Través — in the classic phrase, a través de (“going through”) — comes from the Latin transversus, which is just the prefix trans– (“through”) with vertere (“to turn”).

Here is where it gets interesting. From the same root vertere, we get all of the vert– English words, such as: convert, invert, divert, vertebrae. All do involve turning, in one form or another.

This one doesn’t have a mapping that is easy, since only the v- survives, since the trans– lost the -ns- and the r-t-r of vertere disappeared, leaving us with just… v. But we should remember that the v-, and much more often the v-r or v-r-t is just that something is turning, converting into something else.

Esconder (Spanish for “to hide”) comes from the Latin ab– (“away”) and condere (“to put together”). Hiding is, after all, just a form of putting yourself away from everyone else!

From the same root we get the less common English abscond, “to secretly run away to avoid capture.” That is just hiding–but taken to the extreme!

The Spanish vendimia (“a harvest of wine”) comes from the Latin vinum (“wine” — from which we get words like vino — “wine” — in Spanish) combined with demere, which meant, “to take out”. So the wine harvest is literally, the taking out of the wine.

The interesting part is that, from these same two roots, we get the English… vintage. You may think of vintage cars or vintage clothing — but it really does just refer to taking out wine.

We can see the v-n-d of vendimia maps to the v-n-t of vintage.

The Spanish aprovecharse (“to take advantage of,” in a good way) comes from the Latin ad– (“towards”) and profectus (“progress, success.”)

From the same root profectus, we get the English… profit.

We can see the root pr-v of aprovecharse mapping to the pr-f of profit. And how do you make a profit if not by taking advantage of the opportunities in front of you?

Seguir, Spanish meaning “to follow”, sounds like it has nothing to do with anything.

But it does, in a subtle way. It comes from the Latin sequi, which means “to follow.” From the same root we get:

• Persecute – from the Latin persequi; the per means “through”, and the sequi is the same “follow”.
• Sequel – directly from the Latin sequi for “follow”, via French.

Haber (“to have”, in the grammatical sense, and the root form of he, has, ha, hemos, etc) comes from the Latin for habere, meaning “to hold.”

From the same root, we get the English word habit. What is a habit if not something you hold so dearly that you do it all the time? We also get prohibit (the same root with the prefix pro meaning “away”). What is a prohibition if not a habit that you’re trying to stop?

The h-b root is so obvious in all, it’s almost not worth mentioning. Almost!

Aguja (Spanish for “needle”) and the similar Agujero (“hole”) both come from the Latin acus, also “needle.”

From the same Latin root, via Latin, we get the English acuity. Being sharp with your wit and observations is just another form of being sharp!

Another descendent (just slightly more distant!) is acrid — because that which is bitter is really sharp on the tongue.

The a-c root in English maps to the a-g root in Spanish. The c- and g- transformation is a very common one too; both sounds are very similar!