777: hell and color Jan 23, 2017

While some extreme grammarians could see thinking that a 'color' is someone who 'cols', following the pattern of words like 'aviator', as a sin, this would not be as wrong as it first appears. One thing to know is that the word, 'hell' comes from the Old English 'hel, hell', which is of Germanic origin but comes from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to cover or hide’ which includes the Latin, 'celare' meaning, 'to conceal' and the Greek, 'kalyptein'. It is not uncommon for Germanic words beginning with H to start with a C in Romance languages, and for more of that, click here. Not only is the word, 'hell' related for words meaning, 'to conceal' (with those words also giving English the word, 'conceal') but the word, 'color', originates from a Romantic verb deriving from a word related to the aforementioned, 'celare'.