1. The word was first recorded in English by 900, from Latin. It appears in King Alfred’s translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, in a line saying that a hard stone cannot be cut by any iron.

2. Old French had a form of the word by the twelfth century, meaning both a diamond and a magnet. English borrowed it again by the middle of the fourteenth century, and in about 1385 Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale described an everlasting door made of it.

3. In Greek, the source word was an adjective meaning ‘unbreakable’. Its origin is uncertain, though one theory builds it from a prefix meaning ‘not’ and a verb meaning ‘to conquer’, which traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *deme-, ‘to break horses’.

4. TAME and DAUNT come from that same root. TAME goes back to an Old English word for ‘domesticated’, and by about 1200 it described people held in subjection. DAUNT entered English about 1300, from Old French, meaning to vanquish, and goes back to a Latin verb meaning ‘to tame’.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1548, from German. It appears in a translation of Martin Luther’s writings, in a line mocking the Pope for boasting that all laws were held in the coffer of his heart.

2. Around 100 AD the Greek biographer Plutarch described the Greek word’s state as that of prophets and prophetesses ravished with divine fury when a god was believed to speak through them. Latin borrowed it in the third century, and by the early sixteenth century it was used for a writer’s inspiration. It reached English through German.

3. Behind the Latin lay a Greek adjective meaning ‘possessed by a god’, built from a word for ‘in’ and a word for ‘god’. That word for ‘god’ descends from a Proto-Indo-European root, *dhes-, which formed words for religious concepts.

4. FANATIC and ATHEIST come from that same root. FANATIC entered English in 1533, from a Latin word for a person possessed by the frenzy of a temple’s god, though its link to the root is not certain. ATHEIST reached English in the 1580s, from a Greek word meaning ‘without a god’.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1450, from Latin. It appears in The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, in a line weighing whether Holy Scripture, or a revelation of its own kind, shows that poverty was a commandment to all Christians.

2. Latin had used the word by the sixth century, and Spanish had a form of it by 1414. English borrowed it straight from Latin, and in 1509 a memorial sermon for the Countess of Richmond said she kept the church’s appointed days. She also kept fasts of her own for Saint Anthony and Mary Magdalene.

3. Behind the Latin adjective lay a noun meaning ‘private property’, said to come from a word for ‘cattle’, which traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *peku-, meaning ‘livestock’. In ancient times livestock was the main form of property.

4. PECUNIARY and FEE come from that same root. PECUNIARY entered English by about 1500, from a Latin word for ‘money’. FEE goes back to an Old English word for ‘cattle’, and by the late fourteenth century it meant a payment for work.

5. By 1836 Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers used it, beside the word ‘extensive’, for a character’s knowledge of London. In 1936 the astronomer Edwin Hubble’s The Realm of the Nebulae used it for galaxies that fit none of the usual types.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1325, from French. It appears in the Northern Passion, a medieval poem on the suffering and death of Christ, in a line where a man receives something from a group.

2. French had already used the word by the late twelfth century, and behind it lay a Latin one. The same Latin word had reached Old English separately by the eighth century. King Edgar’s laws used it to order that there be only one across his kingdom, and that no one refuse it.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1230, from French. It appears in the Ancrene Riwle, a medieval guide for women living as recluses, in a line saying someone can never be defeated in any way.

2. French had already used the word by about 1100, for destroying a person or thing. Behind the French verb lay an older French verb, and behind that, a Latin one.

3. In Latin, the source verb meant ‘to prepare’. The French verb built on it also meant ‘to accomplish’, and a prefix meaning ‘not’ went in front. The Latin verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *dhe-, meaning ‘to set’ or ‘to put’, which may also lie behind the English verb ‘do’.

4. CONFECTION and CONFIT are built on the same Latin verb as this word. CONFECTION reached English by 1477, from French, and meant making something by mixing ingredients. CONFIT came by 1975, from French, for food cooked very slowly in fat.

5. By 1614 Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World used it for the fate of Xerxes’ land army, soon after the overthrow of his fleet. In 1732 Henry Fielding’s play The Modern Husband used the word for spoiling a husband’s plans. Today it more commonly describes making someone uneasy or embarrassed.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1598, from Latin. It appears in an English translation of a French surgeon's manual, The Frenche Chirurgerye, in a passage comparing the pains of dysentery.

