Words of Dead Worlds

Originally the word “meat” comes from the old English “mete” which refers to any type of food. “Mete” was simply whatever you were eating. That word is descended from proto-Indo-European word “matti” which originally meant […]

When you experience a catharsis, you feel cleansed by the experience of strong emotion. The word literally refers to the idea of purification, as it comes from the Greek root “Katharos”, which means “clean” in […]

What makes a biscuit a biscuit? Well, the word literally means “twice-baked”. It starts with “bi”, which means “two” — like binoculars. And then “cuit” is literally french for cooked. This is because in ancient […]

We understand the word “apocalypse” as referring to the end of the world, but it didn’t always have such a sinister meaning. Coming from the Greek, it is made up of two words: “Apo” which […]

We generally take the words we use for money for granted. After all, we don’t need to know where it comes from as long as we get more of it! But since money is generally […]

The words “guest” and “host” are two sides of the same coin — they’re related concepts but they have opposite meanings. Strangely, they are both descended from the same proto-indo-european root: ghosti, which meant “stranger” […]

The word “quarantine” comes from the Italian word “quaranta”, which means “forty”. At the height of the Venetian trading empire, one of the major threats that the city faced was the danger that foreign trade […]

In old Icelandic, calling someone a “raum” or “raumr” was a way of mixing an insult in with your compliment (or vice-versa). That’s because if someone was a “raum”, they were both exceptionally large, and […]