Cognate Cognizance Podcast

adumbrate — to cast a shadow over something; to foreshadow

adumbrar — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

“Adumbrate” is not a very common word in English, and I don’t think it’s cognate counterpart in Spanish is highly used either; however, the root of these two words comes from Latin’s umbra which means “shade” or “shadow.” In English, the word “umbra” also means “shade” or “shadow,” and sometimes it is used quite specifically in science to refer to a conical shadow cast by a celestial body.

In Spanish, the word for “shade” or “shadow” is “sombra.” You can see that it is still similar to its Latin beginning even though the initial part of the word has changed a bit. From this comes the very well-known Spanish word of “sombrero.” Even those who don’t know any Spanish still tend to know that a “sombrero” is a “hat.” Some people think it only refers to those very large and ornately decorated Mexican hats worn by Mariachi singers, but a “sombrero” is any hat with a bill that encircles the head and thus gives its wearer’s face “shade” from the sun.

The Latin word umbra also gave birth to well-known colors used in art classes and found in many crayon boxes. Those would be “raw umber” and “burnt umber.” “Umber” is generally a brownish or reddish earth color, and the “raw” and “burnt” forms of it work well for “shading” when painting or coloring.

Another useful word in English that comes from Latin’s umbra is “umbrage.” Usually we say someone “took umbrage” at something to signify that the person became annoyed or resentful about something. Nowadays, we have an epidemic of people “taking umbrage” over the slightest things. However, it originated as a word meaning that there was a “shadowy semblance of something.” So, now when we “take umbrage” about something, it’s because there was a “shadow” of an insult in whatever it is we are annoyed about.

“Umbrage” also refers to the foliage in trees that provide shade. I didn’t even know that until I looked up the word to write this piece. I quite like that definition because I enjoy sitting in the “umbrage” provided by the mature trees in my yard. I need to use that word more, and I encourage you to do the same.

Perhaps by now, you’ve realized, or wondered, that the word “umbrella” might be related to these shady words. Yes, indeed it is. We often associate “umbrellas” with rainy days and protection from the rain; however, they are also designed to offer us “shade” or “umbra.” The word “umbrella” literally means “small shade.”

I hope these “Cognate Cognizance” posts have done the very opposite of “adumbrating” your world. I hope they are bringing light to your lexical understanding.

Until next time. Please share this with others who enjoy learning about words and encourage them to become a subscriber.

Tammy Marshall

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Check out this “quintet” of giraffes! I recommend you hit the audio playback arrow above for this episode.

quintet — any group of five persons or things

quinteto — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

There aren’t many English-Spanish cognates that begin with the letter Q. In Spanish, you will only find the letter “Q” used when it’s followed by the combinations of “UE” or “UI.” That’s it. If you are attempting to place a “Q” in front of any letter besides a “U” then you are misspelling the Spanish word, and if you are putting any letter besides an “I” or an “E” after that “U” then you are further misspelling the word.

Thus, you get the combination of “que”— which sounds like the English “kay” — at the start of words like “queso” which is “cheese” or elsewhere in words such as “porque” which is “because,” but it will always have that same sound; and “qui” — which sounds like the English “key” — at the start of words like “quien” which is “who” or elsewhere in words such as “tranquilo” which is a cognate meaning “tranquil” or “calm.”

“Qui” also begins today’s cognate, and it begins the Spanish word “quinto” which means “fifth.” “Quinto” comes from Latin’s quintus which gave birth to all the words we now use in English to refer to things that are the multiple of five.

If you are one of five children born of the same pregnancy, you are a “quintuplet.” If you multiply something by five, you “quintuple” it. In Spanish, you do the action of “quintuplicar.” In math, a “quintic” is a quantity of the 5th degree. A “quincunx” is an arrangement of five items in which you put one item in each of four corners to form a square and the fifth item in the middle.

While “quinto” means “fifth” in Spanish, the word for “five” is “cinco.” “Quince” is “fifteen.” At first glance, to an English-speaker who doesn’t know any Spanish, that person would think the word was “quince,” which is a type of fruit; thus, Spanish “quince” and English “quince” are what we call false cognates. They look alike, but they do not have the same meaning at all.

