2381: camp Jun 25, 2021

The word 'camp' relating to an open field for lodging is not so surprisingly the same as would be found with 'campus', but neither of these have the explicitly militaristic use that was once seen. While French for instance also has the word 'champ' (field), the root in Latin and then Old English had the sense of "contest; battle" hence phrases like 'camp-fever'. This is also related to the Old High German 'hamf' (paralyzed; maimed). Even in the 19th century, when the word 'camp' had moved on from militaristic senses, it took on religious ones as in 'followers of a doctrine', a sense still seen in reference to ideological battle, including secular academic ones. The sense of 'camp' as a hobby or sporting activity was developed from its use for military but it by a historical framework relatively new.

2358: pollen Jun 2, 2021

The word 'pollen' is part of plant reproduction, but that's not exactly the original sense of the root. In Latin, this meant 'flour' to refer to its fine powdery quality. Even when modern taxonomic categories came into effect in the Modern Age, Linnaeus kept the term and used it to describe spores. From then on it the word stuck in an official capacity.

2355: fascinate May 30, 2021

The fascinus was a device used in Roman pagan religious practices that led to the word 'fascinate'. The device was actually idol representative of the divine phallus. This was seen as seen as a medical instrument in some ways but particularly to ward off the evil eye (invidia). It is in this sense of magic and being under this spell to refocus attention that the sense in English of 'fascinate' was established, which had been used as such even in Ancient Rome.

2354: gamut May 29, 2021

'Gamut' referring to the whole range of something originates with music. In fact, this really began as a phrase, from the medieval Latin 'gamma ut' with that being the lowest note on a G scale. This is from the Greek Γ (gamma) originally denoting the last a medieval scale in a hexachord—gamma appears 6th in Greek's alphabet—which was associated with the sound 'ut' in solfège i.e. ut, re, mi, fa.... Eventually this was applied to other scales with more notes and then ranges of anything.

2351: crane & grouse May 26, 2021

The word for a crane in Latin is ‘grus’. In fact, despite the apparent differences these names for the lanky bird are actually cognates, sharing an older root found in many indo-european languages. One might think that the bird known as ‘grouse’—a lot more similar in sound—would be related but it probably has no connection to the Latin ‘grus’. Before it went by its modern name, the grouse was called a 'moorhen', though now this term usually applies to a small, black water-fowl related to the coot.

2349: Aluminum vs. Aluminium May 24, 2021

It's well known that the North American spelling and pronunciation of 'aluminum' differs from that of Britain's 'aluminium', but whether to use -i- or not may not really be the most interesting part of this spelling: it was originally just 'alumium' with no -n-. This is because the word is from Latin 'alumen', a name not for the metal but for the chemical compound known in English as 'alum' (not directly etymologically related) and into the 19th century it was the English, not Latin, where the name was taken from for a resultant 'alumium'.

The difference between the North American and British spellings came after the name was changed to keep with the convention of using Latin roots. For some time the -um and -ium were used interchangeably even by the same individuals, but the British scientific opinion was that it didn't appear to sound as classical, but in America -ium was at first actually more popular anyway. Both of these terms had variant levels of popularities in the respective regions but the current situation was more or less established by the turn of the 20th century.

2344: A History of G and Z May 19, 2021

The letter Z is pretty uncommon in English and at the very end of the alphabet, but this was not always the case. Much like in the Hebrew or Greek writing systems, this letter (or its equivalent) both are numerically 7th though now in Greek it is 6th in order. The elimination of Z was done deliberately by the Roman censor Appius Claudius who saw Z as a foreign letter even though this is only true insofar as Latin doesn't really use it; it was very much present through the creation of the alphabet. This was then replaced with the Roman-invented G now occupying the 7th position, with G being based off of C in form to represent that it is just the vocalized form. The use of the letter G to represent [d͡ʒ] (as in 'giraffe') is from French orthography.

2343: carthage May 18, 2021

Carthage, the capital or the Carthaginian Empire and now the city of Tunis, is known in Arabic as قرطاج (Qarṭāj). The Carthaginians were a Phoenician people who spoke a Semitic language, so it might sound obvious that Arabic would use this, but actually it is a loan word from French replacing an earlier 'Cartagena' which was from Latin. That said, the ancient city was known as qrt-ḥdšt ('new city') in reference to the older 'Tyre'.

2337: get, nascent, and a word family of birth May 12, 2021

The words 'beget' and 'nascent' both relate to birth (as of course do a great many other words) but these can be proven to be related by a common root. The word 'get' is related to a root *ghend- meaning 'to take; to grab; to hold' is also related to *ǵenh₁- and *gene- both meaning 'to give birth' or 'produce' leading to the Latin gnāscor (hence 'nascent') and 'get' along with 'generate' and all its derivatives, also 'gene', 'genealogy', 'pregnant', ‘beget‘, 'kind', 'naive', 'indigenous', 'gonad', and so many more.

2334: Holy Grail May 9, 2021

There are lots of words for types of drinking vessels (cup; mug; glass; clalace; goblet; flute, etc.) but 'grail' really only appears in the context of the Holy Grail. The word 'grail' itself does not have any particular religiously significant etymology, coming from the Medieval Latin 'gradalis' meaning 'dish' and possible related to the word 'crater' though this is less certain. In Middle English the phrase 'Holy Grail' was 'seint gral' or 'sangreal' (same root as 'saint' which just means 'holy') and this is often contrasted with 'sang real' meaning 'royal blood'. This phrase definitely isn't the origin, but certainly could have influenced the word.

