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Course: 6th grade reading and vocabulary (improved and expanded) > Unit 5
Lesson 2: Understanding visual evidenceConserve | Vocabulary
Let’s explore the meaning and origin of the word “conserve”.
Created by David Rheinstrom.
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- Where does David get that music? sounds really cute.(3 votes)
- would Khan Academy be different in this context? because it's not spelled the same?(2 votes)
- I'm conserving my cheese(2 votes)
- "well this looks like a job for me so everybody just follow me 'cause we need a little controversy 'cause it feels so empty without me". -EMINEM-(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [David] Keep it together,
wordsmiths. That's right. The word in this video is conserve. Conserve. It's a verb, and it means
to keep something safe, to protect a natural resource. You might also see it in
its noun form, conservation, as in animal conservation. Let's break this word
down into its two parts. Con means with or together
like confident or congratulate, and serve comes from the Latin Serv, which means to guard or watch. So based on these word parts, conserve literally means
to guard or watch together. Let's come up with some similar words that have these elements con and serve. I'll put on some music and
give you 10 seconds. Ready? Here we go. Meet you back in 10. (upbeat music) Here's what I came up with, preserve. Another way to protect, to stop
something before it happens. Pre meaning before, so I'm protecting it
before something happens. If I preserve fruit, I've made it into jam before it can rot. Conservatory, which is like conserve plus
atory meaning a place for. A conservatory is a greenhouse where plants are protected
from outdoor weather. And observatory, ob means
towards or in front of, and an observatory is a looking place. A building with a big telescope that you can use to watch
the stars and the planets. It is pointed towards the heavens. Let's point away from the heavens and towards some example sentences that use the word conserve. To conserve water during the drought, we don't take baths, just showers. So I'm saving water, right? There's a big communal
reservoir somewhere in my town, and I'm using less of it by taking a shower instead of a bath, and that means that
there's water left over to say put out fires. But there's also that
other use I talked about, conservation, which has
a political meaning. Usually, it's about a group of people who come together for
environmental reasons to protect a natural place. Thus, Emilio joined up with
the conservation effort to protect the sand dunes. The conservationists are
working to protect the dunes, to keep them safe from threats
or development or pollution. Conservation is all
about protecting a place and keeping it safe and unchanged. May you always conserve
the spirit of learning within yourselves, wordsmiths, because I believe that with
it you can learn anything. David out.