Abarcar (“to cover, take in, take on”) comes from the Latin brachium for “shoulder.”
From the same Latin root brachium, we get the English brachial: as in your brachial artery, the artery that runs down your shoulder!
The b-r root is clearly visible from both.
Unsurprisingly, from the same root we also get the Spanish for shoulder… brazo as well as the English…. bra.
Nerds love to pattern-match, to find commonalities among everything. Our approach to learning languages revolves (the same -volve- that is in “volver”, to “return”) around connecting the Spanish words to the related English words via their common etymologies – to find the linguistic patterns, because these patterns become easy triggers to remember what words mean. Want to know more? Email us and ask:
morgan@westegg.com
Here at ForNerds, we love meeting and talking to other people who love learning Spanish, etymologies, and any other topic in nerdy ways. Drop us a note and say hi!
morgan@westegg.com
