I read from embryophyte to emergency brake.
Here's a very long timelapse of corn!
https://youtu.be/9nQ6d3A2cTs?si=P9toEcoxabCfGGH8
I asked Kevin Stroud of "The History of English Podcast" about the change of "s" to "e" in words like "emerald" and this is what he sent me (thanks Kevin!):
With regard to your question, the source of the change was Late Latin. It appears that the people who spoke Late Latin (including many of the Vulgar Latin dialects that evolved into the Romance languages) had a problem pronouncing the 's' sound at the beginning of a word. To compensate for that problem, they often preceded the 's' sound with a slight 'e' sound. Eventually, the 's' sound disappeared in those words altogether. Since English borrowed many of those words, English speakers sometimes pronounced that initial 'e' sound and sometimes they didn't. As a result, English has a lot of these word pairs where one version has an initial [e] and one doesn't (like estate/state, esquire/squire, estrange/strange, and so on). Since the 's' in those words eventually disappeared in languages like French, it explains why French as 'etat' where English has 'state' and 'estate.' All three words began as a common word ('status') in Latin.
That history also explains what happened with words like 'emerald' from Greek. It began as a Greek word that began with an 's' sound ('smaragdos'). When it passed into Latin, speakers added the 'e' sound at the front, thereby producing the Latin word 'esmaraldus.' As I noted, the 's' sound eventually disappeared in French, thereby producing the French word 'emeraude.' And from there, the word passed into English with its initial 'em-' sound.
You might want to start using your emergency (parking) brake at least when you're parked on a hill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_brake
https://cloverdaleautoservice.com/the-purpose-of-emergency-brakes/
The word of the episode is "emcee".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_ceremonies
Theme music from Jonah Kraut
https://jonahkraut.bandcamp.com/
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"The Dictionary - Letter A" on YouTube
"The Dictionary - Letter B" on YouTube
"The Dictionary - Letter C" on YouTube
"The Dictionary - Letter D" on YouTube
"The Dictionary - Letter E" on YouTube
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