Huevo and Ovulate
- Posted by Morgan
- on May 15, 2023
- in Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
Huevo (Spanish for “egg”) comes from the Latin ovum for the same. From that Latin root, we get the English… ovaries. The ue‑v of huevo clearly maps to the o‑v of ovary! The eggs are both literal and metaphorical!
From the same root we also get ovulate and even… oval An egg is oval, isn’t it?
- See more of this pattern: Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
Involucrar and Envelope
- Posted by Morgan
- on May 15, 2023
- in True Spanish Etymology Stories
The Spanish involucrar (“to get involved with”) comes from the Celtic voloper (“to wrap up.”) Isn’t getting “involved” with something just getting yourself wrapped up in it?
From that same Celtic root, we also get the English… envelope. An
We can see the i‑n‑v‑l of involucrar maps to the e‑n‑v‑l of envelope.
- See more of this pattern: True Spanish Etymology Stories
Hervir and Fever
- Posted by Morgan
- on May 14, 2023
- in Initial F to H, Patterns, Spanish
Hervir (Spanish for, “to boil”) comes from the Latin fervere (“to be hot, burn, boil”).
The best part: from this same root, we also get the English… fever!
This is thus another example of the pattern where Spanish lost the initial F and replaced it with the (unspoken) “H”: Hoja-Foliage, Huir-Fugitive, etc.
- See more of this pattern: Initial F to H, Patterns, Spanish
Atropellar and Troop
- Posted by Morgan
- on May 14, 2023
- in Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
Atropellar (“to knock over, to knock down” in Spanish) comes to Spanish borrowed from the French, troupe, as in, a troop of soldiers or more common these days, a comedy troop.
Although we can see the tr‑p root in the English, French, and Spanish words, the question remains: how did a group turn into a knocking-over? The answer is that, large groups of rowdy drunk men almost always result in… knocking lots of people over! This is not a new concept – the word itself attests to the antiquity of drunken revelry!
- See more of this pattern: Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
Sueño and Insomnia
Sueño (Spanish for “dream”) and insomnia come from the same root: the Latin somnus, meaning, “sleep.”
The evolution is easy to spot if we remember that the ‑mn- sound in Latin usually transformed into the ñ in Spanish. See damn and daño, for example. Or autumn and otoño as well.
Thus, the s‑mn of insomnia maps to the s‑ñ of, sueño.
Estafa and Staff
- Posted by Morgan
- on May 13, 2023
- in Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
Estafa, Spanish for “to rip off” in the sense of taking advantage of someone or stealing, comes from the Italian staffa, which means “stirrup”. This change of meaning came about because it was common, back in the day, for people to borrow a horse… and then never return it.
The Italian staffa itself comes from the Proto-Indo-European root stebh, which meant “to fasten, or place firmly” from which we get the English… staff. A staff, after all, is a stick that helps you fasten something into place! At least, it used to.
From the same PIE root, we get other English words including step, stump, stamp and… Stephen.
The st‑f root is visible in both estafa and staff.
- See more of this pattern: Spanish, True Spanish Etymology Stories
what is the etymological way to learn spanish?
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:
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