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[johnstonmr]

Ok, so one of the side effects of my being an English major and my love affair with words is that I actually enjoy etymology.

Here's something interesting I found about the word impeach:

Nothing hobbles a President so much as impeachment, and there is an etymological as well as a procedural reason for this. The word impeach can be traced back through Anglo-Norman empecher to Late Latin impedicare, “to catch, entangle,” from Latin pedica, “fetter for the ankle, snare.” Thus we find that Middle English empechen, the ancestor of our word, means such things as “to cause to get stuck fast,” “hinder or impede,” “interfere with,” and “criticize unfavorably.” A legal sense of empechen is first recorded in 1384. This sense, which had previously developed in Old French, was “to accuse, bring charges against.”

Fun, no?

Comments

[lograh.livejournal.com]

cool! Word origins is always an interesting topic that's good for a few minutes of inspired thought and appreciation (or, sometimes, hatred) for the language we use.

[ktbee.livejournal.com]

In Medieval Latin this quarter we were reading the Book of Mark from the Bible. So I am sitting here, translating with my Latin dictionnary, when I come across a word which, my dictionnary tells me, means reclining. I get really confused since the whole sentence would mean Jesus was reclining with his disciples. That just seems blasphemus. I was so confused, why hasn't anyone mentionned Jesus "reclining" with his disciples. Turns out the word that meant "reclining" in Classsical Latin became the word for "eating" in Medieval Latin (the Romans liked to recline when they ate so the two ideas became synonomous for the same word). Jesus was eating with the disciples which made much more sense. I do not know if this counts as etymology, but I find it highly amusing.

[johnstonmr]

It is, indeed, etymology.

And ... YOU POSTED!!!!! Yay!!!!!!