The Spanish for “car”, coche, on the surface sounds nothing like the English for the same — or any similar word.

But etymologically, it comes from the same root as the English, coach. Think of it in the old-fashioned sense: the coach class on a train!

All come from the same root: the Hungarian kocsi (Hungarian is unrelated to English or Spanish, so there is no deeper root), named after the village where the first coach, in the very old sense — a large carriage — was created.

It’s interesting how coach has been downgraded as a word in English: it was first the luxurious way to travel, and now it is the economy class of a train.

Tripulación (Spanish for “crew”, such as on a boat or plane) comes from the Latin prefix inter– (“between”) and the Latin root polire (“to polish” in Latin). A crew probably spends much of their time polishing the ship to perfection, right?

From the same Latin root polire, we get another Spanish word: pulir which means… “to polish”. Surprise, surprise!

From this root, we also get the English polish as well, in addition to the less obvious: interpolate. How did that transformation of meaning happen? Remember that in interpolating, you’re really polishing up the data! You’re taking data from the dusty bins of forgotten files, dusting it off, and reusing it: just like polishing up a ship.

The p-l root is clear in all variations as well.

Hueso (Spanish for “bone”) comes from the Latin for the same, os. The connection is particularly easy to see when we remember that the H- is perfectly silent in Spanish.

From the same root we get the English ossify — literally, to turn into bone! — but, considering about 4 people know this word, it is easy to remember hueso if we connect it to another word it is related to, albeit more distantly: oyster.

Oyster comes from the Latin for the same, Ostreum, which itself comes from the Latin word os, “bone.” What is an oyster defined by, if not, its hard, bony shell?

The o-s root is clearly visible in all variations!

The Spanish for “hand,” mano, has a first cousin in the English manufacture.

Manufacture comes from the Latin manus (like in Spanish, also “hand”) and the Latin factura (which is from facere — “to do”, and almost identically in Spanish, with an f-to-h conversion, hacer).

Thus, “manufacturing” is literally, “making by hand” — the work of an artisan!

Also from the Latin for “hand”, and thus still cousins with the Spanish mano is manual as well: manual labor is also work done with your hands–literally.

Rocío (Spanish for “dew,” not to mention its cousin, rociar, “to sprink or spray”) comes the Latin ros (“dew.”)

From that same root, we get the English… rosemary, everyone’s favorite mint! Rosemary in fact comes from the Latin rosmarinus (ros – marinus), the “dew of the sea”!

The r-c of rocío clearly maps to the r-s of rosemary.

Charlar (Spanish for “to chat”) comes from the Italian ciarla — as does the English… charlatan. We can see the ch-r-l root in both easily.

Interestingly, the English word has taken a negative turn while the Spanish, not so much. I would attribute this to the Anglo-Saxon culture’s looking down on talking without action, while the Latin culture’s focus on talking even if it means inaction.

Also from the same root is the English, charade. Charade, like charlatan, contains negative connotations of appearance, not reality.

We get the English cockroach directly from the Spanish cucaracha. We can see the c-c-r-ch pattern in both. There is no Latin, Greek, or German root since it is a New World word.

Although we’ve already discussed the etymology of correr (Spanish for “to run”) and its connection to the English horse, there is another — more obvious — connection that helps us remember it:

Recur. Recur literally comes from the Latin recurrere, meaning “to run back and forth”: re – correr. Yes, that which recurs keeps on running back and forth!

Cargarse (Spanish for, “to take charge”; a very common word, often used in the sense of, assigning or accepting responsibility) comes from the Latin carrus, meaning, cart.

How did this evolution happen? Easy: you load a cart; the cart takes on the burden; just as you, by accepting responsibility, are taking on a burden, too. In other words, any action you might need to be responsible for achieving is just like the annoying junk in your trunk, holding down the car!

From the same Latin root, we get the English, caricature. You can see the c-r root in both. The word for “cart” turned into caricature because, well, a caricature is an overloading (!). A caricature, then, is literally just piling on more and more needless extra, exaggerated observations into the picture you paint, until your trunk is similarly burdened down!

Funny how, in English, over-loading a car is an exaggeration, a caricature. But in Spanish, it is just the normal way of taking responsibility.

Árbol, Spanish for “tree” comes from the Latin arbor, for the same. We can see the Latin to Spanish evolution easily recognizing the common r-to-l swap, where the “r” and “l” sounds in many languages are often interchanged.

From the same Latin root, we get a variety of related English words, such as herb and arbor, as in Ann Arbor, home of the great University of Michigan. We also get some other Spanish words, such as hierba, meaning “grass”.

The pattern is easy to spot in the vowel-r-b root: a-r-b for árbol and e-r-b for herb.