Plumber comes from the Latin plumbum, for “lead.” A plumber originally meant someone who works with (particularly smelts) lead. These men, over time, worked mostly with pipes (made of lead!) and eventually dealt more and more with the pipes that carry water into (or out of) homes and buildings. So lead workers became plumbers.
Interestingly, the Spanish for “lead” (plomo) comes from the same Latin root. We can see the pl-m root in words in both languages.
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
