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.
2548: melancholy Dec 4, 2021
Like 'gall' and its connection (supposedly) to the gallbladder 'melancholy' was also once a pseudo-medical term. The word Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melankholía), from μέλας (mélas) meaning 'black; murky'—same root as 'melanin'—and χολή (kholḗ) meaning 'bile', which is the same root as 'cholera'. This black bile, known in Latin as atra bilis (dark bile) believed as a kidney secretion which in excess causes sadness.
2547: gall & gallbladder Dec 3, 2021
To have gall, as in spirited gumption, and to have a gallbladder where the liver's bile is stored might not seem related at first glance, but to doctors of less enlightened times, these would. Linguistically, these are from the same root, and the organ is so named because of Medieval idea of the humors, which is to say it was where one of the four humors (fluids) was stored, believed to be the source of physical and mental characteristics depending on their quantity. In this case, the yellow bile was associated with gumption.
2546: glass (material) Dec 2, 2021
Recent posts discussed how the root *ghel- led to words for many different colors [1] or that related to light and bile, but even just looking at how 'glass' has changed can reveal a great deal of variability alone. From the 13th century it was used with restricted meanings beyond that just the material, in this case meaning 'drinking glass'. In the 14th century it took on the meaning of 'mirror' as in 'looking glass', and by the 15th century it referred to the timekeeping 'hour glass'.
2545: glass, chlorine, & arsenic Dec 1, 2021
The word 'glass' in other languages shares a root with many color-words, but that is far from where the root *ghel- ends. Meaning 'shine', this word also led to many light-associated words like 'glaze', 'glow', 'gold', 'glimmer' 'glare' and more, but also many related to bile like 'chlorine', cholera, and 'gall'. Even 'arsenic' comes through this root, though it was adopted into English through many other languages, ultimately from Old Iranian *zarna- (golden).
2544: glass Nov 30, 2021
Although 'glass' refers to a material in English, throughout Indo-European languages the root of this word often led to other meanings for a variety of colors. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *ghel- meant 'shine' and as a result eventually came to mean 'glass' in Germanic languages, but also led to words for the colors yellow such as Old English 'glær' or Latin 'glaesum' (amber) or indeed Modern English 'yellow'. In Old Irish 'glass' meant 'green' and in Welsh 'glas' means 'blue'.