Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Word Musing
Inspired by the serendipitous etymological musings of Pyramus of Cephalogenic, I said to myself two nights ago, "Hey, worm and vermin kinda sound alike. I wonder if they're related?" I looked it up and, sure enough, they are! "Vermin" comes from Latin and "worm" is Germanic, but they ultimately derive from the same Indo-European root.
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I love those moments of inspiration. Yeah, not only are "vermin" and "worm" related, but in German, the letter "w" is pronounce as we pronounce "v", so "Würm", the source of our "worm", sounds even more like "vermin".
Also, "vermicelli", the pasta, is Italian for "little worms". Same root, obviously.
And--this is even better--the "ver-" of "vermin" is etymologically related to the "-vers-" of such words as "reverse"; "-vers-" means "turning", and a worm is a twisty, turny thing.
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