mercy — kind and gentle treatment of someone who might not deserve it or of those who have suffered a misfortune; a blessing from the divine

merced — the Spanish cognate of the same meanings

Middle English took this word from French which had gotten the word from Latin’s merces which is “a price paid for something, wages, reward.”

Here’s what merriam-webster.com says about the word’s origin:

To the ancient Romans, the Latin word merces meant "price paid for something, wages, reward." The early Christians of Rome used the word in a slightly different way. For them it meant the spiritual reward one receives for doing a kindness in response to an unkindness. The word came into early French as mercit or merci with much the same meaning as was later passed on to our Modern English word mercy. But while mercy in English now has the meaning "kindness or pity shown to someone," the word merci in French has lost much of that meaning and is chiefly used today to mean "thank you."

In Spanish, as in French and Italian, variations of the word “misericordia” are the ones that you will generally see for “mercy” meaning “compassion” while the word “merced” (in Spanish) appears much more often in religious senses.

The Virgin Mary is sometimes referred to as María de las Mercedes, meaning “Mary of Mercies.” Thus, the name “Mercedes” is a popular name for females across the Spanish-speaking world, which is predominantly a Catholic one. It’s also popular in other Roman-based languages — it’s the name of Edmond Dantes’ love in “The Count of Monte Cristo,” my favorite novel. It’s a fitting name for her, too, if you happen to know the story of the book — if you don’t, then it’s high time you read it.

By translation, the name “Mercedes” simply means “Mercies.” The name Mercy exists in our English-speaking world, too.

If you don’t know the name Mercedes as a woman’s name, you certainly know it as a type of luxury car, and when you see one, you might be inclined to say, “Mercy Me!”

In reading Colombian literature, or simply older Spanish literature, you might come across the expression “su merced” from time to time, especially anytime that a priest or a lord is being addressed. It’s a term that means “your grace” and is used to show respect and reverence for the person to whom you are speaking. I haven’t been to Colombia, but according to my understanding, they still use this expression when addressing people.

It comes from “vuestra merced” which was used across the Spanish-speaking world to address royalty and those of high ranking. It meant “your grace,” too. Over time, that expression essentially got bunched together and became the well-known and well-used word “usted,” which means “you” in a formal, polite address.

In Spanish, there is the informal word for “you” which is “tú,” and there is the formal word for “you” which is “usted.” This differentiation was always something that my students struggled to understand because in English we simply say “you” no matter if we are addressing a friend or an elder or a “royal” person or even many different people at once. In Spanish, there are also two words for “you” when the “you” being addressed is plural — the informal “vosotros/vosotras,” which is used primarily in Spain, and the formal “ustedes,” which is used throughout Latin America no matter if you are being informal or formal.

Perhaps you can see why my students struggled to understand this cultural usage of words that simply translate to our one word of “you.”

Let’s take the sentence from the sticker in this photo: “You are important.”

Addressing my friend in an informal fashion, I would tell her: “Tú eres importante.”

Addressing my elder or someone to whom I would show respect or addressing someone that I do not know on a first-name basis, I would tell her: “Usted es importante.” (Side note: the word “usted” is often abbreviated and then looks like this — “Ud.”)

Addressing a group of (all male or mixed genders) younger people or friends in Spain, I would tell them: “Vosotros sois importantes.” If they were all females, I would tell them: “Vosotras sois importantes.”

Addressing a group of people I don’t know well in Spain or a group of people anywhere (for the most part) in Latin America, I would tell them: “Ustedes son importantes.” (Side note: “Uds.” is the abbreviation for “ustedes.)

Because of the word “merced” and its older combination with “vuestra,” a possessive pronoun meaning “your” in the informal plural sense (more grammatical confusion, I know), the Spanish language now has a VERY common and important word — USTED.

