pric

Behind a whole cluster of everyday words — price, precious, praise, prize, appreciate, depreciate — sits one Latin noun: pretium, meaning "price, value, reward." To a Roman, pretium was the worth of a thing, what you would give to get it. That single idea fanned out into English along several different roads, and the spelling changed depending on which road it took.

The most direct road runs through Old French pris into Middle English price — the plainest survivor of pretium: the amount something costs. From price grow the transparent compounds: priceless (so valuable it has no price), overpriced, pricey, pricing, price-tag, stock-price.

A second road kept the Latin adjective pretiosus ("full of value"), which became Old French precios and English precious — literally "worth a lot." The preci- spelling marks this branch: preciousness, preciously.

A third road runs through the Latin verb pretiare ("to value, to price") and its prefixed forms. With ad- (to, toward) it became appretiare, "to set a value on" → appreciate. Here the meaning split in two directions that still confuse learners: if you set a high value on something you appreciate it (you're grateful, you admire it); and an asset that gains value also appreciates (it goes up in price). The opposite, de- (down) + pretiare → depreciate: to lower the value — used both for money (a currency depreciates) and for words (to depreciate someone is to belittle them). From these grow appreciation / depreciation, appreciative, appreciable.

A fourth road went through French in a rougher form: the same pretiare became Old French preisier, "to value, to esteem," giving us two more words that no longer look related. Praise is "to set a high value on someone in words" — to estimate their worth out loud. And appraise (ad- + preisier) is the cooler, technical cousin: to formally estimate value — a surveyor appraises a house. Praise and appraise are siblings; one became emotional, the other professional. From this branch: appraisal, appraiser, reappraise, praiseworthy.

Finally prize — a reward for winning — comes from the same French pris ("value, worth"); a prize is literally "a thing of value" awarded to you. As a verb, to prize something is to value it highly (prized possession).

So five spellings — pric / preci / preti(ate) / prai / priz — all trace to one Roman idea: what a thing is worth. Setting that worth high gives you precious, praise, appreciate, prize; setting it low gives you depreciate, underprice.