See also

Etymological saunter

Mortgage /'mɔːgɪdʒ/, Saturday, 26th May 2007
As a French coming to England, I was most curious about the advertisements publicising mortgages everywhere. The word mortgage looks really like a French word and I think that any French person would immediately parse it as mort-gage (literally death-gage, the French word for mortgage is hypothèque). Fortunately, the English word death wasn't borrowed from Latin but has the same origin as the German word der Tod, so that this deadly message remains completely unnoticed to the Autochthons. The fact that mortgage looks so French is not a coincidence as it was borrowed from the French expression mort gaige, so called because the debt became void or dead when the pledge was redeemed (after the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology). My first thought was that it was connected to the debtor's death rather than the debt's one: but of course, someone else pointed out that, nowadays, mortgages wouldn't stop after one dies anyway and that someone would have to pay it off… Well, at least, people remember you in some way... It reminded me this very funny anecdote (not funny for everybody, I admit):
In 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal, common in France, to sell her condominium apartment en viager to lawyer François Raffray. Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay a monthly sum until she died, an agreement sometimes called a reverse mortgage. At the time of the deal the value of the apartment was equal to ten years of payments. Unfortunately for Raffray, not only did Calment survive more than thirty years, but Raffray died of cancer in December 1995, at the age of 77, leaving his widow to continue the payments.
Wikipedia's article about Jeanne Calment
Pat, Saturday, 26th May 2007
source: Parlons roumain, p.24
Scaraoțchi, Saturday, 26th May 2007
Scaraoțchi is the popular word for the Devil. Another word for the Devil is drac which suffixed by the masculine definite article gives dracul known after one Prince of Wallachia, Vlad III Dracula, the son of [Vlad II] Dracul, inspired the tale of the well-known vampire. The origin of Scaraoțchi is much funnier than that: it derives from Judas Iscariot's Slavonic name: Iuda Iskariotskij. Indeed, the Romanians adopted the Church Slavonic in the liturgy at the beginning of the Dark Ages but didn't understand it very well. As a consequence, Iuda Iskariotskij was understood as Iuda i Skariotski, which means Judas and Skariotski. Judas's companion, in the Romanians' opinion, could hardly be anyone but the Devil. Hence, his name… Similarly, the verb a blogodori which means to mumble derives from the Slavonic blago dariti, to give thanks [to God] because, presumably, everybody mumbled rather than gave thanks to God in Church.
After Parlons roumain, p. 35 and
the page about the Church of Romania on Orthodox Wiki.
Acera,
Isle, island,
Express,
Morphine, Sunday, 3rd June 2007
While this now seems obvious to me, the fact is that I had never questioned myself about the origin of this drug's name and that I was amused by its etymology when I found it. Because of its sleep-inducing properties, the name morphin ultimately comes from Morpheus (through German and French), the god of dreams [The Chambers says Roman god of dreams but it would be more correct to refer to the Greek mythology, in my opinion]. Morpheus's name is due to the fact that he was thought to be responsible of sending Human shapes (μορφαι) to the dreamer. The names of Morpheus's brothers, Phobetor and Phantasos, are related to the words phobia and fantasy respectively. The -ine is the suffix borrowed from the French -ine and from Latin -ina which applies to abstract terms.
Sources: Chambers, Encyclopedia Britannica.
Nice,