Even if you haven’t studied Spanish, there is a very good chance you’ve seen, heard, or even learned the question “Cόmo está usted?” This means “How are you?” If you know the person well, you would ask, “Cόmo estás?” instead, but for the sake of being courteous, the first way is the way to go. That way, you won’t unintentionally insult someone and then have to beg for “merced.”

Until next time. This is the free issue for July. Please upgrade to paid status to receive these more often than monthly. Paid subscribers have received posts about “placid,” “negotiate,” “gyrate,” “progenitor,” “manuscript,” and many others over the past months. Paid subscribers also have access to the full archive of almost 300 posts and they receive the audio version of each post, too.

Tammy Marshall

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As the days heat up, perhaps you might end up suffering from a “calenture.”

calenture — a fever supposedly caused by heat, especially tropical heat

calentura — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

We took our word from the Spanish word. The Spanish word, in turn, came from Latin’s calere which means “to be warm.”

I came upon the English word in an older piece of literature in which the person was suffering from, or perhaps died from (I don’t recall which), a “calenture.” I wasn’t familiar with the word, but I immediately knew it had to do with “heat” because I have long known the Spanish word “calor” for “heat.”

If you want to say “I’m hot” while fanning yourself (as opposed to telling someone you’re a sexy beast — that would involve the word “caliente”), you would say “Tengo calor,” which translates literally to “I have heat.” If you want to say that “it’s hot out today” you would say “hace calor hoy.”

When I was teaching, I would equate the word “calor” with the English word of “calorie” and remind my students that a “calorie” is a unit of “heat.” That way, they would easily remember the word “calor” for “heat.” The Spanish word for “calorie” is “caloría,” but it wasn’t a word I used much in my classes — “calor” most definitely was, though.

In regards to the cognate duo, merriam-webster.com only offers a definition in which the “fever” affected sailors in the tropics, and they add this tidbit:

In addition to being plagued by scurvy and homesickness, sailors of yore who dared the tropics also had calenture to worry about. Given a case of this fever they were likely to imagine that the sea was actually a green field and to leap into it.

That’s one way to cool off from a fever, I guess, but it most likely led to their deaths.

We use a “caldron” (or “cauldron” as we more commonly spell it) to heat up, cook, or boil a large quantity of liquid. This word is “caldera” in Spanish, and it is also the word for a “boiler.”

In English, we also have the word “caldera,” but it’s for a very specific geographical feature that forms where the central part of volcano has collapsed. There’s a lot of “heat” in a volcano! I’ll let merriam-webster.com explain this:

A large, bowl-shaped volcanic depression, a caldera forms when the top of a volcanic cone collapses into the space left after magma is ejected during a violent volcanic eruption. Its diameter is many times that of the original vent. The term is Spanish for "caldron." Subsequent minor eruptions may build small cones on the floor of the caldera, and the caldera may still later fill up with water; an example of this is Crater Lake in Oregon.

Something that might get cooked in a “caldera” is a “caldo.” That word translates usually to “broth.” Clearly, there is no similarity between the Spanish and English words, and that is because “broth” comes to us straight from Old English. While the word “sopa” is the more commonly used and much more generic word for “soup” in Spanish, the word “caldo” often takes on that sense, too. I’ve seen many menus that offer “caldo de pollo” — chicken soup — “caldo de res” — beef soup — and others.

If you throw the “caldo” on someone, though, you could “scald” him. See that “cald” inside that word? Yep, our word “scald” is related to all these other words dealing with heat. That Spanish verb is “escaldar.”

Perhaps if those sailors in the tropics had been fed a nourishing “caldo,” they wouldn’t have been as likely to leap into the ocean as a result of their “calenturas.”

Until next time. Stay out of the heat if you’re prone to “calentures.” This is the free post for June. Upgrade to “paid” to receive these posts more frequently than monthly. Paid subscribers also receive the audio recording of each post and have full access to the archive of almost 300 past posts.

