Words from Late Latin

Family

Late Latin grew out of Latin.

Languages that grew out of Late Latin: Medieval Latin.

The words, A to Z

• acolyte

  Before it meant a devoted helper, this word simply named someone who walked behind another.

• annual

  A word that keeps time by the calendar, born from the simple idea of a year turning over.

• armistice

  The word for laying down weapons literally means making them stand still.

• bottle

  A small cask that shrank its way into English through French kitchens.

• campaign

  Before it meant elections or ads, this word simply meant heading out to open ground.

• casualty

  A word for tragedy that started out meaning nothing more than chance.

• cherry

  This small, sweet fruit's name got doubled up by a mistake in translation.

• copper

  This reddish metal carries the name of an island that supplied the ancient world with it.

• coup

  A single word for one sharp, decisive strike — political or otherwise.

• court

  The place where kings once held their followers is the same root behind where tennis players now chase a ball.

• dose

  A word that started as an act of giving before it ever meant a measured amount of medicine.

• drab

  A word for dullness that started life woven into cloth.

• energy

  The word for what makes things move is, at its root, just a word for being 'at work.'

• epidemic

  Something that spreads not just through bodies, but through a whole population at once.

• fiasco

  A total flop, once upon a time, was just a bottle waiting to be bought.

• filament

  That glowing wire inside an old lightbulb owes its name to something as humble as thread.

• gambit

  A chess player's small sacrifice traces back to a wrestler's trick of tripping someone by the leg.

• hypothesis

  Before it's ever proven, an idea has to be given something to stand on.

• inventory

  Before it meant a list of goods, this word meant the act of stumbling onto something.

• lamp

  This everyday word for a light-giver has been shining, quite literally, since ancient Greece.

• lamprey

  This eel-like fish may have been named for the way it clings to rocks with its mouth.

• monarch

  A ruler whose whole claim to the job is that there's only one of them.

• motivate

  Behind every push to act hides an old word for simply moving.

• mussel

  This shelled sea-dweller shares its name with something that once looked like a scurrying rodent to Roman eyes.

• nurture

  This word carries the quiet work of feeding something until it grows.

• oleander

  A flowering shrub whose name may have quietly swapped places with another word entirely.

• parcel

  That wrapped package on your doorstep is, at its core, just a tiny piece of something bigger.

• pasta

  The word for your spaghetti dinner started out meaning porridge sprinkled with salt.

• pastiche

  A work that borrows so many flavors from other styles it becomes its own dish.

• peach

  This juicy fruit's name once meant something else entirely: an apple from Persia.

• pharaoh

  This royal title started out as a description of a building, not a person.

• pillage

  To strip a place bare, all the way down to the roots.

• plethora

  A word that started out meaning you'd simply had enough.

• reliquary

  A container built for the things we cannot bear to let go of.

• rent

  The money you pay to live somewhere started out as a word for simply 'giving back.'

• rhubarb

  A garden vegetable's name once meant nothing more than "foreign plant" — and later became actors' code for background noise.

• salvage

  The word for rescuing what's left comes from the very idea of keeping something safe.

• satchel

  A schoolbag's name once meant something small enough to hold coins, not textbooks.

• spontaneous

  This word traces back to a Latin phrase meaning 'of one's own accord.'

• street

  Every road you call a street was, at its root, just something that got flattened out.

• symptom

  The word for a sign of illness literally means something that falls together with something else.

• treacle

  This sticky, sweet word once meant something you'd want on hand for a snakebite, not a scone.

• umbrella

  The thing you pop open in the rain is, at its root, just a little patch of shade.