Jason in Barre, Vermont, wonders if there’s a connection between the words casual and casualty. Both belong to a family of words involving the idea of falling, deriving from Latin cadere, to fall, and its past participle, casus. From the same roots...
Vice is a noun meaning bad behavior, but it’s also an adjective referring to an official who is second in command. Karen, a seventh- and eighth-grade history teacher in Waco, Texas, says her students wonder why. These two senses of vice come...
Is there a difference between reticent and reluctant? Reticent more specifically involves reluctance to speak–it comes from the Latin root meaning “silent,” and is a relative of the word tacit–whereas you can be reluctant to...
The words respiration and inspiration have the same Latin root, spirare, which means “to breathe.” The word conspire also shares that etymological root. But what does conspiring have to do with breathing? The source of this term is notion that...
Why do spelling bees include such bizarre, obsolete words as cymotrichous? Why is New York called the Big Apple? Also, the stinky folk medicine tradition called an asifidity bag, the surprising number of common English phrases that come directly...
Here’s a testy T-shirt slogan: “Polyamory is wrong! It’s either multiamory or polyphilia. But mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Etymological Mish-Mashery”...
