Although, there is no obvious English cognate, amargo is the Spanish word for bitter. Bittersweet, for example, is amargodulce: literally, bitter-sweet.
Interestingly, though, the very common Spanish word for “yellow,” amarillo, comes from this same root for bitter. It literally means “a bit of bitterness,” from the Latin amarus for “bitter” with the –illo diminuitive ending.
Yellow — the color of melancholy, of puke, of snot — is really the color of just a hint of bitterness.
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:
morgan@westegg.com
Here at ForNerds, we love meeting and talking to other people who love learning Spanish, etymologies, and any other topic in nerdy ways. Drop us a note and say hi!
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