Freelance Ghostwriter – the word for the day is etymology.

According to Webster’s: Latin etymologia; the origin and development of a word, affix, phrase; the tracing of a word or other form back as far as possible in its own language and to its source in contemporary or earlier languages; the branch of linguistics dealing with word origin and development.

Noun singular: etymology; Noun plural: etymologies.

Words have a history, an origin, and many times words evolve over time into other forms and often times with different meanings.

“Etymology” is derived from the Greek etumologia. Etumon means true sense and logia means study; logos means speech.

A word, perhaps, may have the same meaning and/or form in its Modern English version as it did in Middle English, yet have a slight variation from the Old English version.

Have a look at this article by Robert Jesselson, The Etymology of the Words “Violin” and “Violoncello”