Language is a fluid.
While many of the world languages are just as dynamic as English, I tend to find the origins of words we use every day endlessly fascinating. We casually utter a sound or observe simple symbology to send and receive basic signals among other humans, but the words themselves often have an incredibly rich history and origin; and in most cases can be “decompressed” to represent nearly infinitely complex concepts or ideas.
While English is soundly a “Germanic” language, it inherits large volumes of vocabulary from other sources. This concept isn’t unique to English, but being that I natively speak it, I find its an easy path to explore.
An “Interesting” list
Quintessential
“Quint” - From the latin for the number 5. “Essential” - As in the essence or basis of something. Also a synonym for Element.
The word itself stems from the latin term “Quinta Essentia” or “The fifth element”. In pre-atomic philosophy and physics (particularly greek and roman), the universe was believed composed of 4 primary elements and a superior “fifth element”. That fifth element was the “essence” of the universe, sometimes referred to as energy, aether, spirit, divinity, or other such terms. Since the original concept of the “fifth element” was considered superior or the overriding force in the universe, it’s meaning has drifted to mean “The most typical or perfect example of a thing”.
Chemistry
There is some debate as to the actual origin of this word. An easy observation of the word however is that it is a modern representation of the word “Alchemy”, or the transmutation / mixing of elements to create new / other elements.
Alchemy comes from “al-kīmīā” - An Arabic word, likely borrowed from “khymeia” - An early Greek word meaning to “cast together”. This root word itself can be traced further back. This word was likely borrowed directly from the Egyptian word for, well “Egyptian”; khēmia.
Many ancient peoples named their place of inhabitance after plain descriptions of the area. In this case “Khem” was the Egyptian Coptic word for “Blackness” or “The Black Land”, likely describing the color of the soil that surrounded the Nile River.
This is important because of the slight semantic drift in the words themselves. While the Greek and Arabic words did mean roughly, “the mixing of elements”, it also had a double entendre in meaning “The Egyptian Black Arts”. There was a stigma (another interesting word) surrounding “Alchemy” as a meaning, especially in the Catholic Church. Further, there was a generic fear that Alchemists could severely damage the economies of medieval governments by transmuting base metals into gold and devaluing governmental control of currency. King Henry IV of England outright banned the practice of Alchemy in 1404 in the “Act Against Multipliers” whereby it was explicitly illegal to attempt to create gold from base metals. Around this time however, the primary usage was in the Latin “alchimia”. Around the 16th and 17th century, the “al-” was falling into disuse among Latin academics and *“Alchimia” and “Chimia” began to be used interchangeably. “Alchimical, Alchimic, chimic, and chimical” were all used to describe processes involving elements metallurgy during this time.
English took the forms and spelling of the word to its present state when it dropped the “i” from “chimical”, and replaced it with “e”. Though, other languages such as Spanish and Russian kept the “i” sound in their spellings.