The Spanish mirar, “to look at” has two curious cousins in English: admire, mirror and miracle.

All come from the same Latin root, mirari, which meant “to wonder at”. We can see how they are all related to this same sentiment of awe and wonder:

• Mirar is now just to look at someone but originally meant, to look at with wonder. Looking at someone is a form of wondering about them.
• Admire is really a form of wonderment as well. The ad- prefix means “at”, so admiration is always wonder that is directed at someone.
• Mirror too comes from the same root, and looking in the mirror is thus the most conceited act of being in awe of yourself!
• Miracle, as well as its Spanish version milagro, also comes from the same root: a Miracle is really just something that causes intense wonder!

The m-r root is present in all versions, in English and Spanish, so the pattern is easy to spot.

We’ve already discussed how the Spanish lavar is related to other words in English like deluge.

But there’s a more obvious connection, that we’ll discuss today: lavar, meaning “to wash” is related to the English… lavatory. I guess there’s a reason why the British call it the “wash room”!

Both come from the Latin lavare, similarly meaning “to was”. And we can see the l-v root clearly in both.

Sello (Spanish for “stamp”) is a cousin of the English seal — not the animal, but the, umm, stamp that is put onto official documents.

Bot come from the Latin sigillum meaning, “small, engraved picture” because a stamp or seal really was just a small, engraved picture.

The -gl- sound of the original sigillum vanished into English so that the English word seal is left with just the vowels around it (e, a) (in English) while in Spanish, the -gl- evolved into the similar -ll- sound. This is in the same class of evolutions as pl- to ll- (plenty, lleno), fl- to ll- (flare, llamar), and cl- to ll- (call, llamar) as well, although less common than those.

The Spanish for a “thousand,” mil, comes from the Latin milia, meaning the same.

Here’s the interesting part: the ancient Romans would put a stake in the ground every thousand paces outside the city, to mark how far away you go. And that’s why, from the Latin word for a thousand, we get the English… mile.

Bonus: million comes from the same root–and literally means, “a thousand thousand!”

Concurso (Spanish for “contest”) comes from the Latin concursus, (“running together”).

Why? A contest really is just a bunch of people… running together to see who gets to the finish line first.

From that same Latin root, we get the English… concur. Why? It could also mean in Latin an “assembly”: a bunch of people might be running together, but might also be just talking together in an assembly, to which they come to a conclusion together, to which, they concur.

We can see the c-n-c-r root in both words clearly.

Pollo (Spanish for “chicken”) is a close cousin of the English poultry.

Both come from the Latin pullus meaning “a young animal”.

The p-l mapping in both is obvious. And this mapping falls into the category of “completely and utterly obvious once you’ve heard it… but you never thought of or realized it until someone told you”.

Playa (Spanish for “beach”) comes from the Latin plaga, meaning “region to go hunting” (hunting for water animals, clearly!), which is related to the Greek plagos (“side” — the beach is just one side of your town!).

From that same root, we get the English Plagiarism — because the original Latin, in the sense of “hunting”, turned into “kidnapping”, which then turned into, “literary kidnapping.” Seriously!

The original Proto-Indo-European root, before it became Latin, for these words is *pele, meaning, “flat, spread out”. Think of the English, plain, as in, the plains of the midwest! And what is the beach if not flat land spread out? Well, most beaches, at least.

Mezcla (Spanish for “mix”) comes from the Latin miscere, meaning, “to mix.” You can envision the sound change when you remember that -sc- sounds and even looks like the letter -zc-!

From the same Latin root miscere we get the English, promiscuous — just miscere with the emphasis prefix pro-, so it literally means “to mix indiscriminately.” What does a promiscuous girl (or, ummm, guy) do if not mix with someone without discriminating between people that much?

The m-z-c of mezcla clearly maps to the m-s-c of promiscuous.