User:LachlanA/InterestingEtymologies


 * "black" is derived from "blanc", the French word for "white", via the notion of "blank"
 * "clue" comes from the word "clew", meaning a ball of string. It is said that Theseus unwound a clew of string to help him find his way back out of the Labrynth after fighting the Minataur.
 * "nice" originally meant "foolish" (from Latin "nescius": "ne" not, "scius" to know), then "finicky" (still the first meaning in Websters), then "precise" or "not obvious" (the second meaning in Websters), then "pleasant" (relegated to third in Websters, but by far the most common meaning in current English).
 * "robot" comes from the Czech word for forced labour, "robota".
 * Calculate / calculus
 * "Awkward" ("turned towards being turned away from")
 * "Electric"
 * "random" from French "to run fast ("randir")
 * "Electric"
 * cursor / cursive
 * "alcohol" from Arabic for "antimony sulfide powder", used as an antiseptic (and eyeshadow) and sublimated from stibnite. (Was the connection the use as antiseptic, or the distillation process as indicated by ?)
 * "Electric"

Maybe

 * "assassin" comes from the Arabic for hashish smoker ("hashishiyyin"), from an Arabic sect during the crusades who smoked hashish and then killed invaders. )
 * "sycophant" means "someone who denounces someone else as a fig smuggler", from 6th century Athens.)
 * "phoney" from "fawney", English slang for fake gold rings, sold by pirates (Business Insider )
 * "Nimrod" (and inept person, in the US), from the meaning of "great hunter" (after Noah's great grandson Nimrod), but Bugs Bunny's sarcastic description of Elmer Fudd. )