Tammy Marshall

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I like to use the word “missive” to refer to a handwritten letter. I suspect that many people don’t know that word or think I’m silly for using it, but I like the sound of it. It comes from the same Latin root as our cognate duo for today does.

emissary — an agent sent somewhere to represent someone or something on their behalf; a representative

emisario — the Spanish masculine cognate of the same meaning

emisaria — the Spanish feminine cognate

These words come from Latin’s emittere which means “to send out.” I’m sure you noticed that that verb looks a lot like our verb “emit,” which comes directly from that Latin verb. If you “emit” a sound, you are “sending it forth” from you. In Spanish, that verb is “emitir.”

A “missive” is a letter that is “sent” to someone. In Spanish, it is “misiva,” but like us, they tend to use “carta” to refer to a letter just as we tend to use the word “letter.” I still like the word “missive,” though.

When you have a “mission,” you are often sent somewhere to accomplish it. An “emissary” might have a specific “mission” to fulfill, and some “emissaries” are also secret agents like Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible” — “Misiόn: Imposible” in Spanish.

“Missionaries” are sent far and wide with specific objectives or “missions” to accomplish. They are usually religious “missions,” and we tend to think nowadays of “missionaries” working in other countries, but there are 21 Catholic Missions one can visit in California that were established to convert indigenous people. Here is a link to one website about them: California missions

A male “missionary” in Spanish is a “misionero” and a female one is a “misionera.”

Back to “emissary.” I was pleasantly surprised that King Charles did not send one on his behalf but rather came himself, with Queen Camilla, recently to the United States on a visit in recognition of our country’s 250th anniversary. He’s quite a funny fellow, too. If you didn’t get a chance to see some of his humorous comments, here’s a video: King Charles is actually funny!

Just as I like the sound of the word “missive” more than the more commonly used “letter,” I also really like the sound of the word “emissary” much more than the word “representative.” Perhaps that’s because I too often shout that word into my cell phone nowadays, demanding to speak to an actual human being! Maybe I should try yelling “EMISSARY” the next time I’m stuck in automated response limbo and see if that word works better for me.

Until next time. This is May’s free post (or missive). Please upgrade to paid status to receive these on a weekly basis. Once you become a paid subscriber, you also receive the recordings as well as access to the full archive of posts — there are more than 200 of them, so your subscription buys you a lot, and it doesn’t cost much at all to try it for a month. Thank you.

Tammy Marshall

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I love words, so it’s probably no wonder that one of my favorite books is my unabridged Webster’s dictionary. The word “word” comes to us from Old English, but its Latin counterpart is verbum, from which we’ve created a number of useful words, including the one that means “too many words.”

verbose — a adjective to describe something that contains too many words or someone prone to wordiness (like that’s a crime or something?)

verboso — the Spanish (and Italian and Portuguese) masculine cognate of the same meaning/s

verbosa — the Spanish (and Italian and Portuguese) feminine cognate

When I was teaching both Spanish and English, I would often remind my students that verbs were the most important words in sentences. In fact, one often only needs a verb to have a fully complete sentence. Think commands here — Run! Stop! Jump! Drive! The subject, you, is implied in each of them, and they don’t need any other words to be fully complete. They are decidedly non-verbose sentences.

The reason we call the action of the sentence a verb (and yes, I know that verbs don’t always show action) is because it’s the most important “word” in each sentence. You cannot have a meaningful sentence without a “verb,” so we shortened the Latin word verbum to “verb” for that specific part of speech, but we essentially are saying “word” for “verb.”

If we then use too many words, we become “verbose.” We attached the suffix -ose which means “full of.” Something “verbose” is full of words.

If you have an obsession with words, you have “verbomania.” I may not be that crazy about words, but I’d say I’m borderline. I’m definitely a “logophile” which means “lover of words” and combines the Greek word logos which means “word” and the Greek word philos which means “dear.” Together, a logophile is a “word lover.”

Back to “verbose” and its cousins.

