A lesson in Etymology (read and contribute).

[lola_siannodel]

Jill_Frost

Sophomore-

Latin, I believe

Sopho - Wise
More - Fool

Thus a sophomore is a "wise fool".

My english teacher mentioned that today. Too bad you already put it up. I was going to. Oh well.  

[SilverMaple]

I only took two years of Latin in the 6th and 7th grade, and then I stopped because it was annoying. Oh man, I forgot everything! sweatdrop


Encyclopedia: Derived from the Greek words enkyklios (circular or general) and paideia (education). Modern sense of "reference work arranged alphabetically"  

[Maculata]

I was looking up information on the Muses...
So we've got the basis/origin of the words "museum" and "thespian."

Quote:

Many places were dedicated to the Muses such as the famous Valley of the Muses - Thespies on the eastern slopes of Mt. Helikon began it's "Mouseai" festivals in the 6th c. B.C. It was organized every 5 years by the Thespians. Poets and musicians from all over Greece also participated in various games (epic, poetry, rapsodia, kithara, aulos, satyric poetry, tragedy and comedy). It was common for ancient schools to have a shrine to the Muses called mouseion, the source of the modern word 'museum.'

(Direct quote from http://www.eliki.com/portals/fantasy/circle/define.html)  

[The MoUsY spell-checker]

How about the word grammar, which is the focus of this guild?

From the Old French grammaire which meant "learning," especially Latin and philology, which in turn came from the Latin grammatica, from Greek grammatike tekhne "art of letters" as in philology and literature, which came from gramma "letter," from stem of graphein "to draw or write."

How appropriate considering that people who use incorrect grammar on purpose are the ones who don't care to learn proper English.  

[Ithaya]

How about a simple one?

Alphabet - from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: "alpha" and "beta".
Or so I assume.

And as for Mousy's post, it looks like that might be something to do with the route of graphite, too (graphein - to draw or write), though of course I'm only guessing.

And that somehow reminded me of the word fortune, and the Latin "fortuna", meaning fortune.  

[The MoUsY spell-checker]

Ikonik Angel

And as for mousey's post, it looks like that might be something to do with the route of graphite, too (graphein - to draw or write), though of course I'm only guessing.

Well, as far as I know, graphite does come from graphein (to draw / write).

By the way, it's Mousy (no e).  

[Eurykleia]

Jill_Frost

Sophomore-

Latin, I believe

Sopho - Wise
More - Fool

Thus a sophomore is a "wise fool".

'sophos' isn't Latin, it's Greek, just like 'moros' 3nodding

Here's another one for you:

Psychosomatic: Of or relating to a disorder having physical symptoms but originating from mental or emotional causes

Derived from the Greek words 'psyche' (spirit, mind) and 'somatos' (body).  

[K8.Edid]

With everyone talking about words rooted in Latin, particularly medical or scientific terms, I figured I'd point out the reason. Throughout the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church pretty much held a monopoly in Europe on education and literacy. The Catholic church, being based out of Rome, used Latin as it's official language, in fact only teaching reading and writing in Latin for over 4 centuries. Because of this, in order to achieve any level of higher learning, it was essential to know Latin, and so the classification of things in a scientific context (animal species, medical conditions, literary conventions, etc.) naturally followed suit.

I know this is a little off the topic, but it's in the right neighborhood, and I thought it was interesting.  

[Eurykleia]

With everybody going on about how useful Latin is and how many words are derived from Latin, I feel it's my duty to say this:

Greek is just as useful (yes, in science and medicine too!)

To show you some proof:

* everthing that ends with -scope (stethoscope, bronchoscope, microscope, gastroscope, oscilloscope) derived from 'skopein' (to see)
* everthing that ends with -phone (telephone, geophone, semafoon) derived from 'phonos' (voice)
* everthing that ends with -logy (biology, dermatology, psychology, sexology) derived from 'logos' (word, speech)
* everthing that ends with -phobia (xenophobia, claustrophobia, arachnephobia) derived from 'phobos' (fear)
* everthing that ends with -philia (*****, necrophilia, hemophilia) derived from 'philos' (love, lover)  

[K8.Edid]

Eurykleia

With everybody going on about how useful Latin is and how many words are derived from Latin, I feel it's my duty to say this:

Greek is just as useful (yes, in science and medicine too!)