That’s why you have to associate these “five-oriented” English words with their Latin, and thus their Spanish, roots of “quintus” and “quinto.” In Spanish, the word “quinientos” means “five hundred,” so you can see those root words appearing there, too.

In English, we have a few words that begin with “QUI” and refer to the number FIFTEEN. A “quindecagon” is a polygon with 15 angles and 15 sides, and a “quindecennial” is a 15th anniversary of something. Perhaps you are familiar with the popular Mexican tradition for girls called a “quinceañera” that takes place on a girl’s 15th birthday. I’ve been to a few, and they are very fun, and very loud!

I challenge you to go to the dictionary and find other English words that start with “QUIN” and refer to things that come in fives or in fifteens.

Until next time. High five!

Please share this with anyone you know who likes to learn about words.

Tammy Marshall

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jubilate — to rejoice and show great joy

jubilar — the Spanish verb cognate of the same meaning

The adjective “jubilant” has masculine, “jubiloso,” and feminine, “jubilosa,” (as well as plural — “jubilosos” and “jubilosas”) counterparts in Spanish. The noun “jubilation” is simply “júbilo” in Spanish. I chose the verb “jubilate,” which is “jubilar” in Spanish, because it means something else in Spanish — something that has brought me great “jubilation.”

“Jubilar” also means “to retire.” In that meaning, it is used in a reflexive sense to show that one has taken oneself out of employment to enjoy the well-deserved fruits of one’s labor. Thus, it would be “jubilarse,” and you would say “Me jubilé” to mean “I retired.” In other words, “I retired myself.”

Personally, I LOVE that the verb “jubilarse” means “to retire” because you’re essentially saying that you are rejoicing or entering a phase of your life that is full of joy. Retiring from teaching has brought me nothing but joy! And I now get to do the things that make me rejoice, “jubilate,” every single day — write, read, paint, walk my dog, travel, etc.

The verb “retirarse” also exists in Spanish, and you can see that it is a much more obvious cognate for “to retire,” but it also means things like “bowing out” of something or “removing oneself” from something, and those don’t always mean you are permanently leaving a career to focus on the rest of your life. Thus, if you use “jubilarse” in Spanish, you are ONLY referring to the act of retiring after a long career. “Jubilar” in a non-reflexive way means “to rejoice,” or “to jubilate.”

If you are listening to the audio version of this (click the arrow at the top to play it if you’re not), then you are hearing that the letter “j” in Spanish sounds more like an English “h.” It’s not a common letter in Spanish, but it does exist. It evolved from the letter “I” and took on a slightly different shape when the letter “I” began a word, so as a distinct letter, the “J” isn’t really all that old, and you will usually only find it at the beginning of words in Spanish.

Here are a few other “J” cognates: “judo,” “juvenil,” and “jaguar.”

If my weekly cognate posts bring you any jubilation, please share them and encourage other word lovers to subscribe.

Thanks.

Tammy Marshall

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castor — a beaver

castor — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

I recently visited Agate Fossil Beds National Monument with my daughter who is one year away from becoming a full-fledged paleontologist — to read about our trip, click here: Agate and other fossil stops

While we were there, I read about and saw a film about these ancient corkscrew-shaped burrows that were discovered at Agate in 1891.

They turned out to be the burrows of the Palaeocastor. A Palaeocastor is an extinct type of beaver. As soon as I heard the name of the animal, I said to my daughter that it was a beaver. She was surprised that I knew that, but then I told her that “castor” is the Spanish word for “beaver,” so it was a logical guess on my part. A guess that turned out to be correct, by the way, and a guess that allowed me to impress my scientific, soon-to-be-paleontologist daughter.

I, on the other hand, was surprised to learn that the scientific familial name for beavers is Castoridae, so I decided to check to see if the word “castor” exists in English for “beaver.”

It does! The first definition for the word is “beaver.”

