The common Spanish word obra, for “a work” (in the sense of, “a work of art”) or “something done with effort” sounds pretty random at first. But if you think about it…

Obra comes the Latin opus, meaning “work” (in the same sense). From opus, we get various English words including:

• Opus (obviously) – used in music to mean the same.
• Opera – it was originally just a work of music!
• Maneuver – also related to the Spanish mano, for hand: it is a work you create with your hands, literally!
• Operation – yes, an operation is something you’ve created.

Although, there is no obvious English cognate, amargo is the Spanish word for bitter. Bittersweet, for example, is amargodulce: literally, bitter-sweet.

Interestingly, though, the very common Spanish word for “yellow,” amarillo, comes from this same root for bitter. It literally means “a bit of bitterness,” from the Latin amarus for “bitter” with the –illo diminuitive ending.

Yellow — the color of melancholy, of puke, of snot — is really the color of just a hint of bitterness.

A Spanish word that hopefully you don’t use much but unfortunately sometimes you must is ácaro, meaning, “mite.”

Ácaro comes from the Latin for the same, acarus which ultimately comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)ker-, which meant “cut.” Perhaps the word for “cut” turned into “mite” because that’s what mites do, they cut you open?

From that same root, via German, English gets a bunch of words related to cutting, such as… scar. That’s just a big cut, right? We also get the English shore – that’s just where the land cuts the flow of the ocean.

We can see the c-r mapping in both languages, with the initial s- disappearing in Spanish.

Abarcar (“to cover, take in, take on”) comes from the Latin brachium for “shoulder.”

From the same Latin root brachium, we get the English brachial: as in your brachial artery, the artery that runs down your shoulder!

The b-r root is clearly visible from both.

Unsurprisingly, from the same root we also get the Spanish for shoulder… brazo as well as the English…. bra.

The Spanish lado (“side”) comes from the Latin latus (“wide”).

There are many surprising English words from the same Latin root. “Surprising” largely because the l-t sound was preserved in English but evolved into the similar l-d sound in Spanish–thus making the connection less obvious but still interesting.

Some examples include:

• Lateral, and its variations such as, unilateral, bilateral and multilateral.
• Latitude: the latitude is literally the width from one side to the other.
• Dilate: a dilation is indeed a widening.
• Relate: literally means, “to go back to the side”; relating to someone is going to their side of the fence!
• Elation: From the Latin ex-latus (and ex- is, of course, “above”); thus literally, “rising above the sides”.
• Collateral: From com + latus (com is Latin for “with, together”, like the Spanish con-); thus literally meaning, “side by side”.
• Translate: Since trans– is Latin for “across”, a translation is literally, “bringing something from one side across to another.”

Yerno (Spanish for “son-in-law”) at first sounds like nothing in English.

But let’s look closer! The g- and y- sounds are often mixed up between languages and even regions that speak the same language; in fact, the Old English g- transformed itself into a y- over time (compare the German gestern with the English yesterday, for example). And the n-r sound not uncommonly swaps to become an r-n sound; the two are easily mixed up, especially in slurred speech.

Thus, the bizarre-sounding y-r-n root of yerno maps to the g-n-r root of generic (Maybe sons-in-law are more generic in Spanish cultures than English ones?) as well as genus (which lost the final r-) — yes, genus as in Latin and now scientific classification of your spot in the universe! The son-in-law, I guess, is destined to be the son-in-law as his lot-in-life.

Miercoles (Spanish for Wednesday) has a fun parallel between both languages.

Miercoles is named after Mercury — the Roman god of speed. Wednesday is named after Woden — the Germanic god of speed!

Cuidar, Spanish for “to take care of” or “to be careful” and commonly used in the warning cuidado, comes from the Latin cogitare, “to think”: cogito ergo sum, as they say.

The Latin cogitare comes from the Latin prefix com with agitare, “to turn in the mind” which comes from agere, “to move”. From this we get the English… agitate!

So, we have an interesting evolution: from moving to thinking (a moving of the mind) to… being careful. Being careful is then the same thing as being thoughtful — at least in Spanish.

Interestingly, the original root has been mostly lost in the modern cuidar, with the c-a-g-t root turning into c-d. But you can still see the outline at the extremes.

Saber (Spanish for “to know”, in the sense of “knowing a fact”–not “knowing a person”) comes from the Latin sapere, meaning “to taste.” I guess you can taste a fact more easily than a person!

From the same Latin root, we get (via French) the English word… sage. Sagacity is a form of wisdom — which is a form of knowledge.

The s-b to s-g mapping is clear, and the -b- and -g- have similar soft sounds.

Cadena (Spanish for “chain”) is a cousin of chain itself. Both come from the Latin for the same: catena.

The English chain is disfigured from the original for a few reasons. Since the English came to our language via the French, the initial c- changed into a ch-, as so often French does. French additionally has a tendency to drop letters: the middle -d- in this case. Thus, the c-(d)-n of cadena maps to the ch-n of chain!

From the same root, we have a more obvious connection–but a more obscure word. Concatenate, a nerdy word meaning “to add together” that really only software developers remember these days, comes from the same root. We can thus see the c-d-n of cadena very easily in the c-t-n of concatenate, remembering the very common -d- and -t- swapping. Concatenate begins with the con- prefix (“together” in Latin, like the Spanish “con”) — and what is a concatenation, if not just adding together a bunch of nodes in a chain?