Cousin words with different meanings
Monday, July 21st, 2008Millions of words in hundreds of languages (spoken by half of the humanity) are derived from just a thousand words spoken by the tribes of the Indo-Europeans.
These inherited words have undergone through countless changes in their morphology and phonetics, have been borrowed to and fro, have been mixed with non-Indo-European languages and of course, they changed their meanings many times.
Here we have an example for such a changing of meaning from a Latin word, magister. This Latin word, meaning “teacher” or “master”, is derived from magis, a word meaning “greater”.
Six words in Romanian language are derived from the same Latin word, but they were borrowed at different times and have different forms and meanings:
Also, Romanian has the word metresă, borrowed from French maîtresse, related in both form and meaning to English mistress, which, along with the word mister is derived from this fruitful Latin word.