If you’ve never thought about how the word “verb” simply means “word,” consider the commonly used word “verbal.” If you are “verbal,” you speak “words.” If someone is “nonverbal,” he doesn’t speak — he doesn’t use words.

My favorite word game I would play with my Spanish students was one called “Verbal.” In it, the students would have to conjugate verbs according to subject and tense as depicted on dice. If they were correct, they would earn play money. They loved the game, and I loved how much it helped improve their understanding of verb conjugation.

“Verbatim” is something that is “word for word” the way it was first expressed.

If you tend to be “verbose” when you speak, you may be accused of “verboseness,” which is the noun. Another word for that is “verbiage.” Both become “verbosidad” in Spanish. “Verbiage,” however, can also simply refer to the wording, or diction, that you use, and doesn’t necessarily mean that you are using too many words, so if that is what you mean and you don’t want to be misunderstood, then use “verboseness” or any of its many synonyms — one of which is “verbosity.” Perhaps the English language is being too “verbose” with its choices of synonyms for a word that means “wordiness.”

If you write “verbosely,” an editor may encourage you to cut a lot of your words. That adverb is “verbosamente” in Spanish. Remember that you add “-mente” to the feminine adjective forms of words in Spanish to create most adverbs.

Until next time. You go right ahead and be as “verbose” as you want to be, especially if you are improving your cognate cognizance at the same time.

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Tammy Marshall

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utile — a seldom-used English adjective meaning “useful”

útil — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning and the only adjective in Spanish (that I’m aware of) that means “useful”

This cognate pair was unknown to me while I was teaching. In fact, until about ten minutes ago I didn’t even know the word “utile” existed in English. This post was going to be about the word “inutility” and its Spanish cognate of “inutilidad,” but while researching the word “inutility,” I came upon “inutile,” and I was gobsmacked, to say the least.

During all those 30 years in which I taught Spanish, the words “útil” and “inútil” were basic vocabulary words that ALWAYS translated to “useful” and “useless.” I’d typically help my students learn the meanings of these words by pointing out how “useful” a “utility” knife is, or something else to that effect, but, because I’d never ever ever ever seen or heard the words “utile” or “inutile” in English, I didn’t even think to look for them. Quite clearly, they are almost exact cognates of the Spanish words.

As I’ve said here before, in situations like this, it would behoove native English speakers to learn the Spanish words AND their English cognates — thus increasing their lexicons in two languages. It’s also soooooo much easier to recall that the Spanish word “útil” means “utile” in English and vice versa!!!

Spanish textbooks should teach “útil” to mean “utile” in English and “inútil” to mean “inutile” and should include the words’ etymology and other related words we use in English, such as “utility,” “utilize,” and “utilitarianism.”

As adults, we have to pay the “utility” bill every month. It’s that bill that takes a lot of our paycheck, but it’s also the one that reflects our “usage” of things like electricity, water, gas, etc. That’s essentially what “utility” means — something designed for use or usage. If we “utilize” something, we “use” it.

I’d never given much thought to the opposite of the word “utility.'“ We have the word “useful” and its opposite of “useless,” and I now know we also have “utile” and “inutile,” but until I read “The House of the Seven Gables” by Nathaniel Hawthorne recently, I didn’t know we also have the word “inutility” even though it makes perfect sense that we would.

He used it in this sentence: “The inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman.”

Granted, Hawthorne wrote this in the mid-1800s and his writing is full of somewhat antiquated (yet interesting) words. However, knowing the Spanish word of “inútil” helped me to immediately understand that “inutility” — a word I’d never seen before — meant “uselessness,” but I was quite surprised to see that this word, when I looked it up on merriam-webster.com meant “inutile.” “Inutile!!!” The English cognate of a Spanish word that I knew very well. I grew up speaking English, so why did I know the Spanish word very well yet the English word not at all?

Frustrating, to say the least.

