Flamante, Spanish for “great-looking” or “splendid” — perhaps, a more modern version of which would be, “awesome!” — comes from the Latin flamma, meaning, “flame.”
From that same root, we get the English, flame. Completely unsurprisingly.
If you’re wondering how we get from “fire” to “sexy”, then all we need to do is remember one word…. flaming.
The fl-m root is clearly visible in both.
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!
morgan@westegg.com