To show you some proof:

* everthing that ends with -scope (stethoscope, bronchoscope, microscope, gastroscope, oscilloscope) derived from 'skopein' (to see)
* everthing that ends with -phone (telephone, geophone, semafoon) derived from 'phonos' (voice)
* everthing that ends with -logy (biology, dermatology, psychology, sexology) derived from 'logos' (word, speech)
* everthing that ends with -phobia (xenophobia, claustrophobia, arachnephobia) derived from 'phobos' (fear)
* everthing that ends with -philia (*****, necrophilia, hemophilia) derived from 'philos' (love, lover)

I absolutely agree. however, Greek is a root language of Latin, and a lot of Greek words were adopted by Latin, which is why they are so prevalent.  

[Eurykleia]

History of the Greek language
History of the Latin language

I think I misunderstood, but did you say that Greek is derived from Latin? That would be avant la lettre, wouldn't it?  

[K8.Edid]

Eurykleia

History of the Greek language
History of the Latin language

I think I misunderstood, but did you say that Greek is derived from Latin? That would be avant la lettre, wouldn't it?

I'm sorry, I probably could have made it clearer, but I meant exactly the opposite. I said that Latin derives from Greek. Basically all I meant was that since the Romans (Latin) adopted a great deal of learning from the Greek, the Greek terms worked their way into the Latin vocabulary, much like Latin has worked it's way into ours.  

[Eurykleia]

K8.Edid

Eurykleia

History of the Greek language
History of the Latin language

I think I misunderstood, but did you say that Greek is derived from Latin? That would be avant la lettre, wouldn't it?

I'm sorry, I probably could have made it clearer, but I meant exactly the opposite. I said that Latin derives from Greek. Basically all I meant was that since the Romans (Latin) adopted a great deal of learning from the Greek, the Greek terms worked their way into the Latin vocabulary, much like Latin has worked it's way into ours.

Well, with that I completely agree! 3nodding

I just thought of another word:

Euthanasia - 'eu' (good) and 'thanatos' (death), both are Greek words  

[Sola Catella]

Doombringer50

Note the root of many words are not obvious, English stemming from three main languages, Latin, German, and Greek. Many words find there origin in theese texts. By the way, hemo is for hemoglobin, the normal type of red blood cell. segragation is from segres, murder is slang for homicide. the truth is, many words we commonly use are slang, the total words in the English language are more than one million, we only use about three thousand in common speech, almost all of the regular words are slang.

Technically, while English is a Germanic language, it does not stem from German--it comes from Anglo-Saxon, which is closely related to German.

English has also borrowed words heavily from French (after the Normandy invasion; this is where we get words like pork and beef), Latin, and Greek--it didn't spring from any of these languages; English just happens to be unique in the fact that it has borrowed so many words from other languages (rather than creating its own) that it has become a Germanic language with mostly words of Romantic derivation.

One of my favorite words, concur, literally means 'to run with,' by combining a slurring of the preposition 'con' (with) with the Latin verb 'curro, currere, cucurri, cursus' meaning 'run.'

The popular name Felix means 'happy or lucky' in Latin.  

[Emmanuela]

Sinister- It comes from Latin meaning 'Left handed' (where as 'dexter' means 'right handed'). It came to it's present meaning from the middle ages. When a person would meet another they would shake there right hand up and down to make sure that there were no knives in there sleeve and that they couldn't use there right hand to stab you. As most people were right handed, this generally worked to stop assainations, as the left hand is too weak to stab through the Medival chain mail. BUT, if you met a person and shook their right hand, then think, they can't kill me, I'm holding their strong hand, they could use their left hand to stab you as that was their strong hand. Ok, I'm rambling a bit here, but do you get what I mean? My R.E. teacher told us!