Débil, Spanish for “weak,” comes from the same root as the English word debilitating: the Latin debilitas, meaning the same. This is another “obvious once you know” etymology.

Curiously, debilitas itself comes from the prefix de- (“away from”) and the Proto-Indo-European root *bel‑, meaning “strong.” From the same root we get, via other routes, the strong men of the Bolsheviks. Yes, it’s the same b‑l root there too!

Quejar, Spanish for “to complain” doesn’t seem related to any English equivalent.

But upon closer look, it is a first cousin of both quash and squash.

How so?

All come from the Latin quassare, meaning, “to shatter.”

The relationship is easy to see if we remember that the Spanish ‑j- sound used to be the Latin ‑s- sound (and many variants, like ‑ss‑, ‑si‑, ‑sy‑, ‑sh‑, ‑ch‑, etc).

Thus, the qu‑j for quejar maps to the qu-sh of quash and the sq-sh of squash.

Complaining, it seems, is a form of quashing (squashing?) your opponent!

Luchar, Spanish for “to fight”, doesn’t sound like its cousin reluctant — although of course everyone is reluctant to fight. But the relationship is closer than it seems.

Reluctant comes from the Latin roots re- (“against”) and luctari (“to fight”). Reluctance is to fight against what should be done — literally.

From luctari, we also get the Spanish for exactly the same, “to fight.”

But they don’t sound similar. How did luchar evolve?

Interestingly, in most Latin words that had a ‑ct- sound, this ‑ct- sound evolved into ‑ch- as Latin evolved into Spanish. Think about night/noche and eight/octagon. The same pattern explains luctari turning into luchar.

We see this relationship clearly with the l‑ct to l‑ch mapping between the two.

Today’s pattern is so easy that you won’t recognize it until we tell you!

The classic English last name Fletcher was given to those who made arrows. This is unsurprising if we remember the Spanish word for arrow is… flecha. The f‑l-ch root is obvious in both of them!

Now is when we all go in unison: ahhhhh!

Amenazar (Spanish for “to threaten”) has a curious origin: from the Latin mine, meaning, “lead” or sometimes “silver.” Remember, this was the material that weapons — swords, arrowheads, etc — were made of. If you don’t comply with my threat – I will hurt you!

Although this isn’t directly related to the English mine (the place where you get silver!), they might have the same original root – and it is an easy mnemonic. After all, we mine silver in the mines.

The Spanish apoyar, to help, has a surprising root: podiare, the Latin meaning “to step on.” Think of the Spanish pie, from the same root.

This came about through an interesting linguistic turn of events: podiare originally meant “to step on” and then it came to mean, “to raise up” — like, to put on a podium. A podium is, after all, a raised platform that you step on!

Helping someone, in Spanish, is thus a form of lifting them up — literally. Or maybe, stepping on them?

This implies a question: what happened to the ‑d-? The p‑y of apoyar maps to the p‑d of podium, but how did the ‑d- turn into a ‑y-? The answer is that, apoyar entered Spanish, from podiare, via Italian — it first turned into appoggiare, the Italian for the same! So the ‑d- turned into a ‑g- which turned into a ‑y-.