1738: liaison and ligation Sep 17, 2019

'Liaison' was originally a cooking term, as discussed yesterday, but there is more than one way how that word changed. 'Ligation' is a doublet of 'liaison', meaning that they both came from the same word but diverged phonetically over time. I this case, 'ligate' came directly from Latin for 'to tie' (ligare), whereas 'liaison' evolved within French first. Many words in medicine, in this case specifically surgery come directly from Latin, and, more importantly, have not existed as long, such that they are more similar to the original.