We’re all familiar with the word stamina, meaning “strength to resist, endurance.” But did you know that it comes from the Latin word for “threads”?

The Latin, in turn, is from the Greek stemon…a thread. Specifically, the thread that the three Fates spun, measured out, and snipped for each human life. If someone had a long life–exhibiting fortitude and endurance and resistance to the bad things that could end said life early–they were thought to have long “threads of life.” Much stamina.

And just as a bonus–if you haven’t brushed up on your Greek mythology lately, LOL, the three fates are Clotho (the one who spun the threads), Lachesis (the one who measured it out), and Atropos (the one who cuts it).

Did you know that our word enigma actually comes from the Greek word for “fable”? I hadn’t! But apparently so.

Said Greek word is ainos. And since a fable is a tale whose meaning/message has to be puzzled out, ainos let to a verb ainissesthai, which means (go figure) “to puzzle out.” Well, the Greek was of course adopted into Latin and changed a bit, to aenigma. Sound familiar? This was a noun, meaning (you guess it!) “a puzzling speech or riddle.”

It officially joined English as enimga in the 1530s.

It took a while for summer weather to really take hold for us this year in West Virginia…but man, it’s been full force in August! Heat and humidity all around–which we frequently describe as balmy. Which, as it turns out, probably isn’t actually a good word for it, LOL.

Balmy, in the sense mentioned above, should actually mean “mild, temperate.” It comes, after all, from balm, which is of course soothing. It had that meaning since the 1600s. But before that, it actually referred to another quality of balm–the fact that it’s scented. I had no idea that balmy originally meant “fragrant”! Did you? By the 1700s, in fact, it had combined the two to mean “mild, fragrant.”

But then an interesting meaning came along that I’ve never even heard of. It began to mean “weak-minded, idiotic, someone characterized by odd behavior.” Now, you may be going “Whaaaaaat?” like I was. That meaning came along in the 1850s…and was most likely a result of confusion. The word that actually meant that was barmy. Barm is the foam that rises to the top of some alcoholic beverages during the brewing process, which was believed to cause such odd behavior. Barmy, then, makes sense. But apparently, it was confused with balmy often enough in speech that the meaning got borrowed.

What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods right now?

This kind of qualifies as a head slap moment, LOL. So even as kid, I noticed how close pastor sounds and looks to pasture. And the fact that pastoral means “having to do with country life” was something I learned a long time ago. But I never actually paused to wonder why our word for a minister is so directly related to all this farm stuff.

But duh. It’s because pastor is actually directly from a Latin word, meaning…want to take a guess? “Shepherd.” Of course!! So it’s no wonder it shares a root with pasture.

It’s been a part of the English language since the 14th century and has pretty much always carried both meanings since pastor was used in Church Latin to denote those who tend the spiritual flock of souls. It didn’t become a verb, however, until the 1870s.

A couple years ago, I remember reading to the kids about Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit to Japan in 1854, and how it opened Japan to trade with the US for the first time. But I didn’t realize that the word tycoon came directly from this visit!

During Perry’s meetings, the shogun’s supporters wanted to make it very clear to the guests that the shogun was actually more important than the emperor when it came to making decisions. So they called him taikun, which is literally “great prince”–(ta, great + kiun, prince). Perry brought the word home with him, and it apparently quickly caught on.

During Lincoln’s term as president, his cabinet members began to affectionately refer to him as the tycoon (the Americanized spelling of the word). This nudged the meaning from “great prince” to “important person.” Only after World War One did the meaning travel a bit more to mean “wealthy and powerful businessman.”

If you saw my post a few weeks ago on excruciating/crucifixion, you might just look at the word crucial and say, “Well, huh. That has that cruc root in it too!”

And you’d be right. Crucial also has the same root, which literally means “cross” in Latin. But in the case of this word, we actually owe Francis Bacon thanks for our meaning of “critical, of the highest importance.”

You see, in addition to being a torture device, a cross was also a very simple form used for practical things like signposts. In his work, Instantius Crucis in 1620, Bacon takes the literal signpost and its Latin word and uses it metaphorically–when you see a signpost, you know to pay attention, right? Following the right direction will be of the utmost importance to where you end up on a journey.

Well, by the 1730s English had adopted the literal meaning of crucial–shaped like a cross. And by 1830, the metaphorical meaning had come along too. I always find it interesting when the later, symbolic meaning has completely overtaken the literal one in modern speech!