Well worth a weekly read if it turns on your interest button to "Etymology" http://www.worldwidewords.org/
How to make three hours disappear
Thank you. That "whet my appetite" for more.
Interesting. I love languages and words. At the very bottom of the page lists "gibbous". Anyone who keeps track of the moon - i.e. lunar cycles - should know this word well.
I wonder about "wet" or "whet" when it comes to Irish and/or Welsh custom to "wet/whet the baby". I know exactly what the custom is about but am not sure at all about which word to use.
EDIT: Etymology should not be confused with "entomology". 😀
I used to get those two mixed up all the time.
Surveyor and others
surveyor (n.)
early 15c. (late 14c. as a surname), from Anglo-French surveiour "guard, overseer," Old French sorveor, from Old French verb sorveoir "to survey" (see survey (v.)).
tripod (n.)
c.1600, "three-legged vessel," c.1600, from Latin tripus (genitive tripodis), from Greek tripous (genitive tripodos) "a three-legged stool or table," noun use of adjective meaning "three-footed," from tri- "three" (see tri-) + pous (genitive podos) "foot" (see foot (n.)). Related: Tripodal.
theodolite (n.)
surveying instrument, 1570s, of unknown origin (see OED for discussion). "The word has a Gr[eek] semblance, but no obvious Gr[eek] basis" [Century Dictionary].
benchmark (n.)
also bench-mark, "surveyor's point of reference," 1838, from a specialized surveyors' use of bench (n.) + mark (n.1); figurative sense is from 1884.
section (v.)
"divide into sections," 1819, from section (n.). Related: Sectioned; sectioning.
section (n.)
late 14c., "intersection of two straight lines; division of a scale;" from Old French section or directly from Latin sectionem (nominative sectio) "a cutting, cutting off, division," noun of action from past participle stem of secare "to cut," from PIE root *sek- "to cut" (cf. Old Church Slavonic seko, sešti "to cut," se ?ivo "ax, hatchet;" Lithuanian isekti "to engrave, carve;" Albanian šate "mattock;" Old Saxon segasna, Old English sigðe "scythe;" Old English secg "sword," seax "knife, short sword;" Old Irish doescim "I cut;" Latin saxum "rock, stone").
traverse (n.)
"act of passing through a gate, crossing a bridge, etc.," mid-14c., from Old French travers, from traverser (see traverse (v.)). Meaning "a passage by which one may traverse" is recorded from 1670s. Military fortification sense of "barrier, barricade" is recorded from 1590s.
traverse (v.)
early 14c., "pass across, over, or through," from Old French traverser "to cross, place across" (11c.), from Vulgar Latin *traversare, from Latin transversare "to cross, throw across," from Latin transversus "turn across" (see transverse). As an adjective from early 15c. Related: Traversed; traversing.
mete (n.)
"boundary," now only in phrase metes and bounds, late 15c., from Old French mete "limit, bounds, frontier," from Latin meta "goal, boundary, post, pillar."
bound (n.)
"limit," c.1200, from Anglo-Latin bunda, from Old French bonde "limit, boundary, boundary stone" (12c., Modern French borne), variant of bodne, from Medieval Latin bodina, perhaps from Gaulish. Now chiefly in out of bounds, which originally referred to limits imposed on students at schools.
