The Spanish Atajo (“shortcut”) comes from the Latin taliare which means, “to split.” How did that transformation come about? Think about it like this: if you want to get somewhere quickly — via a shortcut — then you keep on splitting what remains to get there the quickest way! A more subtle variation of that is, atajo has the a “devious” implication, such as: you’re trying to use the shortcut to get around doing it the hard or honest way. You’re trying to split the path to take a quicker one…
The Latin tailare gives us the English… entail. If a premise entails a conclusion, then, the conclusion is cut for precisely that problem! (This originally happened in reference to inheritances, actually: the inheritance was cut appropriately.)
And from the same root we get the English tailor. A tailor cuts clothing to be right for you!
