Bastard

Interpret is a pretty interesting word, especially when you think it shares the same root as pretty.

 It doesn’t, as it turns out, but finding out was fun. Like Richard Feynman said, “The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out...” What a wonderful character that guy was, you should read about him if you get the chance, or watch some of the videos of him explaining mundane things like elastic bands, or the energy transference of a bouncing ball. He was a truly rare and wonderful human being.

 I own a lot of dictionaries, including two dictionaries of word origins. I used to read dictionaries when I was a kid, not from page to page or anything weird like that, but I’d open it up either to find a specific word, or to a random spot, and begin exploring. One word inevitably leads to the next; that’s how sentences are built, and ideas conveyed. In seeking the definition of one word, you always find another because you’re curious, and curiosity is, by its very nature, insatiable, isn’t it?

 The Latin origin of curious is, unsurprisingly, curiosus, which means taking pains over something, and is itself derived from cura, meaning care. I’m sure that you can also see the derivation of the word cure. But is curiosity insatiable by it’s very nature? Insatiable is compounded from Latin’s satiare, to satisfy, which is equivalent to sati, meaning enough, which is, very interestingly, akin to sad, in conjunction with the formative prefix in-, which implies a negative force to what follows. Now nature....you see how this can go. Very, akin, interesting, compounded, conjunction, implies, all Latin, with the exception of akin, which is Old English/Old Norse/Old German for kind or type, much like the Latin genus.

 So, I thought interpret was an interesting word. It sounds weird, and it looks weird, and there are no other words in the English language that end in -pret unless they contain interpret. So that’s pretty interesting. So -pret isn’t a suffix, is it a prefix, like in pretty, or pretending? No, pre- is the prefix in pretending, so das is nichts. If you understood that, you either can read a bit of German, or possibly are open to the implications of context.

 I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to learn English. It’s Latin Latin Latin Latin Norse German Latin Old English, which is German Latin Dutch Norse, and there are so many different sets of rules. Latin is easy, it’s basically a Lego language, and that makes a lot of sense to me. The other languages I am unfamiliar with except when they are plonked (plunked?) down in front of me like a round stone, or a chess piece that has nothing to do with Lego at all except that it’s a shape, and I can pick it up and look at it, and decide how to use it.

 Pretty originated in the barbarian North of Europe, but those sandal wearing Romans, with their short swords, and hygiene, had a different word for tricky.

 And I don’t know what it is.