opinionated

This family starts with a very human problem: choosing. The Latin verb opinari meant to think or judge, and underneath it lurks a PIE root for “to choose,” which is a neat little clue that opinions are basically selections wearing nice clothes. By the early 1300s, English had opinion, meaning a judgment that wasn’t quite knowledge — the sort of thing people argue about over ale, or, today, in the comments section. Then English got more specific and a little more annoyed: opinioned, opiniated, and finally opinionated, which is what you call someone who doesn’t just have an opinion but seems to have stapled themselves to it. It’s the same family tree that gives us opine, notion, and belief, which is why the word feels less like “thinking” and more like “thinking with your heels dug in.”