Burro is the Spanish for “donkey” and it is — shocking, shocking! — related to the English… burrito, that Mexican food we all know and love. The Spanish itself comes from burrus for the crimson/maroon color, which comes from the Greek pyros for “fire.”

But how did a donkey become a burrito?

The answer is lost to the annals of history, but the two most common theories are: they look like those packs that you roll up and hang on either side of a donkey; or they look like donkey’s ears. In either case, the imagery should make the word easy to remember!

The very common Spanish word aguantar, meaning “to put up with”, comes from old Provençal for glove, guanto.

We can see the evolution: something you put up with is something you (metaphorically) carry around with you, a burden. And what is a glove if not something you wear, something you carry around, something that helps you carry anything else?

There’s an interesting parallel to the English, bear — in this “put up with” sense, not the animal sense. Bear, from the Old English beran, originally meant something you “bring” or “carry”. So, bear follows a parallel etymology as aguantar, both originally meaning what you carry and becoming what you force yourself to put up with.

Funnily enough, the Old English beran also became bore and born in English: women do bear children, after all. I guess children are really just something you need to put up with.

The Spanish rechazar (“to reject”) doesn’t sound like anything in English. At least not obviously.

The word, however, comes from more basic Spanish word cazar (“to hunt”), which we’ve previously discussed here — related to the English “chase.”

But how did the word for “hunt” become “reject”?

Well, lets think about it: you hunt after your opponent, your enemy, the big bad bear you’re trying to kill. You hunt after that which you reject. Hunting could then be seen as the strongest form of rejection!

Andar, the common Spanish word for “to walk”, usually in the metaphorical sense of “to go,” is cousins with the English… ambulance, as well as its cousin, amble.

Both come from the Latin ambulare, meaning, “to walk.”

We can see the a-n-d of andar map to the a-m-b of ambulance and amble very clearly.

The Spanish Sombrero comes from the Latin prefix sub– (“under”) with the Latin umbra (“shade, shadow.”) We also get the Spanish sombra (“shade”) from that same root, as well.

From that same root umbra, we get the English… umbrella. The umbrella does protect you from the sun, actually — think of 19th century aristocratic women walking around with their sunlight umbrellas!

We also get, from the same root, the English to take umbrage — to get angry. Why? The bad things that happened that got you angry usually happened… in the shadows.

The u-mbr root is clearly visible in all the variations.

Sentarse, Spanish for “to sit”, comes from the root *sed-, meaning the same.

The surprising English cognate is… saddle. A saddle is what you do sit in, indeed!

This mapping is not obvious at first, but you can see that the s-d root of saddle maps to the s-(n)-t of sentarse. Anglo-Saxons are shorter and to the point–as usual.

English does have another word from the same root, but it comes via the Latin and is thus more pretentious and closer to the Spanish: sedentary. A veritable SAT word!

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).

Cambiar and the English for the same, change, both come from the same root: cambiare, Latin, also meaning change.

Although this may not be obvious at first, we can see the mapping in the c-m-b of cambiar and the ch-n-g of change. The -m- and -n- are often interchanged; and the -g- and -b- both have that soft sound where you can hear how one can easily turn into the other, although it is a bit less common.

Why did the c- of the Latin turn into the ch- in change? Oh, easy: because it came to English via the French! And French has its own sets of patterns of course!

The Spanish brazo (“arm”) comes from the Latin bracchium meaning, “upper arm.” The Latin itself comes from the Greek brakhion. From these, we get English words such as bra (more recognizable if we remember the older, and original French, form of the word, brassière) as well as bracelet

We can see the br-c and its variations (br-z, br-s) in all the versions of the word.

The Spanish aval (“guarantee, as in a bank guarantee”) comes from the French aval, meaning “downward”. The French word comes from the Latin vallem, meaning valley — a valley does slope downward, after all. From that same root, we get the English… avalanche, which is an overwhelming amount of the valley tumbling downwards!

But all this leaves the question: how did the word for “downward” turn into the word for a “loan guarantee”? That part is unknown. But we could speculate that the creditor calling upon a guarantor to pay in the case of a default is a low point for the borrower. Or perhaps, you need a guarantor only when you’re at a low point yourself. Or…? Since we don’t know the history, we can create infinite variations that sound like they might make sense, as a fun exercise.

You can see the a-v-l root in all the variations clearly.