2587: felt, filter, anvil, and felon Jan 13, 2022

Filters can be made out of a plethora of materials and are used in all sorts of situations, but historically this would have been felt. This is why the Latin 'filtrium' and the English 'felt' came to be distantly related, but the material of felt has used to have a more generic meaning. The root *pel- meaning 'to beat' references this process of creating felts by crushing and rolling materials, and it is this same root that is found in 'anvil' and 'to fell' fairly sensibly, and 'felon' perhaps more surprisingly. This last word is from the same root but over time took on meanings of wickedness in certain languages like Latin before coming to English.