Once I came upon “inutile” I immediately went in search of “utile,” and lo and behold, I found it. That’s when I changed the cognate duo for this post from “inutility” and “inutilidad” to “utile” and “útil.”

Knowing these words is quite useful!

Shakespeare coined the word “useful” in his play “King Lear.” Prior to that, we English speakers used the word “utile!!!” Damnit, Shakespeare! If you hadn’t interfered with your creativity, I would have known the word “utile” all this time.

We took the word “utile” from Latin, and Spanish, naturally, took “útil” from that Language, too. The other Romance languages also use either “utile” or “útil” as well — pronounced according to how they pronounce their vowels, etc., of course.

Another word for something that is “inutile” or “useless” or for something that serves no “utile” or “useful” purpose is “futile.” You see that lovely word “utile” right there, only changed by the initial “f.” We “f”-d up it’s usefulness and made in non-utile. It is now “futile.”

You know what’s not “futile?” Having awesome cognate cognizance! Not only does it enhance your vocabulary in more than one language, but it definitely enhances your reading, especially when tackling any classic piece of literature.

Thus, thanks to Hawthorne, I now know “utile” and “inutile.” Perhaps it’s time for these words to make a comeback in English. In Modern English, I should say.

Until next time. This is the free post for March. Please upgrade to “paid” status to receive the recorded version of it as well as the weekly posts you miss out on by being a free subscriber only. Paying subscribers also have full access to the archive of more than 260 posts.

Tammy Marshall

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See the look on this dog’s face? This clearly expresses my own sentiments after coming upon an English word in “The Deerslayer” by James Fenimore Cooper that so clearly seemed to be a cognate of a Spanish word in which I was well versed yet that so clearly did NOT mean what I thought it should.

Here is the sentence: “Master March may find it pleasant to traduce us, but sooner or later he’ll repent!”

If you already knew the meaning of the word “traduce,” give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back, or high five this dog. Do it anyway — he’s adorable.

“Traduce” is not a commonly used English word, by any matter, but the verb “traducir,” which has a conjugated form that is “traduce,” IS a commonly used Spanish word. In fact, it’s one that I used very often during my three decades of teaching, and you’ll see why in a minute, so when I saw the word in that novel, my mind took it to mean one thing while it really means something else.

When words look the same in two different languages yet have entirely different meanings, they are false cognates. “Embarazada” is considered to be one of the most humorous. It looks like our word for “embarrassed,” but it means “pregnant;” thus, if you announce you are “embarazada” to your Spanish-speaking friends, you might wonder why they are all congratulating you and asking when the baby is due. Don’t ask someone where the “éxito” is, thinking you’ve just asked them where the “exit” is — you’ve asked them where the “success” is, and I doubt they know the answer.

Let’s get back to “traduce.”

traduce — the English word meaning “to injure by speaking ill of,” to betray, to shame or blame by misrepresentation, etc.

traduce — a Spanish conjugated form of the verb “traducir” meaning “to translate”

These two words, though they now have quite different meanings, came from the same Latin verb traducere which means “to lead across, transfer, degrade.” The English meaning of the word followed the path of degradation. The speaker of the sentence referenced above thought that Master March had been speaking ill of her, in a degrading manner. The Spanish verb’s meaning followed the path of transferring one thing to another, which is what you do when you translate something.

Every day, I would have my students “translate” from one language to another, and if they weren’t getting that instruction from me, they were seeing that verb in directions on worksheets, in their textbooks, etc., so they and I had daily encounters with the Spanish verb of “traducir,” often including that one form “traduce.”

Therefore, I am very well accustomed to seeing and using and understanding the Spanish word, but I doubt I’ve come upon the English word of “traduce” much at all, if ever, before reading “The Deerslayer.” Seeing it brought my reading to a standstill because my mind interpreted it as “Master March may find it pleasant to translate us, but sooner or later he’ll repent!” Translate us? What does that mean?