2323: auspice, auspicious, & augur Apr 28, 2021

'Auspice' on its own is a legitimate albeit rare word, but referring to a prophetic object or sign, but in the phrase "under the auspices of..." meaning "with the support and oversight of..." it's fairly common. It is in the first way, unsurprisingly that we see its semantic relation to the word 'auspicious', meaning 'sign of success'. Originally though, rather than the general meaning those have now, this was particular to divination, and is related to the word 'augur' which initially was an actual Roman officer whose job was as a diviner.

2321: cormorants & corvids Apr 26, 2021

Cormorants are not corvids, and yet the name for this bird comes from the Latin 'corvus marinus' meaning 'sea raven'. 'Corvus' led to the word 'corvid' denoting the family of crows, ravens, jays, and so on, but this is not the only linguistic similarity to taxonomically distant birds. For one thing, 'cormorant' as an adjective is a synonym of 'ravenous' which of course comes from 'raven' as both birds are known for eating a lot, voraciously.

'Corvus' (Latin for 'raven') led to the word 'corvid' denoting the family of crows, ravens, jays, and so on, but is not related to 'crow' directly, despite any semantic and phonetic similarities. That said, it is believed that the names for both crows and ravens are both ultimately from onomatopoeias based off the calls they make.

2318: italy Apr 22, 2021

The Italian nation is a fairly young one by European standards, but its name goes very far back. Originally it was from the Oscan language 𐌅𐌝𐌕𐌄𐌋𐌉𐌞 (víteliú) meaning "land of bulls". Oscan is an extinct language from the Italian peninsula, but this is assumed to be related with the Latin word 'vitulus' meaning 'calf'. This name for Italy is originally just for the southern tip of the peninsulina.

2315: Italy, Włochy, and Olaszország—How Are These Related? Apr 19, 2021

Many names for Italy follow a similar format: Italien, Italia etc. Some clear exceptions to this exist however in the Polish Włochy and Hungarian Olaszország. In the case of Polish, this word actually has an old Germanic root, despite Germanic languages by and large not using this anymore for 'Italy' from *walhaz meaning 'Roman; Romance', and having the same root as 'Wales' and 'Wallonia'. Similarly, 'Olaszország' is also ultimately of this same proto-Germanic, and proto-Slavic root, possibly related to the Latin 'Volcae', the name of a Celtic tribe. At any rate, only the first half of this comes from the 'Vlasi' root, and the rest is a suffix, as can be seen in Hungarian's related word 'Oláh' for a Romanian.

2314: Cat=Dog, Lamb, and Goat?—Wanderwort Apr 17, 2021

The word for 'dog' in Latin is 'canis' (hence English's 'canine') but the word for 'puppy' is 'catulus'. This also led to its own derivative word in English: 'cat'. This gets stranger however, with more distant relation to the Russian око́т (okót) meaning 'lamb', and Old Irish 'cadla' for 'goat'. Others go on still to connect this to the Arabic قِطّ‎ (qiṭṭ) (i.e. 'cat) and other Semitic words to classify this root as a wanderwort across Indo-European, Uralic, and Semitic languages without one clear origin. The original idea seems to involve however young, often small animals, or sometimes more generally animal fertility.

2308: Nuns vs Sisters Apr 11, 2021

Christian nuns and sisters (in the ecclesiastical sense) may have more or less the same roles, they actually are different. Nuns take solemn vows while religious sisters take simple vows, one main difference of which is that sisters can own property and other capital. This means they are free to make endeavors in certain vocational areas like charity, education, and health. Nuns—the term for which comes from the Latin 'nonna': literally (female) monk—tend to live in the enclosure of an order and are not involved in those affairs.

2302: Nigromancy: A Deliberate Misspelling of 'Necromancy' Apr 5, 2021

Necromancy, sorcery surrounding interactions with the dead, is definitely a form of black magic, and that shows in the historical spelling of the name. 'Necro-' as a combining form is from Greek νεκρός (nekrós) meaning 'dead' as also found in 'necropolis' for instance. Nevertheless, in Middle English (nigromancy) and Medieval Latin (nigromantia) the spelling was obviously changed, and made to align more with the Latin 'niger' (black) to due a presumed—but etymologically erroneous—association with 'black magic'. The spelling was eventually changed to align with the Greek origin during the renaissance.

2288: dean & 10 (Expanded)—Mar 22, 2021

There are a lot of words related to 'dom-' like 'don', 'domain', and relating to control, leadership, and in the case of 'don', 'education', and yet 'dean' is not related. Instead, 'dean' is from the Latin 'decanus' meaning 'leader of ten (soldiers)', unsurprisingly . Indeed, the Roman army's arrangements of tens led to multiple words in English including 'decimate'. Quickly however, the meaning took on other settings such as in the Church and eventually, in English, in education. There was actually a similar word in Old English, teoðingealdor, but at any rate 'dean', and the related 'decan' and 'doyan' are here to stay.

2275: jovial & Jove Mar 9, 2021

Around the world, many cultures have associated certain times of year with heightened happiness. While likely few would still have any association between the two, the word 'jovial' meant born under the influence of the planet Jupiter, also called 'Jove' in English. Indeed, the Latin '-ālis' ending was used to express relationship, in this case with the head of their pantheon, Iovis. This astrological relation and an idea that those people born in that zodiac period were cheerier people led to the modern definition.

2274: gem Mar 8, 2021

In the past many thought that crystals really grew from being alive, and considering the etymology of 'gem', this might not have really seemed such a crazy idea. 'Gem', in its original sense meant 'bud', from the Latin 'gemma', which comes from a root *gen- meaning 'produce'. The root itself is somewhat mysterious, and so cognates are not exactly clear with it, but the root may also have had to do with the growth of other things including nails, with the current sense of 'gem' coming later in relation to the shape of seeds and buds, or their other qualities.