Tag Archives: Latin

More unexpected etymologies…

Posted 214 days ago by Stephen Whiteley

Today, some unexpected etymologies. All of the following words have become so deeply embedded in English that I, for one, would never have imagined they were borrowings from sundry other languages. Slogan – from the Celtic slaugh and gheun, battle …

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The curious etymology of gloss

Posted 342 days ago by Stephen Whiteley

Glossolalia is a lovely word. It means ‘speaking in tongues’, or, as Wikipedia has it, ‘the fluid vocalizing…of speech-like syllables, often as part of religious practice’. Let’s leave aside the question of whether this phenomenon is indicative of divine possession …

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The Spanish word for left

Posted 391 days ago by Stephen Whiteley

Basque loanwords abound in contemporary Spanish. They include caspa, dandruff, manteca, lard (origin of mantequilla, butter), pestaña, eyelash (and now ‘tab’ in the sense of internet browser), and páramo, moorland, alongside many other less evocative terms. But I was particularly …

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The etymology of slave (and robot)

Posted 473 days ago by Stephen Whiteley

The word slave comes from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος, via Middle Latin Sclavus, from which root Italian gets schiavo, French esclave, and Spanish esclavo. The original meaning of the word was ‘Slav’, as in ‘Slavic’: apparently a certain Otto the …

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Myriad myriads

Posted 478 days ago by Stephen Whiteley

Yesterday, in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La Fiesta del Chivo, I came across a word I didn’t know. It was: miríada. For my sins, I am accustomed to skipping over words that I don’t recognise, particularly in a long book like …

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