by Dwane | Apr 16, 2015 | English, Latin, Vocabulary
Pedigree: Lineage; line of ancestors from which a person or tribe descends; genealogy. Pedigree comes from the French phrase, pie de grue, meaning: the crane’s foot. Some thought that the spreading lines of a genealogical chart resembled the foot of a crane. The...
by Dwane | Apr 15, 2015 | Education, Latin, Vocabulary
Pawn: Something given as security for the payment of borrowed money; a pledge. This first definition has nothing to do with the Latin word for foot. Instead, it comes from an Old French word meaning pledge, or security. The pawn on the chess board, however, does from...
by Dwane | Apr 14, 2015 | Education, English, Greek, Vocabulary
Hexapod: a creature with six feet. Any arthropod of the class Hexapoda. In other words, an insect. Though he only has two feet, Marvel has brought a “hexapod” hero to the big screen: https://youtu.be/xInh3VhAWs8 Hexapod comes from the Greek word ἑξαποδία...
by Dwane | Apr 11, 2015 | English, Latin, Vocabulary
Pedestrian: a walker; someone who journeys on foot. As an adjective, something pedestrian describes a going on foot; walking; made on foot; as a pedestrian journey. Interestingly, pedestrian also means boring, mundane, banal, prosaic, or commonplace. When we use the...
by Dwane | Apr 11, 2015 | Education, Greek, Vocabulary
Gastropod: Snails and slugs. These guys are members of a class of mollusks (Gastropoda) that use their stomachs as a foot. I used to work with some guys like that. A scientist named Georges Cuvier coined the word in 1795. Cuvier created the word by combining the Greek...