Clearly, I immediately realized, “traduce” in English did not mean “translate,” so I looked it up and found what it does mean — the following paragraph in the novel already had led me to a fairly correct understanding of the word, but I like to be thorough, and I needed to know if there was some connection to the Spanish word I already knew. After clarifying things with a dictionary, the sentence made perfect sense, but I also realized that I’d encountered a somewhat false cognate of which I wasn’t previously aware.

Seeing the etymology of the words, though, shows me that they actually are cognates because they are related to each other, but their meanings have swayed far from their roots. They’ve become distant relations, let’s say.

“Traduce” emphasizes the distress felt by the victim, so, if you’ll indulge a bit of melodramatics on my part, I was quite “traduced” by what I felt to be a pretty strong cognate cognizance that let me down when I most needed it — while reading a book! Okay, that’s definitely a stretch.

If you are someone who speaks ill of someone else in order to betray that person, then you are a “traducer,” and what you are doing could be called “traducement.”

Let me give you an assignment involving real false cognates. These are ALL Spanish words, but you will think they are English words. Try to guess what each means.

* once

* arena

* red

* pie

* papa

They surely look like words that I could logically put together in English to say something like, “I once went to an arena and had some red pie with my papa,” but in Spanish those words mean the following:

scroll down

keep scrolling

a little further

* eleven

* sand

* net

* foot

* potato

Those are true false cognates!

Until next time. I hope you aren’t “traduced” by anyone.

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Tammy Marshall

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I grew up loving the cartoon Peanuts, and I always could relate to Charlie Brown, especially when he would simply sigh. During my 30 years of teaching, I sighed A LOT — ask any of my former students, and they will tell you that when they heard me sigh, they knew I was annoyed with them. Sighing was my way to release stress and tension without blowing my top — of course, I did that, too, but I tried to keep my temper in check by frequent sighing. Very frequent sighing. Extremely frequent sighing.

Perhaps that is why the Spanish word for “to sigh” was always easy for me to remember. It wasn’t really a word I taught in my classes, but I would come across it in things I read on my own, and once I’d learned the word, it firmly stuck in my mind. So, imagine my surprise when I came across the English cognate of the Spanish word for “to sigh” while reading a poem recently.

Let’s look at the cognate duo.

suspire — simply put, this means “to sigh”

suspirar — the Spanish verb that means “to sigh”

I’ve been reading a collection of poetry by past U.S. Poet Laureates, and in the section devoted to Robert Pinsky, there was his poem titled “The Forgetting.” In it, he uses the phrase “suspiring forward into air.” I quite literally stopped reading when I saw that word, blinked a couple times, and then shook my head in disgust that I hadn’t known this word existed in English prior to reading the poem. My cognate cognizance came in handy once more because I immediately understood the word even though it was the first time seeing it in English.

Looking in my unabridged Merriam-Webster, I also find the noun “suspiration” and the adjective “suspirious.” The noun is “suspiro” in Spanish, and the adjective is “suspirioso.”

These words come from the Latin root word for “to breathe,” spirare, so you can see the connection to “respire” and “respiration,” etc. We tend to use the word “sigh” in English becomes it comes to us from Old English, but now that I know that the word “suspire” exists, I believe I will be using it more often because I still tend to suspire when I’m tense — my suspirations are much more infrequent now that I’m not teaching, but they’re still an obvious sign of me feeling frustrated or annoyed at something.

Adding a bit to the simplified definition of “to sigh,” “to suspire” means to draw a deep or long breath. Doing that is a great way to calm oneself and to get centered when everything around you seems to be going crazy or not your way. Just ask some of the Peanuts gang.

If you’d like to listen to the poet Robert Pinsky read the poem in which he uses the word “suspiring,” here is a link to him doing that: "The Forgetting" by Robert Pinsky

This is the free post for January. Happy New Year. Please consider upgrading to paid status, so you’ll receive these more frequently, and paid subscribers also receive the audio version (which is me reading the posts to you) and have access to the full archive of more than 250 previous posts. That’s a lot of cognate cognizance for a few dollars each month!

