vinc

The root vinc comes from Latin vincere, "to conquer, to overcome, to win." Its past participle was victus, which gives the second form vict-. So the family has two faces: present-tense vinc- (the act of conquering) and perfect vict- (having conquered). Almost every word here can be sorted into one of those two spellings.

The most direct descendants keep the literal military meaning. victor is the one who has conquered; victory (Latin victoria) is the conquering itself; victorious describes the conqueror. Add the negative prefix in- (not) to the -ible (capable of) form and you get invincible — "not able to be conquered." Its rare positive twin vincible simply means "can be beaten."

The interesting part is how Romans used "conquer" as a metaphor for winning an argument. To convince is con- (thoroughly) + vincere — to thoroughly defeat someone's doubts with reasons until they have to agree. You don't overpower them physically; you overpower their objections. From the same idea comes conviction: in court, to win the case against an accused person is to convict them, and the verdict of guilt is a conviction. But "conviction" also keeps the inner sense — a belief so strong it has "conquered" all your doubts. One word, two children of the same metaphor: a legal guilty verdict and a firm personal belief. convict (the verb, to find guilty; the noun, the guilty person) sits right beside it.

Prefixes push the root in other directions. e- (out, from ex-) + vincere gave evict — originally "to recover property by defeating someone in court," now simply to force a tenant out by law; the noun is eviction. The rarer evince comes from the same e- + vincere but kept an older sense, "to prove, to show clearly" — to defeat all doubt by demonstration.

Two words sit at the edges of the family and deserve a warning. province is traditionally explained as pro- + vincere, "a territory conquered and placed before/under Rome," but scholars are genuinely unsure of this etymology — treat it as a likely-but-unproven member. And Victorian (and its compounds) comes from the name Queen Victoria, which descends from victoria/vincere; it is a proper-name derivative, not a word about conquering anything.

The regular pattern, then: vinc- for the live act, vict- for the finished result, and a recurring leap from physical conquest to winning over a mind — convincing, convicting, evincing.