In the previous post, I wrote about the little program I developed that searches for words far apart but sharing common etymology. It keeps bringing me new discoveries. Sharing them!
The words chaos and gas are essentially the same. The chemist Jan Baptista van Helmont introduced ‘gas’ as he deciphered ‘chaos’ in his Dutch interpretation, from the Greek χάος. The letter g in Dutch conveys a sound remotely echoing the modern Greek ch. “In the absence of a name,” he wrote, “I called this vapor ‘gas’, as it stems closely from the ancient concept of chaos.” Meanwhile, the word gasoline has no relation to gas. It derives from Cazeline (possibly influenced by Gazeline—a name from an Irish imitation), a trademark for petroleum-based lamp oil, originating from the surname of the man who first started selling it in 1862—John Cassell—and the suffix -eline. The name Cassell itself comes from the Anglo-Norman castel (related to the English castle), which, in turn, traces back to the Old French castel.
Cattle, capital, and chattel are etymological twins of each other, also linked to capital—all through the root caput (“head”), reflecting the ancient practice of counting wealth in terms of cattle heads. By the way, caput also gives rise to chief and captain.
The same goes for the twins bank and bench. “Bank” originally meant “bench,” where a money changer sat, or the “counter” of a money exchanger. Compare typologically with the Russian word “лавка”—both “bench” and “store” (in old times—these were the same), “counter”—the place where trading happens, i.e., “by the bench.” The breaking of a bench—banca rotta—has also given us the word bankrupt (“bankrupt”), literally “broken bench.”
Separately interesting are Chicago/skunk. Chicago comes from the French Chécagou, a transcription of the word from the Miami people’s language šikaakwa—”wild onion” (or ramps, Allium tricoccum) and also “striped skunk.” Skunk means, in the same language, roughly “urinates badly” and indeed designates the skunk itself.
Hospital and hotel/hostel are also etymological twins. They trace back to hospes (“host, guest”).
Discussing that dress and director share a common root would take a lot, a supporting image is attached for help
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Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 