Until next time.

Tammy Marshall

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Zenith, peak, culmination, apex, pinnacle — these are all considered synonyms for “apogee,” and they are all words that are very familiar to me, but I don’t see “apogee” used very frequently. I do, however, see its Spanish cognate used.

apogee — the farthest or highest point; in space usage, it refers to the point in the orbit of an object (such as a satellite) orbiting the earth that is at the greatest distance from the center of the earth

apogeo — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning/s

This word came to English and to Spanish by way of French which took it from New Latin which got its word from a Greek one. The other Romance languages all have cognates, too.

The “apogean” tides are tides of reduced range that occur when the moon is at its “apogee” and, thus, has less gravitational pull to affect tidal movement. These tides translate to “mareas de apogeo” in Spanish.

The adjective, “apogean,” can also be “apogaeic” or “apogaic.” “Apogean” is more common, though.

I’ve written 225 of these “Cognate Cognizance” posts. Have I hit the “apogee” of my success with this publication? Perhaps. I haven’t gained any subscribers for a while now, but I enjoy sharing some lexical wisdom with those that I have each month and/or week.

I need some feedback, though. With all the posts that I’ve written here, I have more than enough to compile (after some substantial editing) the information into a book. As a reader of this publication, do you think what I share here is something that people would like to have available in book format? I think it would be most useful to people teaching Spanish to English speakers or to anyone who simply wants to strengthen her own lexicon. Do you agree with me? Who do you think would benefit from these posts in book format, if anyone?

Please share a comment — don’t be shy. I sincerely want to hear from you to know what you’ve gained from being a subscriber. Thank you.

Until next time. Thank you for subscribing. Take a moment to revisit some of my first posts if you weren’t with me from the start. Here are links to a couple: Sonorous and Lacrimal

Tammy Marshall

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Back when I was teaching, I had the good fortune of being able to create a couple classes. One of those was Linguistics, and in that class I required my students to do a mini-report each week about a word of their choosing. In the report, they needed to share the word’s “etymology” and in doing that, the students soon came to realize that the bulk of the English words that aren’t true descendants of Old or Middle English come to us from Latin and/or Greek.

The word “etymology” comes to us from Greek, and it combines two words: etymon which means the “true and literal meaning of a word according to its origin” and logia which means “the science or study of.”

etymology — the study of historical linguistic change, especially as manifested in individual words (There are other meanings/explanations of this word, but this definition best fits what I asked of my students in that Linguistics class and what I’m attempting to do here with “Cognate Cognizance.”)

etimología — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

etimologia — the Italian cognate and also the Portuguese one with a different pronunciation

étymologie — the French cognate

If you are looking at the “etymological” journey of a word, you can see where the word originated and how it’s changed over the years, not only in its spelling but also in its usage. That word is “etimolόgico” in Spanish to describe masculine things and “etimolόgica” to describe feminine things.

It becomes an adverb when we say “etymologically” and that word is “etimolόgicamente” in Spanish because you add “-mente” to the feminine forms of adjectives to create adverbs (for the most part). I recently learned that, etymologically speaking, the word “dog” has no known origin, and I found that to be quite interesting considering the prevalence of dogs and the relative simplicity of the English word.

In this publication, I’ve been trying to help you learn and enhance your own English vocabulary by connecting you to cognates in Spanish, and sometimes in the other Romance languages. If you know a word in English, and it has a cognate in Spanish, you will more easily learn and remember the Spanish word if you choose to study that language, but if you already know some (or a lot of) Spanish, you may be delightfully surprised to see cognates of those words popping up in English and thus helping you to understand something you’re reading while also advancing your English lexicon (“cicatrix” and “succor” come to mind, for example).

The “etymology” of these cognates is the key to what makes them cognates.

