Word-Origin Wednesday

"Stay" and "home" and "parent" are old words, going back centuries. Words to describe someone who tends to the home and children are also very old. English speakers began using the term "stay-at-home parent" very recently.

"Leverage" has been in the English language since the 18th century, but its position in everyday corporate speak is fairly recent.

Tea has been around for thousands of years, but English speakers didn't need a word for it until they started trading it in the 1590s.

"Butt" and "cheek" have been around for centuries. It took a while for English speakers to put them together.

"Ambulance" has been an English word since the 18th century, before motor vehicles, and is related to the word "amble."

"Selfie" is a fairly new word, but its root word and suffix are centuries old. Some people don't like "selfie," but resistance is futile.

By tracing "hiatus," meaning a break, back to its ancient Proto-Indo European roots, we find it has some modern cousins with similar meanings but very different sounds.

"Penultimate" and its cousin, "ultimate," both come from Latin. As the meaning of "ultimate" shifts, poor "penultimate" is being left behind.

The current popular meaning of "carnival" goes back to the 1920s, but the original meaning, which involves meat, goes back centuries.

We've been using the word "buck" as slang for money since the 1850s. There are two theories to explain why.