Etymology

Etymologies: There are many words in our day to day life, with which we are familiar and we use them simply. But do you know from where they have come from ? What is the origin of that word and how it gained its current meaning ? Etymology gives us the history and development of that word. Find how it works here, with the etymologies of very common words, and its gonna be interesting :

Appendix

In Latin it means "the part that hangs." A human appendix hangs at the end of the large intestine; appendices come at the end of books.

Escape

In Latin, escape means "out of cape." The ancient Romans would often avoid capture by throwing off their capes when fleeing.

Essay

The English noun essay comes from the French verb "essayer," to try. Early intellectuals believed their papers to be only a modest attempt to put their I deas on paper.

Gift

From the Old English "asgift," meaning, "payment for a wife" in the singular and meaning "wedding" in the plural. The Middle Dutch "gift," now written as "gif," meant the same, but today means "poison." The Old High German "gift" also became "poison." From the root "geb-", from which in English we get "give." There is another German word, however, which incorporates the word "gift", but which retains the older meaning of "payment for a wife". The word is "Mitgift", which is the modern German word for "dowry".

Hazard

This term came from the Arabic "al zahr," which means "the dice" and was used by Western Europeans to call each of the various games played with dice that they learned while in the Holy Land during the Crusades. The term eventually took on the connotation of danger because, from very early on, dice games were associated with gambling and with con artists using corrupted dice.

Heresy

Greek for "Choice."

Hierarchy

Originally was a medieval classification of angels into various ranks.

Host, Hospital, Hostel, Hospice, Hospitable, Hospitality

From the Latin "hospes, hospitis," meaning, "someone who receives stangers into his home." In English, "Host" also means "the consecreated bread consumed in Communion"; thus the connection between friendship and bread is once again noteworthy

Husband

Comes from the Old German words hus and bunda, which mean "house" and "owner," respectively. The word originally had nothing to do with marital status, except for the fact that home ownership made husbands extremely desirable marriage partners.

Idea, Ideal, Idol

All from the Greek "idein," for "to see"; cognates with the Sanskrit "vid" (to know) and Latin "videre" (to see) and the English "wise." The W/V sound from the Indo-European root was lost in ancient Greek.

Jeans

Genoa--called "Gene" by sixteenth-century Europeans--was the first city to make denim cloth used for jeans. The pants were named after the city.

Salary; Salt

In the early days of Rome its soldiers were given a handful of salt each day. The salt ration was subsequently replaced by a sum of money allowing each man to buy his own, and relieving the commisariat of the trouble of transporting it. The money received was referred to as their "salt money" (salarium in Latin). Eventually, the term would make its way into medieval France, where a soldier's payment was known as his solde (which is still in use today as the term for a soldier's or sailor's pay), and it was in paid for with a special coin called a sol. By extension, the word also came to refer not only to a soldier's wage, but also to the soldier himself, evidenced by the medieval French term soldat, which itself came from the Old French soudier. For its part, the English word "soldier" comes from the Middle English souder, which also derived from soudier [Footnote: Contrary to popular belief, salt--necessary as it was and unlike other spices--was never very expensive. It only became expensive towards the end of the twelfth century A.D., when it was used as a means of taxation and people often went without it, as a result--a fact not unconnected with the famines and deficiencies that afflicted so many generations of Europeans at the time).].

Sinister

From the Latin "sinister" for "left." Hence, left is evil. [See full article about sinister and dexterous]