I began this publication a little over four years ago, and I’ve shared more than 225 cognate duos with you since then. I’d like to encourage you to visit the archive and read any that you’ve missed or reread some to refresh your memory. Here’s a link to it: Cognate Cognizance archive

I hope to share another 225+ with you. I’d like more subscribers, too, so this post is free to everyone, and I hope you’ll share it with anyone you know who is interested in words.

Thanks for reading Cognate Cognizance! This post is public so feel free to share it.

If you’d care to become a subscriber, free or paid (paid receives the audio version, too, and more frequent posts), then please do so today.

Until next time.

Tammy Marshall

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe

In Chapter 6 of “The Sword in the Stone” by T. H. White, young Arthur, known in this story as the Wart, is practicing and learning archery with Sir Ector’s son, Kay, and there is this passage:

“They left the targets and had several shots at the popinjay — which was a large, bright-coloured artificial bird stuck on the top of a stick, like a parrot — and Kay missed these also.”

Prior to reading this book, I’d heard of the word “popinjay” and known it only by its now-standard meaning of “a strutting supercilious person.” Even though I’m a linguist, it’s just one of those words that I hadn’t given much thought to because it’s also one of those words that I seldom see.

However, in “The Sword in the Stone,” the word comes up frequently, and it had come up before the passage I’d quoted above, also in relation to archery, so I’d looked it up to see what it meant. This is the definition I found: “archaic: the figure of a parrot usually fixed on a pole used as a target in archery.” It was later in the story that White essentially defined the word for his readers, and it was then, too, that I had another of those lovely “aha” moments that come with having sound cognate cognizance.

Once the word “parrot” appeared to me twice — first in the archaic definition I’d found to relate the word to archery and secondly in the passage from Chapter 6, I made that connection with a Spanish word for “parrot.

popinjay — I’ve already given its current definition above, but originally this word was the English word for “parrot.” That definition is now obsolete. However, it can still refer to the image of a parrot on heraldry.

papagayo — the Spanish cognate that means “parrot”

The more commonly used word for “parrot” in Spanish is “loro,” and that’s the word I taught for 30 years, but way back when I first learned Spanish, the word I originally learned for “parrot” was “papagayo.” I hadn’t seen that word very often at all, though, over my three decades of teaching Spanish, so the first encounter with the word “popinjay” in White’s story didn’t ring any mental, linguistic bells for me, but the second encounter with it did.

Parrots like to strut about, so over time, the word “popinjay” stopped referring to the bird itself and began referring to people who strutted about like one. Here’s more about that from merriam-webster.com:

Popinjays and parrots are birds of a feather. Popinjay, from the Middle French word papegai, is the original name for a parrot in English. The French word, in turn, came from the Arabic word for the bird, babghā’. Parrot, which English speakers adopted later, is probably a modification of the Middle French perroquet, which is also the source of the English parakeet. In the days of Middle English, parrots were rare and exotic, and it was quite a compliment to be called a popinjay after such a beautiful bird. But by the 1500s, parrots had become more commonplace, and their gaudy plumage and vulgar mimicry helped popinjay develop the pejorative sense we use today.

Other Romance languages use cognates of “popinjay” for their words for “parrot.” For example, the Italian word is “pappagallo.” Spanish has “papagayo” but tends to use “loro” for “parrot,” a word they adopted after conquering the Taíno people of the Caribbean where “parrots” are quite prolific.

Once, it was considered a compliment to be called a “popinjay,” but nowadays, if someone calls you that, you may want to check your attitude for unnecessary vanity and strutting about. Don’t become another type of target — the one for ridicule instead of arrows.

Until next time. This is November’s free post. If you’re not a paying subscriber, you missed another great word from T.H. White’s story last week — probity. To receive these posts weekly and to have access to the audio version as well as the full archive of more than 240 posts, upgrade to paying today. It’s only a handful of dollars every month. Thanks.

Tammy Marshall

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cognatecognizance.substack.com/subscribe