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Grilled Cheese is a product of Village Compute

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@alliterative.bsky.social Oct 5, 2026, 6:28 PM

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is CLITORIS/CLIMAX #wotd #clitoris #climax #ladder

I hope everyone knows by now that clitoris and climax go together—and perhaps etymologically too! Clitoris comes from the Late Greek diminutive kleitoris of the same meaning but the root of this is uncertain. It might come from the verb kleiein “to sheath” in reference to its being covered by the labia minora or because the related word kleis has the secondary meaning “key”. Or it might come from Greek klitys “side of a hill” from the Proto-Indo-European root *klei- “to lean” thus meaning “little hill”. This root also leads to English ladder (from Old English hlæder) and Greek klimax, literally “ladder”, which came into English as climax with the figurative rhetorical sense of the climax of an argument. Climax gained the sense “sexual orgasm” in the 1880s and is said to have been promoted in the 20th century by birth-control pioneer Marie Stopes.

@alliterative.bsky.social Sep 28, 2026, 4:52 PM

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is WHORE/CHERISH #wotd #whore #cherish #caress #charity #KamaSutra

Talking about sex can sometimes be uncomfortable, but the words we use to do so are often etymologically fascinating. The word whore, for instance, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *ka- “like, desire”, but somewhere along the way in the Germanic branch this seems to have been used euphemistically to refer to a prostitute, as in Old English hore and Modern English whore. That root comes into Latin with more of the original sense as carus “dear”, which leads to such English words as cherish, caress, and charity. The root makes into English in a third way, through Sanskrit kama “love, desire”, which forms part of the title Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu treatise about sex and love. The word sutra, by the way, means “series of aphorisms”, literally “string, thread” from Proto-Indo-European *syu- “to bind, sew”, the root that also lies behind sew, seam, and suture, and, it turns out, also hymen.

@alliterative.bsky.social Sep 21, 2026, 7:06 PM

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is AUTUMN/FALL #wotd #autumn #fall

There’s often debate about the words autumn and fall, breaking along the lines of North American and British usage, but really there’s no need to abolish one term as inauthentic because etymologically they’re probably related. Autumn came into English in the 14th c. from Old French autumpne or automne, ultimately from Latin autumnus “autumn”. Its further etymology is uncertain with some etymologists giving up and positing that it was borrowed from the extinct language isolate Etruscan, but one plausible derivation is that it is from the compound *au-tomos “harvest” from the Proto-Indo-European roots *au- “off, away” (also the root of words such as negotiate and authentic) + *temə- “to cut” (also the source of words such as contemplate, epitome, and estimate), from the sense “the cutting off, the cutting away”. That root *au-, which had the earlier form *h2ew-, is almost certainly related to another PIE root *apo- “off, away”, which had the earlier form *h2po-, which is the source of words such as of, off, after, as well as the prefixes ab- and apo- which come from Latin and Greek respectively. Another word which comes from this root is abolish from Latin abolere “to destroy, abolish” made up from the prefix ab- + oleo, which either comes from the PIE root *al- (earlier form *h2el-) “to grow, nourish”, thus having the literal sense of “to retard the growth of” or from the root *olə- (earlier form *h3elh1-) “to destroy, fall”, and some etymologists suggest the word fall (from Old English feallan) has a parallel derivation to abolish, which would mean that fall also represents a compound of the roots *apo- + olə- (*h2ph3elh1-).

@alliterative.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 5:21 PM

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is FUCK/REPUGNANT/POINT #wotd #fuck #repugnant #point

Many people find the word fuck repugnant, but etymologically it's worth talking about so let's get straight to the point. There is no consensus about where the word fuck comes from, but one idea is that it can traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *peuk- “to prick”. If so it would be related to Latin pugnare “to fight”, which leads to repugnant, literally “to fight back”, and impugn, as well as Latin pungere “to prick, pierce”, which leads to words such as punctual, puncture, pungent, and point. But I trust you get the point of what I'm saying.

@alliterative.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 8:36 PM

The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is LABOUR/LAPSE #wotd #labour #labor #lapse #collapse #labourday #laborday

What is a labour union to do when their contract has lapsed? Turn to etymology! Labour comes from Latin labor “toil, distress, trouble”. Its deeper etymology is uncertain, but one suggestion is that it’s related to labare “to totter” and/or labi “to slip”, which also gives us the word lapse, and if so this would mean the underlying sense of labour is “to stumble under a burden”. But one thing a labour union won’t do is collapse!