2. Latin had already used the word by the fourteenth century, and English took it straight from Latin. By 1602 Ben Jonson's comedy Poetaster had a poet describe his coat of arms as a bloody toe between three thorns, using the word for them.

3. In Latin, the verb behind it meant 'to prick', and figuratively 'to vex' or 'to grieve'. English borrowed the verb's 'pricking' form. The verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *peuk-, which meant the same and may also lie behind a Greek word for a boxer.

4. COMPUNCTION and PUNCH are built on the same Latin verb as this word. COMPUNCTION entered English in the mid-fourteenth century, from Old French, meaning remorse for wrongdoing. PUNCH entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Old French, as a pointed tool for making holes.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1425, from French and Latin, in a Middle English version of the Rule of St Benedict. The passage observes that grievous scandals often arise when a prioress is appointed.

2. Latin had used the word by the fourth century, and French by 1279. English already had an older word for the same thing, found in the Old English translation of the scholar Bede's Ecclesiastical History and still part of Westminster.

3. Behind the Latin word lay a Greek word, built from a verb meaning 'to live alone' and a suffix for the place where something is done. The Greek word for 'alone' may trace to a Proto-Indo-European root, *men-, meaning 'small, or isolated', which may also lie behind a Greek word for 'sparse'.

4. MONARCHY and MONOPOLY share a Greek root with this word. MONARCHY came into English in the mid-fourteenth century from French and Latin, from Greek monarkhia, 'government by a single ruler', and could name the kingdom as well as the rule. MONOPOLY followed in the 1530s through Latin, from Greek monopōlion, 'right of exclusive sale', for sole control of a trade.

5. In 1539 a priest in Spain used its plural to jeer that Henry VIII was a good Christian for putting them down. And in 1800 Captain Samuel Turner's account of his embassy to Tibet used it for the Buddhist communities there. Today it more commonly describes the home of a group living under religious vows.

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1. The word was first recorded in English, in its modern form, by 1548, from Latin. It appears in an English edition of the Dutch scholar Erasmus's work on the New Testament, which a royal order required every parish church in England to keep, describing a way of subverting a commandment.

2. French had already used the word by the twelfth century. English had borrowed it from Latin in Old English, and borrowed it again from French by about 1300, in an older spelling. One of its first English senses was flattery.

3. In Greek, the source word meant 'the tongue', and then 'a foreign or obscure word'. The origin of the Greek word is uncertain, though one theory ties it to a Proto-Indo-European root, *glogh-, meaning 'thorn', which may also lie behind a word for the barb of an arrow.

4. EPIGLOTTIS and POLYGLOT come from the Athenian form of the same Greek word as this one. EPIGLOTTIS took its present form in the 1610s, from Late Latin, for the flap that covers the windpipe when we swallow. POLYGLOT entered English in the 1640s, from Greek, for someone who speaks or writes many languages.

5. In 1837 the historian Henry Hallam credited Irnerius, a medieval law teacher, with starting the practice of adding it to the margins of the law books. Today it still describes a few words set beside a hard word.

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1. The word was first recorded in English, in its modern form, by 1493, from Old French. It appears in that year's ordinances, or rules, for the royal household, which required the Queen to wear her hair in a particular way, with a rich circle on her head.

2. French had already used the word by the early fourteenth century, to describe someone bare-headed. English had a shorter form used around 1381, in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, a poem about a gathering of birds, before adding an ending of its own.

3. In Old French, the source verb was built on the word for hair, and a medieval Latin counterpart meant 'stripped of hair'. The Latin word for hair may be related to the one for head, from a Proto-Indo-European root, *kaput-, meaning 'head'.

4. DISGUISE and DISMANTLE share a prefix with this word, dis-, meaning 'away' or 'off'. DISGUISE entered English around 1300, from Old French, meaning to change one's appearance to deceive. DISMANTLE entered English in the 1570s, from French, meaning to strip off fortifications or equipment, and the French word behind it meant to strip off a cloak.

5. By 1858 the Victorian weekly the Saturday Review used the word for a style of grammar. In 1885 the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Prince Otto used it to describe a lady's reputation. Today it is more commonly used for a particular look.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1400, from Latin. It appears in a translation of the Milanese surgeon Lanfranc's Science of Cirurgie, describing small pricks that some surgeons make on a patient in the form of a cross. That sense is now obsolete.

