See? I told you you'd be seeing more from this book. More amusing word cousins:
What do hors d'oeuvres, mosquitos, sofas, and awnings have in common? Heh. Well, let's start from the parent-word and work down from there: konopos, which is the Greek for a gnat or mosquito. From that, the Greeks derived konopion, meaning "a bed or couch surrounded by curtains to keep away mosquitoes." Hop sideways to Latin, which takes the Greek word, ditches the divan, and uses canopeum to refer to mosquito netting. English eventually inherits this word as canopy, the cloth covering suspended over a four-poster bed, or-- you guessed it-- an awning. But where's the snack food in all this? It's those wacky French again... they take the original Greek, ditch the awning, and use the word canape to refer to a sofa. And then, because some chef needed a word when he came up with an appetizer that *sits* nummy little treats on pieces of toast or crackers, he called it a "couch"-- a canape.
And one more quick one that is, perhaps, even more bizarre: a reed, a pen, a candy, and a squid. (Hee. Gotcha with that last one, didn't I?) Here's how they're linked: the Latin for "reed" is calamus, and because cut reeds were used for as pens, the word got inherited directly. In fact, the technical term for the hollow part of a feather (which is why feathers also get used as quills), thanks to this inheritance, is also known as the calamus.) The candy? Caramel. The L --> R corruption is pretty common when Latin words get pulled into English, so calamellus (a diminutive of our "reed" word, since the sweet is made from sugar CANE) becomes the Portuguese caramel, which is the same in English (tho' they say it with a cool accent). And the squid? Go back to the pen. Pens are long and slender, and they give out ink. So do squid (when they're frightened, anyway). Hence the Italian calamari, the food-word for squid.
Posted by gris at July 19, 2004 01:49 PM