Learning Spanish & Etymology Pattern-Matching for Nerds

Bailar, Spanish meaning “to dance”, is another one of these Spanish words that sounds random and is difficult until you realize its subtle common origin with a bunch of English words.

Bailar comes from the late Latin ballare, meaning the same, “to dance”, originally from the Greek ballizein, meaning, “to dance or jump around”. From this same root, we get a few English words including:

No connection to the English “ball” in the sense of the round object you throw.

Have a ball remembering these!