Prestar (Spanish for “to lend”) has its English equivalent in… presto!

It does make sense: Presto! Money just appears out of nowhere!

There is a deeper connection. Both come from the Latin praesto, meaning, “ready”, which also came to mean, “provide”. Provide, over the years, turned into “lend” as Latin evolved into Spanish: the lender is the provider, after all. Thus, “ready” turned into “provide” which turned into “lend”!

From the same Latin root, we also get the English press–but not in the common sense of pressing a button. But in the almost forgotten, more esoteric sense of forcing into military service. I remember learning in an 18th century British history class that the British crown used to impress men into military service–no, they weren’t trying to impress them (make yourself sound great) but instead to impress them (draft them!). This press and impress, in these particular senses, also come from praesto.

Chicle (Spanish for “gum”) gives us the English chiclets, the gum brand. Through a funny story: when Mexican general Santa Anna lost Texas, he fled — dressed up in drag, actually (true story!) — to Staten Island. There, he stayed with an inventor Thomas Adams and told him about the Mexican love of chewing chicle… the rest is history.

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.

The Spanish acontecimiento (“something that happened; event”) comes from the Latin contigere (“to touch”).

How did that transformation happen? An event is something that you touch, at least metaphorically, or that touches you. Something that happens that doesn’t touch you is just in your mind: not a real event!

From the same Latin root, we also get a few nifty English words including:

• Contact — That is literally touching, right?
• Contagious — How do you get something that is contagious? Through touching!
• Contiguous — Two things that are contiguous are touching each other!
• Contingent — One thing that is contingent upon another is a metaphorical form of touching it as well.

We can see the c-n-t root in both the Spanish and English words.

We have already discussed how pollo (Spanish for chicken) and poultry are related. But it gets more interesting!

From the same root is also… pool. Yes, pool! How so?

Well, in medieval France, they used to play the jeu de la poule, the game of the chicken. Everyone would pool their money together, and throw stones at the chicken to see it run in a different direction each time, a bit like how you… play pool today! Yes, this is where the game pool comes from!

Desmayar, meaning “to faint” is — unexpectedly! — related to the English word, dismay.

Both come from the same Old French root, esmaier, which meant “to trouble, disturb”. (This, in turn, comes from the Latin ex-magare, in which the magare means, “to be powerful” and is related to the English, “might” and “may.”)

Thus, both fainting and being in total shock (dismayed!) are both just ancient manifestations of being troubled at something.

The Spanish tener (to hold) comes from the Latin tenere for the same.

From the same root tenere, we get the English tenet — think about it, you hold your beliefs.

And it gets even better: from tenere, we also get the English suffix -tain, as in maintain, sustain, contain, detain, obtain, and entertain. And the -tain words map almost identically to the Spanish suffix of the same, the same -tener!

For example, mano, the Spanish for hand, is the same mano in maintain (or mantener, in Spanish) — which thus literally means, “to hold in your hand”!

Remo (Spanish for the very common word “oar”) is a cousin of, well, the English row.

Remo comes from the Latin for the same, remus, while the English came from the German ruejen; both of those come from Proto-Indo-European *ere, meaning “to row”.

We can see the r- maps to the r- in each and it does make sense. After all, you do use an oar to row.

Spanish for “lawyer,” abogado is a cousin of the English uncommon synonym for the same, advocate (think of it in the noun sense).

Both come from the same Latin root: advocatus, which is a combination of ad- (“towards”) and vocare (“to call”: think of voice, vocal, vocation — literally, your calling!). So a lawyer, or advocate, literally meant, “one called [to help others]”.

Although the sound mappings may not be obvious at first, we can see that the a-b-g-d of abogado maps to the a-v-c-t of advocate.

We’ve already discussed desayuno (“breakfast”): breakfast is the break-fast, just like des- (“anti”) ayuno (“fast”)!

However, there’s an interesting addition to the story: dinner.

The English dinner originally comes from the French for breakfast, which is almost the same as the Spanish. Both are from Latin and meant the same: desjunare. Thus, we can see over time that the Latin for break-fast (dis– + ieiunus) became “breakfast” in both French and Spanish and then, the French transformed into the English dinner while maintaining the same meaning in Spanish.

Therefore, we can see the d-(s)-n of desayuno map to the d-n of dinner.

But all of this suggests a question: how did breakfast (the first meal of the day) turn into dinner (the last meal of the day)?

Easy: breakfast kept on getting later and later — until it was dinner!

At first it was eating in the morning: breaking the fast of the night. Then, over time, the big fast-breaking meal would happen around 2pm. Then eventually it turned into our 6pm dinnertime.

We see this vestige of the old usage in England, where dinner is sometimes used to refer to “lunch”–and the night-time meal that Americans call dinner is still sometimes called… supper.