I subscribe to a service that emails me the “Word of the Day.” Oh, I know others wait for their joke of the day or their milestone of the day, but I’m into words. And even when I already am familiar with the word of a particular day, I always learn something about it that I didn’t know.
Take the word Sequoia. I knew it was another name for that majestic tree, the redwood. And I’ve seen redwoods in Muir Woods in northern California. More than once. But I didn’t know they were named for Cherokee Indian Chief Sequoia, who invented a Native American alphabet for his people. In other words, he wanted to be able to write his language down for posterity. What an honor to have such regal trees remember him.
Recent sightings of other words include abracadabra, discreet, and mortgage.
The latter is particularly in the news these days as sub-prime lenders struggle to recoup their losses. Here, courtesy of Visual Thesaurus, is the etymology of the word: “The mort part of mortgage is the same syllable that appears in mortify, rigor mortis, and mortician. Yup, it’s all about death, French (and ultimately, Latin) style, but a mortgage (literally “dead pledge”) was so called originally because it was absolute: the property was dead to the lender if the debt was paid, and dead to the borrower if it wasn’t.”
Sounds pretty relevant to me.
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