Making words work better
I bet you’ll never guess from which language English borrowed penguin. Could it be from those adventurous mariners the Dutch, as their word is pinguïn? Or perhaps from a Polynesian language? Nope, neither of those. It’s most probably from… ... ... ... ... Meanwhile, English being so footloose – nay, cavalier – with parts of speech, it was inevitable that Penguin books should hatch a verb.
During the final rallies of her election campaign, US presidential candidate Kamala Harris drew on one metaphor time and time again. She said she was determined, or she saw a nation determined, ‘to turn the page on hatred and division’.
The species of nettle we’re talking about here is Urtica dioica. The Urtica part is a direct borrowing from the Latin urtīca, ‘nettle’, which in turn is from ūrere, ‘to burn’. That makes sense. Ouch! Nettles do make your skin feel as if it’s burning. And that burning is expressed in the prefix to the Danish word for stinging nettles, brændenælder, Danish using the same verb for ‘to burn’ and ‘to sting’. That same Latin word urtīca is also the root of the technical name for nettle rash, urticaria.