2552: arsenic Dec 8, 2021

'Arsenic' shares the same root as 'glass' and 'glow', even though they don't sound similar. This is because of how the word for 'arsenic' was borrowed through Persian. There was a folk etymology for a while that it was from the Greek αρσέν (arsen) meaning 'masculine; virile', which some people associated because of the overall powerful nature of the material. This is not true.