Etymology and surprising origins of English words

Do you ever think about words? Does “salary” have anything to do with “salt?”… and “sauce?”? How about across different languages? You can tell ESCRIBIR and SCRIVERE are related to each other… or even SCHREIBEN and SCHRIJVEN… but the word “write” is not related to them. The same way, “war” can’t be related to GUERRE or GUERRA… right? Well, surprisingly “war” and GUERRA come from the same word… just as “insect” and “sex” have the same origin… Intrigued? Stick around, and let’s look at etymology and some surprising origins of words.

Hi! Welcome to Snap Language. I’m Marc Franco. Words have a life of their own. They’re born, change, reproduce by generating new words and by spreading into other languages (like viruses)… and words even get old, and… die (they just fall out of use).

In Latin, they used the word SAL “salt,” to create the word SALARIUM. Old French borrowed that as SALAIRE. Later, English borrowed that from French as “salary.” But what was the connection in Latin between “salt” and “salary?” Etymologists believe the word was SALARIUM in Latin because it was salt-money, or an amount to buy salt, which was very valuable back then.

Historical linguistics studies language change over time. Etymology is a sub-field of that; it’s the study of word origins and derivations and how words change over time. For example, AN OXA, MANIG OXAN in Old English became “an ox,” “many oxen” in Modern English, and that’s why “ox” still has this irregular plural today.

Words also change meaning over time. (That’s what historical linguists call “semantic change.”) For example, originally, when NICE was borrowed into English from Old French, it meant “foolish.” Then, over time, it meant timid; fussy or fastidious; delicate; precise and careful; delightful; and, finally, kind and thoughtful. We still have these meanings today, but we lost the original meaning, “foolish” (except perhaps when you say someone is “too nice”).

The word “meat” meant any kind of food in Old English. By around the 1300s, its meaning had narrowed to the meaning we still have today: only animal flesh.

Okay, I need to make a disclaimer here: I am not a trained etymologist. I just know enough about the area and find it really interesting. So, this article is not meant to be an in-depth study of etymology. That would be a really long article.

“war” comes from Old French GUERRE. In late Old English, it became werre… well… guerre to werre… werre to war. That’s how this one word (GUERRE) became what, on the surface at least, seems to be two very different words: GUERRE - WAR.

Why study etymology?

When we understand how words and their meanings change over time, we learn about linguistic processes; how people use words and change their sounds and meanings; how languages borrow words from each other and change their pronunciation to conform to the phonology the language; well… we learn how language itself changes over time—not just how it changed in the past but also how it’s in the process of changing right now.

Latin SAL changed in other languages into SAL, SEL, SALZ, SALT, ZOUT… Then, from SALARIUM to SALÁRIO, SALAIRE… SALARY in English. Much later Japanese then borrowed “salary” from English as SARARĪMAN (to mean a person who works for a salary in a corporation… well, a white-collar worker).

SAL was also the Latin root word for SALSA (anything salted). SALSA > SAUSSE > SAUCE > SAUCY… SASS >… > SASSY…

At its core, English is a Germanic language, but it borrowed words from many other languages. It borrowed heavily from Latin (mostly through French). In fact, around 60% of English words are Latin in origin. That’s two out of every three words!

But then… if English words came from this Germanic language and Latin, where did those languages come from? Well, many ancient languages left written and historical records that allowed you to go back and study how they evolved over time into today’s languages… But can you go further back to before a language even had a writing system?

You see, etymologists are really good at back engineering. They examined written and historical records to understand how languages changed. This way, they could build backwards to reconstruct a “proto-language.” Here, “proto” means the earliest form of a language.

So, even without written records, they were able to model this proto-language that they call “Proto-Indoeuropean.” As people migrated over vast areas, they brought this Proto-Indoeuropean language with them, and it developed into Germanic, Baltoslavic, Italic (that’s where Proto-Latin fits in), Celtic, Hellenic (where proto-Greek is), and Indo-Iranian languages. That’s a huge spread!

Business Insider has this great animated map showing how—over an 8,000-year span—this proto-language spread all over Europe, Russia, and Asia (of course, changing into other proto-languages along the way).

