NEIGHBOR:your friend on the next farm

　　Literally,the farmer who lives near you,from the Old English neshgebur which meant “near-by farmer.”Neah appears in modern German as nahe and in English as nigh ,both of which mean”near”Gebur is related to Bauer ,”farmer ”or “peasant,”in modern German and entered our languang from Dutch as boor ,no longer a farmer or peasant but a city person’s idea of someone with the awkward and clumsy manners of a peasant .This same Dutch word boer gave us the Boer War in which the English fought the Dutch farmers in South Africa.

　　NICKNAME: an added name

　　In days long past, a nickname was an ekename, and eke meant “added”, a name ”added” to your given name. At that time an ekename was a surname , and even in surname we have the same meaning in the French sur , which means “over” or ”above” , a name “over” and “above” your first name . the Middle English word ekename finally absorbed the “n” from ‘a(chǎn)n” and became a ekename , and later , with us , a nickname . Once again a name “added” to those you already have.

　　OPPORTUNE: the ship is at the harbor

　　Each year on August 17th the romans had a feast in honor of Portunus, the general god who protected the ports and harbors. His name is derived from portus, the Latin words for “harbor ”. Our word opportune traces to the Latin words ob-,”before”, and portus , “port ,” or “before the port .” When a ship is at the harbor mouth it is an opportune moment , or a happy , fitting, and suitable time for many things.

　　PALLIANTE: cover with a garment

　　The traditional garb of the Greek philosophers was a rectangular woolen cloak draped over the left shoulder and around the body , called by the Romans a pallium . By some strange coincidence , and just as a passing piece of gossip , this was also the popular garment of the hetaerae , those charming and cultural entertainers and courtesans of the day . From the term pallium , “cloak,” the Latins derived the word palliates which meant “covered with a cloak” , and in this circuitous way we get our word palliate with some of the original meaning left . When we palliateour sins , for instance , we attempt to cover them as with a cloak so that they will not be so easily seen and will seem less offensive . When we palliate pain , we reduce its severity and make it less obvious . Again, in a sense , we are “cloaking” it .

　　PARAGON: a testing stone

　　In order to test the purity of gold it is often rubbed against a fine-grained , dark stone like jasper in order to see what kind of a mark it leaves . This testing stone is called a “touchstone”. Ourword paragon comes through Old French from the Italian word paragone which originally meant a touchstone, and hence paragon came finally to be a standard of true worth, so that we can now say , “he is a paragon of virtue.”

　　PECULIAR: related to cattle

　　The story of the word peculiar has a “peculiar” history. In the beginning of Rome, when there were as yet no minted coins, cattle, called pecus in Latin, took the place of money . From pecus the word peculium was finally formed and it meant “private property”. This grew into the word peculiaris which applied to possessions that were “one’s own”. The term entered Old French as peculiar and English as peculiar , with the meaning of property belonging exclusively to someone and not owned by others, or it often could refer to characteristics that were quite distinct from those of other individuals. As the poet Robert Browning said : “Yes, this in him was the peculiar grace.” Now, more and more, peculiar has taken on the meaning of characteristics that are odd and queer.

　　PEDIGREE: foot of a crane

　　Perhaps you take just pride in your family tree. Like a blooded horse, you are proud of you pedigree. But you may not know that, when you boast of your pedigree, you are really speaking of a crane’s foot, for pedigree seems to have been our way of pronouncing the French phrase pied de grue which means “the foot of a crane.” In those very old documents that recorded a family tree, the three-line graph of lineal descent looked for all the world like the imprints of a crane’s foot and suggested the picturesque name. The Latin ancestors of the word pedigree are pes, “foot,” de, “of,” and grus, “crane.”