fiat

今日取り上げる単語は "The Book of Tea" の巻末に書かれていた "Okakura Kakuzo A Biographical Sketch" からの引用です。

On December 26, 1862, a second son was born to Okakura Kanemon, in a merchant family of Yokohama, and named Kakuzo. This was almost ten years after the historical "black ships" of Commodore Perry had forced open the ports of Japan, which for two hundred and fifty years had been tightly shut against the rest of the world. Japan was by no means unanimous in welcoming this intrusion on her national privacy. Bloody uprisings of embattled traditionalists had to be suppressed before the innovators own out and, in 1868, placed upon the throne an emperor who by fiat would turn a medieval country into a modern nation almost overnight.

"fiat" はこのブログを始めた初期の頃に "fiat money" で知った単語で、その直ぐ後に対語の "representative money" を知人から教えてもらったせいで、"fiat money" の意味は覚えられたのですが、もう一つの意味は覚えられずいました。上記引用文に出て来た "fiat" がその意味でした。辞書で確認します。

・Oxford English Dictionary: an official order given by somebody in authority: Prices have been fixed by government fiat.
Word Origin: late Middle English: from Latin, ‘let it be done’, from fieri ‘be done or made’.
・Collins Dictionary: If something is done by fiat, it is done because of an official order given by someone in authority.: He has tried to impose solutions to the country's problems by fiat.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: an order given by a person in authority: No company can set industry standards by fiat.

4/22/2008 に "fiat lux" を取り上げたのも思い出しました。