How is vinegar made? Well, it is basically sour wine. And guess what? Vinegar literally means “sour wine”! Vine– is Latin for “wine” and the -egar comes from the Latin aigre meaning “sour.”
This makes vinegar directly related to the Spanish word for sour: agrio!
(It also makes it related to the Spanish for wine, vino, but that one is too obvious).
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
