426: response and responsibility Feb 7, 2016

'Response' and 'responsibility' look similar in their spellings and sound similar as well, but their meanings are quite different. Ultimately these words both comes from the Latin, responsum' meaning, ‘answered, offered in return,’ which in turn derives from the verb 'respondere' which means the same as our 'respond' today. The difference between these words is due to the word 'responsible' which came to English via French, which meant to answer' as in "to answer for one's misdoings".