It might seem obvious in retrospect but it wasn’t at the time. Vulva (yes, that word!) and the Spanish for “to return”, volver, all come from the same root: the Latin volvere also meaning “to return.” Yes, the words are almost identical and the v-l-v in both maps exactly to the other. It should have been glaringly obvious, I just never realized it! The vulva, after all, does roll back and forth! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the comment!).

Lots of other super-interesting words come from the same root: valve, etc. Over the next weeks we’ll post them too! Volver is a particularly rich root; people have been going back and forth since time immemorial!

The Spanish palabra (“word”) comes from the Latin parabola, meaning, “story; comparison.”

From that Latin word, we get the English… parable.

So, the word that became “word” in Spanish, became, the child’s word in English!

The p-r-b-l root is clear in both.

Interestingly, from the same root is the French word for “to talk”: parler. Je ne parle pas Francais!

But it gets more interesting: the French parler (literally, “to tell parables”) has a parallel to the Spanish hablar (which came from fabulare, literally, “to tell fables.”) As the Roman soldiers conquered Spain and France, their exaggerated words for telling stories — telling parables or fables — eventually became the words themselves for just talking.

The Spanish word for “goose” ganso, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root for the same, ghans. From this same root, we get… the English goose itself! In fact, ganso entered Spanish via German (and the English word comes from German too) — it makes sense that they’re related.

Thus, we can see that the g-(n)-s of ganso maps to the g-s of goose.

Débil, Spanish for “weak,” comes from the same root as the English word debilitating: the Latin debilitas, meaning the same. This is another “obvious once you know” etymology.

Curiously, debilitas itself comes from the prefix de- (“away from”) and the Proto-Indo-European root *bel-, meaning “strong.” From the same root we get, via other routes, the strong men of the Bolsheviks. Yes, it’s the same b-l root there too!

Dorado, Spanish for “covered in gold” — think of McDonalds in Spanish. Los Arcos Dorados (the golden arches–literally!) comes from the Latin de– (“of”) and aurum, “gold”: gilded or gold-covered, literally means… from gold.

From the same Latin root we also get the English aurora, “dawn” or the Roman goddess of the dawn. The morning sun glittering in the distance is… shining, just like gold does.

We can see the a-r root in both words clearly!

The Spanish for “anger,” rabia, is curiously related to the disease of insane dogs: rabies.

Both come from the Latin rabere, meaning “to be crazy.” So, rabies is literally when a dog is acting crazy — and, at least in Spanish, when you get angry, it is a form of insanity!

Also from the Latin rabere comes related English words such as: rage, enrage, and rabid.

Vencer — “to defeat” in Spanish — comes from the Latin vincere, of course from the classic triple-V line of Caesar’s. But from this root, we get a bunch of interesting words, including:

• Vincent — yes, the name is literally, The Conquerer!
• Victory — the victor does win over the enemy!
• Convince — With the con- prefix… the victor of an argument just convinces the other!
• Vanquish — The victor vanquishes the opponent!
• Invincible — the victor is someone who is not (in!) vincible!
• Evict — when you’re evicted from your apartment, that is a form of defeat

We can see the v-n-c root in most of these, or slight variations, like v-n-q.

The Spanish rubio (meaning “blonde,” as in the hair color) comes from the Latin rubeus, meaning “red”.

How did “red” come to mean “blonde”? In a world where everyone has very dark black hair… it’s easy to see how everyone could conflate blonde hair and red hair. The Romans didn’t know the Irish!

From the same Latin root, we get various English words including Ruby, the stone, and guess what color it is? We also get Rubric, which was originally religious directions that were written in… guess what color ink?

Esmero, a Spanish word meaning “done with care” comes from the Latin prefix ex– combined with the Latin merus which meant, “unmixed; pure” (such as, pure wine — not diluted by water). Anything done with care will be pure, right?

From that same Latin root merus, we also get the English… mere. The interesting part is that, over the centuries, mere has gone on to almost take on the opposite of its original meaning: the original, more Latinate sense, was similar to “pure” and its Spanish derivative, done with care. But over time, in English at least, its become degraded and degraded to the point in which today, it means to do “just barely enough.” This is an example of a broader pattern: words tend to degrade over time.

We see the m-r root clearly in both languages.