Relevant is a surprising cousin of the Spanish for Levantar (“to raise”). Both come from the Latin Levantare, also meaning “to raise”.
But what is the connection between raising and being relevant? Relevant was originally a legal term, in Scotland, meaning “to take over a property”: thus, raising up became taking control of which then became just making relevant.
Fervor is really just an intense passion heating up. Thus we shouldn’t be surprised that it comes from the Latin root fervere (“to boil”), from which we get the Spanish for the same (“to boil”), hervir.
The seemingly unrelated words are connected through the common transformation of Latin words beginning with an f- into an h- in Spanish, such as fig and higo, and fable and hablar.
Thus, the f-r-v of fervor maps to the h-r-v of hervir.
The Spanish for “deaf,” sordo, comes from the Latin for the same: sordus.
From that same root is the English… absurd.
How did this abs… umm, ridiculous etymology come about? Well, with the ab– prefix (Latin for “off” or “away from”), it meant, “that which is unheard of.” Think of it as a metaphorical version of being deaf: so absurd, you have never heard about that happening in reality!
This, this is self-referential: it is an absurd etymology!
Today’s link is another gem: despite sounding completely different, “hundred” and ciento are actually the same word. Here’s how.
The ancient Proto-Indo-European root *kmtom meant a hundred. As PIE evolved into Latin, the word stayed basically the same phonetically, turning into centum, and stayed the same (but with a soft-c pronunciation) into the Spanish, ciento.
But as PIE evolved into German, the k-/c- sounds evolved into h- sounds. Think about heart/corazon and hemp/cannabis, for example. 100 followed the same pattern, with the initial k-/c- sound turning into the h-.
Thus, the c-n-t of ciento maps exactly to the h-n-d of hundred. The t/d were interchanged but that’s a very common, similar, and more obvious pattern.
The usual Spanish word for “name”, nombre, is very closely related to the English word nominal, in an interesting way. Not only does nominally mean “relating to the name”, but there is an interesting etymological pattern between the words.
Latin words with an m-n sound usually turned the m-n into an mbr sound as Latin evolved into Spanish. Thus, we see curious patterns like hominem becoming hombre, and the words famine and hambre being closely linked.
The same pattern applies here. The Latin nominalis turned into the Spanish nombre and the English nominal — thus the n-m-n of nominal maps exactly to the n-mbr of nombre!
The Spanish for “poster”, afiche, comes from the Latin figere, meaning, “to fasten”. From that same root, we get the English affix — and we can see that clearly, as the a-f-ch of afiche maps clearly to the a-f-x of affix.
More distantly, from the original Latin root figere, we get the English… fix. You can see the Latin root f-g map to the English f-x as well!
The Spanish for “night”, noche, is related (via the common Latin ancestor) nocturnal.
Here’s the interesting part: the Latin sound “ct” consistently changed to the “ch” sound in Spanish. Think “lactose” and “leche”, or “octagon” and “ocho”. And this is another example of that pattern: the “ct” in “nocturnal” is the same as the “ch” in “noche”!
The Spanish Decir (“to say”) comes from the Latin dictio for “word”. Its participle form is dicho — and dicho also means “saying”, in the sense of, a cliche.
Thus decir is another example of the “ct” sound in Latin turning into the “ch” sound in Spanish — and is also related to the English word… dictionary.
The English foot comes from the Indo-European root *ped. Think pedal.
Interestingly, the “p” sound consistently transformed into an “f” in the Germanic languages — but remained a “p” in the Latinate languages.
This is why, foot is equivalent to pie.
Other examples of this pattern include father and padre, and the English far is from the same root as the Latin per.
Otoño doesn’t sound much like its English translation, fall (the season). But if we think of the less common synonym, Autumn, then the pattern becomes a bit clearer.
Both come from the Latin for the same, Autumnus. But Latin words with an m-n sound usually became an ñ sound in Spanish. Think of damn and daño, for example. So the a-t-m-n of autumn maps to the o-t-ñ of otoño!
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:
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