Prayer is from Proto Indo European prek, which meant “ask” or “entreat”; it is also the ancestor of precarious and postulate. In Latin, prek generated the noun prex, “prayer, request, entreaty”; and the verb precari, “ask earnestly, beg” was derived in turn from that. From precari came the adjective precarius, “obtained by prayer”; and from that came the noun precaria, “thing gotten by prayer”. (Thus, if you prayed for a horse and you got one, you could call it a precaria.) In Old French this became preiere, and it was borrowed into English as prayer by 1300.

Prayer starts with a point-source with great energy (perhaps the emotional state of the one praying), and the energy spreads out and extends from there. The sound “y” indicates a trusting optimism in the result, and the “r” tacked to the end gives more force to that trust. Overall the impression is one of a message sent out with trust, optimism, and great emotional power.

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