All those years that I taught Spanish, and I never knew that the word “castor” in Spanish had an exact cognate in English because we never use it. In English, we have stayed true to our language and preserved a variation of an Old English word (beofor) which, over time, has become “beaver” in Modern English.

“Castor,” on the other hand, came into Spanish from Latin (and Latin took the word from Greek), and since Latin is the base of Spanish, it makes sense that they still use “castor.”

I’ll be honest with you here about something — due to the fact that I taught dirty-minded teenagers for thirty years, I often avoided the word “beaver” completely because of its unfortunate association with a certain part of a woman’s anatomy. If I’d known that I could have forced the English word “castor” upon them and simply had them learn that “castor” meant “castor,” I would have done that, and more of my students would have become familiar not only with the Spanish word for “beaver” but also for the much-less problematic English word of “castor.”

And, in case you were wondering (even a teeny bit), no, castor oil does NOT come from beavers. It comes from castor beans, which are “the very poisonous” seeds of castor-oil plants. Poisonous? Hmmm. I’ve never taken castor oil, nor do I plan to start.

I will, however, start to call them castor dams instead of beaver dams. Will you join me?

Until next time. Share this with anyone you know who might enjoy learning new words or expanding their knowledge about words.

Tammy Marshall

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flora — the plants that are characteristic of a region or time period

flora — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

First, I want to share with you this concise explanation from merriam-webster.com:

Flora means "flower" in Latin, and Flora was the Roman goddess of spring and flowering plants, especially wildflowers and plants not raised for food. She was shown as a beautiful young woman in a long, flowing dress with flowers in her hair, strewing flowers over the earth. English preserves her name in such words as floral, floret, and flourish. A region's flora may range from tiny violets to towering trees. The common phrase "flora and fauna" covers just about every visible living thing.

Associating our English word “flower” with the words “flora” and “floral,” helps you easily learn and remember the Spanish word for “flower” which is “flor.” “Flor” is a feminine word, so it would be “la flor” for “the flower.” Alone it sounds like the English word “floor,” so sometimes students would get confused with the Spanish word “flor.” Picture a “floral” arrangement, and then shorten the word to “flor” and now picture just a single “flower” to help you remember “flor” for “flower.”

When the word becomes plural in Spanish, it becomes “flores,” so often I would have students saying “flore” instead of “flor” for a single flower. They would drop the “s” only from the plural word, but that is incorrect. In Spanish, when a noun ends in a consonant, you add “es” to make the word plural; thus, “flor” becomes “flores” for “flowers.”

In the quote above, the words “floral” and “floret” are mentioned. They are both cognates in Spanish — “floral” and “florete.” A “floret” is a small flower or a cluster of flower buds. “Flourish” is also mentioned, and its etymology goes back to Latin’s flor, which means “flower,” because its original meaning deals with growing in a thriving fashion like a healthy plant does. Knowing the relation of “flourish” to “flower” can help you see that in Spanish the word is “florecer” — see how that starts with “flor” for “flower!”

Every day I go outside and water my “flores.” I love summer for many reasons, and “flowers” are one of those reasons. A few flowers have easy-to-recognize cognates: “rosas,” “tulipanes,” “violetas,” “geranios,” “irises,” and “gladiolos” among others.

Until next time. Take a moment and smell some flowers today, and then share this post with someone who might enjoy learning about words. Tell that person to subscribe, too.

Thanks.

Tammy Marshall

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reunion — a gathering of people who have not been together for some time

reuniόn — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning, but it’s more commonly used to mean a “meeting” (thus the reason for the above photo)

In honor of my upcoming class “reunion,” I thought I’d address this word today. As I mentioned in the definitions above, though, the Spanish cognate is used more to designate “meetings” like those you have at work, but even in that meaning, the word is used to show that people are coming together as one for a single purpose.

This is because “reunion” combines the prefix of “re-” with the word “union.” One of the uses of the prefix is to show that something is “being done again,” so by having a “reunion” you are making “one” out of many “again.”

