{"id":14219,"date":"2012-09-22T10:27:50","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T17:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2012\/09\/22\/eucalyptus-and-hell-are-cognat.html"},"modified":"2012-09-22T10:27:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T17:27:50","slug":"eucalyptus-and-hell-are-cognat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2012\/09\/22\/eucalyptus-and-hell-are-cognat\/","title":{"rendered":"eucalyptus and hell are cognates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The other day, Jim and I were looking at a eucalyptus tree, and I realized that although the eu-<\/i> part was obvious, I had no idea what the -calyptus<\/i> part meant.<\/p>\n

So I looked it up. It is awfully nice to have a dictionary on my cell phone.<\/p>\n

MW11 says:<\/p>\n

\n

New Latin, genus name, from eu-<\/i> + Greek kalyptos<\/i> covered, from kalyptein<\/i> to conceal; from the conical covering of the buds<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is kind of interesting, and good to know, but that wasn't the part that caught my eye. The surprising part was this:<\/p>\n

\n

—more at HELL<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Say what?<\/p>\n

So I checked the etymology for hell<\/i>, and sure enough:<\/p>\n

\n

akin to Old English helan<\/i> to conceal, [. . .] Greek kalyptein<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So there you have it: eucalyptus<\/i> and hell<\/i> are distantly related, by way of a Greek word for concealment.<\/p>\n

I'm pretty sure this wins the most surprising-to-me etymology of the year award.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, Jim and I were looking at a eucalyptus tree, and I realized that although the eu- part was obvious, I had no idea what the -calyptus part…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}