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.

2384: felon Jun 28, 2021

While no one should want to be called a felon, it used to have certain additional bad connotations in the past. In Old French 'felon' could mean any sort of 'evil-doer' both in a legal sense including treachery or oath-breaking, but also generally being a scoundrel in the traditional sense. One theory as to where it originates beyond that point is with the Frankish '*fillo' meaning 'scourge', or the Latin fel (poison) while others point to the Latin 'fellare' meaning 'to suck'. Beyond this, it is especially unclear if this was of Romantic or Germanic origins.