The Spanish cobrar (“to charge”; in the sense of, to charge a fee or collect a payment) comes from the older Spanish recobrar (meaning, “to recuperate”) — which itself comes from the Latin recuperare for the same “to recuperate.”

We can see the c-b-r mapping to the c-p-r clearly, since the -c- and -p- are often interchanged.

Lesson: charging for something is really just recuperating money that is owed to you anyway!

The Spanish carne (“meat”) is surprisingly related to… carnival.

The original carnival — the wild annual February parties in the Roman Catholic countries — were, after all, a meat market in many senses of the word!

Also related, more literally, is the English carnage.

You can see the c-r mapping in both the English and Spanish words clearly.

Today’s pattern is another entry in the “obvious in hindsight” category.

Presupuesto is the common Spanish word for “budget.” Sounds arbitrary and hard to remember.

But it turns out, this is just a participle of presuponer, which is conjugated just like poner and means… to presuppose.

We see the relation between the words obviously in the too-clear pre-s-p-s pattern.

A budget, after all, is just presupposing how all the money will be spent, right?

Today’s etymology is simple and to the point — and, for me at least, was completely unexpected:

Amigo (Spanish for “friend”), comes from the Latin amare, “to love,” a common word we see everywhere, as in amor and amante.

So, a “friend” is literally someone you love.

The best part is that there is an exact parallel to English as well: the English friend comes from the Old Germanic word frijojanan meaning… “to love”. From this Germanic root meaning “to love” we get various distantly related words in English, like Friday (the day of Love — just like how in Spanish, viernes is named after Venus, the goddess of love) as well as freedom. Freedom is something we love… just like our friend.

The Spanish arena means “sand” or “dirt” while the English arena means, well, arena (something similar to a stadium). Nothing to do with sand!

Or so it seems…

Interestingly, both come from the same root: the Latin harena which meant “a place to combat, usually a sandy place” but came from an older, Etruscan word meaning, “a sandy place”. From the older meaning we get the Spanish sand, but from the Roman variation — apparently, the Romans often fought on sand! — we get the newer, English meaning.

Continuing the recent saber and sage conversation…

Quizás (Spanish for “perhaps”) comes from the Latin qui sapi — literally, “Who knows?”. The sapi in that phrase is from the Latin for “to know”, sapere, from which root we get the English… savvy. Someone who is savvy just knows a lot about the subject!

The final -s of quizás maps to the first s- of savvy. And the -p- in sapere, although vanished from quizás, maps to the -vv- in savvy.

The Spanish demasiado (“enough!”) comes from the Latin adverb magis, meaning “more!”.

From that same root magis, we also get the English… master.

It goes to show you: a master is really someone who, as Depeche Mode said, just can’t get enough.  So they keep going and going and going, until they’ve become a master.

The m-s root maps clearly to both words.

To chisel, and the Spanish salchicha (basically, hot dog) both come from the same root: the Latin secare, meaning “to cut, sever, decide”.

Other English words some from the same Latin root secare, such as dissect.

How did “to cut” turn into “hot dog”? Via the Italian Salsiccia — and if you think about it, the hot dog is indeed just a very finely chiseled piece of meat!

Thursday and Jueves, like the other days of the week, come from the Germanic and Latin names for the same God: the King of the Gods, the God known as “Zeus” to the Greeks, and sometimes as “Jupiter.”

The King of the Gods was often called “Jove” (we still remember this in English: sometimes people euphemistically say, “By Jove!”) — hence, Jueves. And the Germanic equivalent of the same God is Thor — and Thursday is literally, “Thor’s Day”!

Buscar (Spanish for “to ask for”) comes from the Latin poscere (“to ask urgently”). In the transition from Latin to Spanish, the word was definitely weakened since buscar doesn’t have any urgent implication.

From this Latin root, we also get the English word… postulate. Postulating is really just formulating a thesis and wanting responses — which is just a sophisticated form of asking a question!

We can see the b-s-c of buscar maps to the p-s-t of postulate.