And what did this Proto-Indoeuropean develop from? Well, before that it gets really murky… you can’t expect to go as far back as the first word ever uttered. (Say “the first word ever uttered” really a few times… Phew!)

Etymologists believe the Proto-Indoeuropean root word for “heart” was *kerd. (I don’t know how to pronounce words in these ancient languages, so use your imagination…) Then, through progressive changes in vowel and consonant sounds, *kerd- changed into words in ancient languages: KARDIA… CARDIO… HERD… HERTON… HEORTE… [Modern English] heart…

“Heart” is also associated metaphorically with “courage” and “memory.” From the root word to Latin CORDIS (of the heart) to the meaning “courage,” CORAGGIO, CORAJE, CORAGEM… In Latin, from RECORDARI (literally, to restore to the heart), they got “remember.” And over time, we ended up with “record,” meaning to repeat, to get something by heart and then the modern meaning… I guess, when you record something, you don’t forget it, right?

But, of course, not all words came from Proto-Indoeuropean to Latin to English. Proto-Indoeuropean also branched into Proto-Germanic, and English actually developed from that (along with German, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, and so on…)

The root *pəter branched into different languages. Following something called Grimm’s Law, the sound /p/ in Proto-IndoEuropean becomes Germanic /f/ and /v/. And that’s how we got words like PADRE, PAI, PÈRE, and پدر /pə’dær/ but “father” FATHER and VATER, VADER and FAR.

In some cases, Proto-Indoeuropean branched out… from *bhrater to “brother” but FRATER in Latin. And then it entered English in a roundabout way as a different word with a related meaning. So, we ended up with “brother,” “brotherly” but also “fraternal” (meaning… “brotherly!”)

From *dwóh to DUO to dos, DOIS, DEUX, and so on… *dwóh became *twai in Proto-Germanic and gave us ZWEI, TWEE, TO, “two!” Then again, in a roundabout way through Latin: dual, double.

That’s why, in English, we often end up with so many different words with similar or even identical meanings, one with a Germanic and the other with a different origin, generally Latin or Greek. In the end, they often came from the same Proto-Indoeuropean root word that went through processes of phonological and semantic change, borrowing and re-borrowing and, from a single ancient word we ended up with two or more words in modern English.

We can see that in these vocabulary words: broth, sap… or juice… or nectar; fear, dread… or aversion… or phobia; and so forth.

English is Still Changing

Based on all these historical examples, you might think that this is all history, and English is now set in stone. (Oh, we’ve got plenty of words now. We’re done.) Well, English is not done at all! These processes of language change are always happening in any living language. Sounds are changing, new words emerge all the time, old words take on new meanings… that happens slowly, so we don’t even notice it very much.

Take the famous difference in the pronunciation of “caught” /kɔt/ and “cot” /kɑt/ that we are losing in North America. In places where these vowel sounds have merged into /ɑ/, there is no distinction anymore between “caught” and “cot.” Also, hardly anyone pronounces the H sound in words such as “where,” “when” or “which.” So, they’re pronounced /wɛɚ/ and /wɛn/ and … “witch” and “which” have become homophones.

Words are still being borrowed and adapted into English: pizza, balcony, latte, buffalo, acai, cashew, sushi, haiku, manga, schadenfreude, delicatessen, boss, lanai, and so on… It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?

Think about it… whether we speak English or Norwegian, German, Portuguese, or Polish, Russian, Bengali, Persian, or Kurdish… regardless! In a way… we’re all speaking the descendants of some very ancient language, a proto-language, that was lost in time.

Oh! Insect and sex! Proto-Indoeuropean *sek, “to cut.” From that, we got words such as “dissect,” “section,” and “segment.” In Latin, INSECTARE “to cut into parts,” … INSECTUM was used to mean “an animal that’s ‘cut up into parts’ or ‘has a body with segments.’” An insect! Possibly, then, *sek … SEXUS because you ‘cut up’ or divide beings into genders… sex! That’s how “insect” and “sex” are related words. Is that cool or what?

Languages change continuously, so what do you think English will be like in 100 years? And in 1,000 years? If you’re multilingual, have you noticed some surprising connections between the languages you speak?