My class graduated in 1986, and we were supposed to have our “reunion” last year to celebrate our 35th year since graduation, but due to Covid, the organizers postponed it a year; however, the point of a class “reunion” is to take a class that once was a cohesive unit but is now scattered across the world and bring back as many of them as possible to recreate that “unit” (a quantity of “one”) for a brief period of time. That’s the reason for any “reunion,” from class ones to family ones, etc.

When you look at the word “union” you see that it comes to us from the Latin word unus meaning “one.” In Spanish the word for “one” is “uno.” It’s pretty easy to see the connection between “uno” and “union” or even “unity.” It all involves separate things or people becoming “one.” In Spanish the cognates for those words are “uniόn” and “unidad.”

I’m sure you can think of many other words that begin with “uni-” in English that also have that sense of “oneness” in them. “University” which is “universidad” in Spanish. “Universal” is an exact cognate in Spanish. “Universe” is “universo.” “Uniform” is “uniforme” and deals with having one form or shape. There are many others, and most of them have exact or easily recognized cognates in Spanish.

Here are some that I bet you can figure out: “unicameral,” “unificar,” “unilateral,” and “único.” If you’re not sure about that last one, it means “unique,” and the point of being “unique” is to be like no other — in other words, you are in a class all to yourself, a class of “one.”

I’m looking forward to seeing my classmates again. We only have reunions every five years, so there are many classmates I haven’t seen for the past six years or longer. Sadly, we’ve also lost many over the years, so even if every classmate showed up this year (which they won’t), we can never be a true “union” of everyone that was in my graduating class the last time we were truly together as “one” in 1986.

Until next time. Please share this with anyone you know who might like to learn about words through the magic of “Cognate Cognizance.”

Thank you for reading Cognate Cognizance. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Tammy Marshall

p.s. The 80s were the best!

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peregrine — an adjective meaning that you have a tendency to wander

peregrino — the masculine Spanish cognate noun that translates to “pilgrim”

peregrina — the feminine Spanish cognate noun that also translates to “pilgrim”

As you can see, we don’t use the word “peregrine” in English to mean “pilgrim,” which is what it means in Spanish, so on the surface it may not appear to be a cognate, but hopefully you can see a connection between the two words. If you can’t, here is what is found on merriam-webster.com:

The current meaning of peregrine has wandered a bit from its earlier meanings. The word originally meant "foreign," as did its Latin predecessor peregrinus. But even before peregrine appeared on its own in English, it was part of the name of that well-known bird of prey, the peregrine falcon. The bird's appellation derives from "falco peregrinus"—literally, "pilgrim falcon" in Medieval Latin. Peregrine falcons typically nest in high places, such as on cliff ledges or, in modern times, city skyscrapers. Because of the nests' inaccessibility, medieval falconers who wanted young peregrine falcons to train had to capture them on their first flights or migratory "pilgrimages." That practice led to a new sense of "peregrine" ("engaged in or traveling on a pilgrimage"), which was later broadened to "wandering."

I wanted to share this cognate duo this month, though, because right now all across northern Spain, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of “peregrinos” walking the Camino de Santiago in the hopes of arriving in Santiago de Compostela by July 25th for the festival in honor of Saint James that takes place there each year. While I don’t necessarily want to be a part of this huge event, I would like to walk a portion of the long pilgrim route from France to western Spain.

I’d say that most English-speaking people here in the U.S. only know the word “peregrine” in association with the falcon, but knowing WHY it is called a “peregrine” falcon instead of just a falcon can lead to an easy understanding of the word “peregrine” and its actual meaning, and that, in turn, can help you remember that the word “peregrino” in Spanish refers to a “pilgrim.” A “pilgrim” is a person who journeys in foreign lands, or a wayfarer. If you look up “wayfarer,” you’ll see that it means a person who travels by foot, and I’ve found that most people who travel by foot tend to wander quite a bit.

My father loves to wander. He is a “peregrine” traveler, and I’ve inherited his love of that. I like to wander around new places and simply see what I stumble upon. Due to my dad’s “peregrine” nature, we sometimes sing a portion of the song “The Wanderer” by Dion DiMucci — not because he’s kissing all the girls, but rather because he’s always off wandering around. Have a listen below if you don’t know the song or if you haven’t heard it in a long time.

