What’s the difference between covert and overt? Just what you can c.
Well, that and what you conceive on the basis of what you can see. Sometimes some added variable can convert it. But also, a difference can be hiding (covert) in plain sight (overt), and it takes a change of perspective to uncover it.
It is the antonymy of these words, and their near identity in form, that causes them to cleave and yet to cleave. Of course covert is the opposite of overt; of course they are nearly identical: the only difference in pronunciation is the /k/ sound at the start – unless, as you may, you say covert like “covert” plus “t.”
Which gives us a bit of an opening here. I don’t mean an aperture – that might be malapert for covert, though it would be perfectly apposite for overt, which traces back to Latin aperire ‘open’ (etymon of aperture), which slid into the descendants of Latin as obrir and ovrir and then, in French, ouvrir, which gained the past tense ouvert, which gave us overt. But OK, how did overt gain a c to reverse the sense?
It didn’t. The question that will uncover the truth is in fact how the a in aperire became the o in obrir and ovrir. And the answer to that is, apparently, by imitation of its antonym operire.
Well, that’s awkward. How do you deal with two words that sound identical but mean the opposite? You can get by if they’re not often used (like cleave), and perhaps if they’re colloquial the uncertainty can leave you either chuffed or chuffed, but for words in regular use that need clarity to avoid disaster, you add something distinguishing to one – in this case, a co- to make it more (or less, depending on your perspective) cooperative. And so operire ‘cover’ became cooperire ‘cover together’, i.e., ‘cover’.
And from cooperire was descended French couvrir, the source of English cover. It is tempting to say that covert is a past participle of cover as meant is a past participle of mean, and in a sense it is, but not quite in an etymology: covert comes not from English cover plus t but from the French past participle, couvert, from Latin coopertus. And so the pronunciation we would expect would be like “cover” with a “t” – but the influence of overt is, well, overt.
In other words, overt has an o because it sidled over towards its antonym, and covert has a c to look less like its antonym but is said with a “long o” because it has sidled over towards its antonym. Opposites attract; the two words look like siblings but are not really related – they have covertly converged in overt form because their opposite vectors aligned them. What a trove!
Sesquiotica 