɡˈdʒɛst/
[verb] To mention an idea or plan for someone else to think about or consider. It can also mean to show or point to something without saying it directly, as in 'the clouds suggest rain.'
To 'suggest' once meant to secretly whisper evil ideas into someone's mind — it was the devil's favourite verb.
The word 'suggest' comes from the Latin verb *suggerere*, which was built from two parts: the prefix *sub-*, meaning 'under' or 'from below,' and *gerere*, meaning 'to carry' or 'to bring.' Together, *suggerere* meant 'to bring something up from underneath' — to supply or furnish something quietly, almost secretly. The Latin past participle *suggestus* gave us the English form 'suggest,' with the core idea of placing something quietly before someone, almost without them noticing.
In classical Latin, *suggerere* was a perfectly neutral word, used in military and administrative writing to mean supplying troops or providing resources. A general might *suggerere* grain to an army — simply 'bring it up.' But over the centuries, as Latin passed through the medieval church and into everyday Christian thought, the word began to pick up darker associations. Theologians used it to describe the way the devil quietly 'supplied' sinful thoughts to a person's mind, slipping temptation in from below, beneath the threshold of conscious awareness.
This shadowy, almost sinister sense was very much alive when the word entered English in the early 16th century. Early English writers used 'suggest' to mean whispering wicked ideas into someone's ear — to plant a thought stealthily, the way a tempter would. Shakespeare used it in exactly this way. In *The Tempest*, a character speaks of being 'suggested' to do evil, meaning that dark forces had quietly insinuated bad ideas into his mind. This was not a gentle offer of advice — it was invisible moral contamination.
Gradually, the word softened. As English-speaking culture became more secular and less focused on demonic temptation, 'suggest' lost its ominous edge. By the 18th century it had come to mean simply 'to put forward an idea' — still with that quiet, understated quality (you suggest rather than command), but now entirely without menace. The sense of indirectness survived: to suggest something is still to offer it gently, to place it before someone without insisting, preserving that original image of bringing something quietly from underneath rather than loudly presenting it from the front.
The Latin root *gerere* — meaning 'to carry or conduct' — is one of the great hidden engines of English vocabulary. It appears in many everyday words through the chain Latin *gerere* → Latin compounds → Old French → Middle or Early Modern English. From *gerere* we get 'gesture' (Latin *gestura*, the way the body carries itself), 'gesture,' and 'jest' (via Old French *geste*, meaning a tale or deed). The prefix *sub-* in *suggerere* also gave us many English words where the idea of 'underneath' or 'secretly from below' still quietly hums — 'subvert,' 'subtle,' and 'suspect' all carry that same sense of something lurking just under the surface.