The Wanderer song

Whether you roam from town to town or up and down the aisles of a store, if you’re doing that, you are behaving in a “peregrine” fashion. Hopefully, you now know that the word “peregrine” doesn’t only have to refer to a type of falcon and the word “peregrino” is what you use in Spanish to refer to a “pilgrim.” Thus a “pilgrimage” in Spanish is “peregrinaje.”

Until next time. Please share this with anyone who might enjoy learning about words. Thanks.

Tammy Marshall

Thank you for reading Cognate Cognizance. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Did you know that the Statue of Liberty’s real name is “Liberty Enlightening the World?” Sometimes we call her “Lady Liberty,” too, and that’s my favorite nickname for her. She’s lovely, isn’t she, but what she represents is one of the loveliest things humans can experience, so on this special day when people all over the United States are celebrating their liberty, I thought it would be a good time to share some cognate cognizance about the word.

liberty — the state or quality of being free (this is simplified but sufficient)

libertad — the Spanish cognate of the same meaning

Seeing Lady Liberty serves as a reminder that in Spanish, the word “libertad” is feminine, so it’s “la libertad.” “Liberty” and “libertad” go back to the Latin word liber, which means “free.”

Knowing this is helpful to learn the Spanish word for “free” which is “libre.” “Libre” means “free” in the sense of being unrestrained and “free” to do as you want. This is not the word for “free” when you mean that something doesn’t cost anything — that word is “gratis.”

The Latin word for free, liber, survives in our word of “liberty” and in the Spanish cognate of “libertad.” It also shows up in “liberate,” which means to set something or someone free. In Spanish, that word is “liberar.” “Liberation” is the act of being set free, whether from actual confinement or from a confining situation. Thus, we have “Women’s Liberation,” which is usually shortened to “Women’s Lib,” but I like the longer form myself. In Spanish, the word is “liberaciόn.”

If you are “liberal” with something, you are generous, or free, with it. I’m referring to non-political “liberalism” right now, but even that is intended to suggest an openness or freedom of thought. Someone who is “liberal” with the salt uses a lot of it on his food, for example. “Liberal” has an exact cognate in Spanish — “liberal.”

“Give me liberty or give me death,” is a well-known quote from Patrick Henry’s speech from March 1775 that became the very war cry of our revolution that led to our liberty and independence. I know that today, July 4, 2022, I give special thanks to people like Henry and wish more people would appreciate all we have here in the United States.

If you study Spanish, you will encounter the word “libre” often. Interestingly, it’s part of the term for wrestling, which is “lucha libre.” That actually translates to “free fighting.” If you’ve ever watched Mexican wrestling, perhaps you know they are called “luchadores,” which really comes closer to meaning “fighters.”

I’ve long enjoyed Jack Black as an actor, and I got a special kick out of his film, “Nacho Libre.” This has nothing to do with nacho chips, I assure you. Nacho is short for Ignacio, and that is his name in the movie. He wants to be a “luchador.” What does a “luchador” do? He wrestles. What is that called? “Lucha libre.” Thus, Ignacio becomes a wrestler called “Nacho Libre.” If you’ve never seen it, and if you enjoy comedy, then give it a whirl.

Here is the trailer for that movie: Nacho Libre

Whatever you are doing today to celebrate your “liberty,” stay safe and come back next week for another episode of “Cognate Cognizance.” Please share this with anyone else who might like learning about words and Spanish.

Thanks. Happy 4th of July!

Tammy Marshall

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mariner — a sailor or a seafarer

marinero — the masculine Spanish cognate of the same meaning

marinera — the feminine Spanish cognate

I love the sea, yet I live as far inland as one can get from a sea or an ocean here in the U.S.A. I’ve long said that I was born in the wrong locale and that I hope to retire near the sea someday. Time will tell, but if I could have chosen the place where I grew up, it would have been seaside.

