The Spanish for “anger,” rencor, has a fun English cousin: rancid.
Both words come from the Latin rancere, meaning “to stink.”
Thus, literally, both rotten food stinks and, anger stinks.
We can see the relationship clearly if we see the r-n-c mapping between the words.
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
