While writing something at work I was unsure how to spell a word: was it 'assertain' or 'ascertain'? I Googled it and found the answer, and also noticed that the spelling has a logical connection with the meaning.
When you ascertain something, you make sure it is true... so you can say it is true as certain. For example:
- The police have ascertained that the murderer used poison
- I tried to ascertain who wrote the letter, but I never found out.
This got me thinking about other words in English that look like a combination of two words.
To me 'island' looks like ' isolated land', which seems to make sense, but this was my mistake. Actually it means 'wet land' in old English.
An easy set of words are those that describe body parts using fore- to mean the front or end (the bit that comes beFORE!). For example, forehead, forearm and forefinger.
The final one I'll put here is my favourite because it's funny: 'scapegoat'. If you do something wrong, but you make everybody believe it was somebody else, that person is your scapegoat . My idea for the history of the word was: in the past people would take a goat with them so that if they bumped into a lion, they could run away while the lion was eating the goat. The actual meaning is similar, but related to religion and sacrifice to the Gods.
To me 'island' looks like ' isolated land', which seems to make sense, but this was my mistake. Actually it means 'wet land' in old English.
An easy set of words are those that describe body parts using fore- to mean the front or end (the bit that comes beFORE!). For example, forehead, forearm and forefinger.
The final one I'll put here is my favourite because it's funny: 'scapegoat'. If you do something wrong, but you make everybody believe it was somebody else, that person is your scapegoat . My idea for the history of the word was: in the past people would take a goat with them so that if they bumped into a lion, they could run away while the lion was eating the goat. The actual meaning is similar, but related to religion and sacrifice to the Gods.
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