In Spanish, the word for the sea is “mar.” It comes from Latin’s mare, which also means “sea.” In Old English one word for “sea” was mere. That word survives today in words like “mermaid” which means a maid or woman of the sea and “merman” which is simply a man of the sea.

However, in English we use the word “sea,” which is only mildly different now than how it was in a different word for “sea” in Old English. It got its beginning even further back from the Goths, though.

“Mar” is easy to remember when learning Spanish, though, because we English speakers are quite familiar with the word “marine” for things that relate to the sea, like marine life and even that branch of the military called the Marines.

“Mar” makes an appearance in our word of “maritime,” which is “marítimo” (masculine) and “marítima” (feminine) in Spanish. “Marine” is “marino” in Spanish.

“Mariner” is kind of an outdated word for “sailor” in English, but there is a well-known baseball team called the Mariners in Seattle, and that team got its name because of Seattle’s proximity to the sea and to marine things.

You may also be familiar with the word “mariner” from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” about an old sailor who kills an albatross and then must bear the burden of its death. That is the origin of the idiom that something burdensome is “an albatross around my neck,” but in my experience with past students, those who had heard of the saying often didn’t know what it meant, and they also didn’t know what a “mariner” was. Hopefully, you do, and you also know that an albatross is a seabird or a “marine” bird.

“Mariner,” “marine,” “maritime” all deal with “the sea” or “el mar.” In Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize winning short novel, “The Old Man and the Sea,” the old man preferred the feminine form for the sea, referring to it as “la mar” instead of “el mar.”

"He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought."

I like to pretend that my last name of “Marshall” also does pertain to the sea. I “shall” live by the “mar” someday. Ha ha.

Whatever it takes to help you make that cognate cognizance, I always say.

Until next time. May you have smooth sailing on your sea of life, you mariners of the world.

Tammy Marshall (if you listened to the audio, you probably heard my cat — that wasn’t me meowing — ha ha)

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paterfamilias — the male head of a household is its original meaning; the father of a family

paterfamilias — the Spanish cognate of the same meanings

It varies only slightly in Italian to “paterfamilia.”

The Latin word of “familia” originally referred to one’s household, which included people related to you by blood as well as people who served you, so that’s why the original meaning of this word simply denotes the male head of a household. He would have been the eldest male, and he would have had authority over everyone in the household.

Since the word “family” has changed a bit over the years, we are more accustomed to using “paterfamilias” to mean the father of a family instead of, or in addition to, the male head of the household. The word “pater” comes from Latin by way of Greek, but in English the word “father” comes down to us from Old English which probably took the word from Old High German’s “fater,” so that’s why we have the initial “f” instead of a “p” like the Romance languages have in their words for “father.”

In Spanish, it’s “padre.” In Italian, it’s “padre.” In French, it’s “père.”

That “pater” survives, though, in our English words of “paternal” and “paternity” and “paternalism” as well as “paterfamilias.” If you are Catholic, you may hear the term “Pater Noster” being used in church to refer to the Lord’s Prayer. “Pater Noster” is Latin for “Our Father.”

If you study Spanish, one of the early vocabulary words you will learn is “padre” along with other family words. Often I would have students bring up the baseball team of the San Diego Padres, and they’d want to know if that meant the San Diego Fathers. No. Not in the sense of biology. It actually means the San Diego (or the Saint James) Priests because Padre is used in Spanish to refer to the Catholic priests, or fathers.

Interestingly, the plural of “paterfamilias” is “patresfamilias” because “patres” is the plural of “pater” in Latin. Also, you can write the word as two separate words and have “pater familias” if you prefer, but dictionaries tend to show it as one word.

I’m sending this edition out a day early, so you can receive it on Father’s Day. Refer to your father as the “paterfamilias,” and see if he knows what that is. I’m hoping he does because it’s a fairly common word despite its ancient origins. The thing I like about it is that it’s the same word in English and Spanish, and you can branch off it to learn other words in both languages.

Have a great day. Hug your “pater.” Until next time. Please share this with anyone you know who likes to learn about words. Thanks.

Tammy Marshall

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