2. Latin had already used the word by the early thirteenth century, in texts written in Britain, and English took it straight from Latin. In 1609 the composer John Dowland translated a Latin treatise on music and used it for a division marked by a dot.

3. Behind the word lay a Latin noun for an act of stabbing, built on a verb meaning to pierce. That verb comes from a Proto-Indo-European root, *peuk-, meaning 'to prick', shared with Latin pugnus, 'fist', and possibly with Greek pygme, 'fist, boxing'.

4. POUNCE and POIGNANT share the same root. POUNCE meant a hawk's claw by the late fifteenth century, probably from Old French. POIGNANT entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Old French, for a sauce or a feeling that hurts.

5. In 1954 T. S. Eliot's play The Confidential Clerk used it in a greeting, 'there you are, Eggerson! ... as always'. In 1997 the magazine Rail listed it among 'the basics' of a railway, alongside clean trains and sensible prices.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by 1756, from Latin. In 1842 the writer J. Wilson, in his Recreations of Christopher North, questions whether a pond's last trout had 'sickened and died' from it.

2. Latin had already used the word by 1688, in a medical dissertation at Basel by the scholar Johannes Hofer. Its title paired the new Latin name with a German word, joined by 'oder'.

3. Behind the Latin name lay two Greek parts, and the first meant a return. That part traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *nes-, meaning 'to return safely', whose cousins include an Old English verb meaning 'to survive' and a Gothic one meaning 'to be healed'.

4. ANALGESIC and NESTOR each point to one half of this word. ANALGESIC entered English in the 1860s, describing something that relieves pain. NESTOR entered English around 1510, from Latin, naming a wise old man after the aged hero of the Iliad, and may share its root with this word’s other half.

5. In 1770 the naturalist Joseph Banks used it in his journal to describe what had a ship's company 'pretty far gone', a condition physicians considered a disease. By 1900 the American Journal of Sociology credited it with drawing a man back to the old ways. In October 2026 The Guardian newspaper used it to describe the pull of the 1990s, 'the last decade of the analogue age'.

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1. The word was first recorded in English around 1320, from French. In 1597 the first printed edition of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet used it to describe the ringing of a bell.

2. French had already used the word by 1285, in a London statute that named the church of St Martin le Grand. It began as an order, with the verb first and the noun after.

3. The verb meant 'to cover'. It came through Latin from a Proto-Indo-European root, *wer-, which meant the same. That root may also lie behind a Sanskrit word for an enclosure.

4. KERCHIEF and FOCUS each share one half of this word. KERCHIEF entered English in the early 1200s, from French, naming a cloth worn on the head. FOCUS entered English in the 1640s, from Latin, where it meant a hearth.

5. By 1569 the chronicler Richard Grafton used it for the bell William the Conqueror was said to have ordered rung in every town. In 1751 Thomas Gray opened his Elegy with it tolling for the end of the day. Today it more commonly describes a time after which people should be home.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by about 1475, from French and Latin. In 1868 the Anthropological Review used it to describe the flint tools of a prehistoric age.

2. French had already used the word by 1310, for a kind of cleverness or ingenuity. Behind the French form lay a Latin word, and behind that, an older Latin word formed from a prefix meaning 'in' and a verb.

3. In Latin, the verb behind it meant 'to build', so the older word was formed as 'building within'. That verb comes from an extended form of a Proto-Indo-European root, *stere-, meaning 'to spread', which may also lie behind a Greek word for a mattress.

4. DESTROY and INSTRUMENT are built on the same Latin verb as this word. DESTROY was in English by about 1300, from Old French, and the Latin word behind it meant to unbuild. INSTRUMENT also entered English around 1300, from French and Latin, first meaning a musical device.

5. By 1771 French was using it for manufacturing, and English followed. In 1843 the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle called its leaders 'the Captains of the World'. Today it more commonly describes a whole sector.

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1. The word was first recorded in English by about 1325, from French. In 1838 the naturalist Charles Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History, used it to describe what a drake does once a year, when it loses its bright colours and takes on the plain feathers of its mate.

2. Old French had already used the word by the twelfth century. Behind the French form lay a Latin word, and behind that, a Greek word built from a prefix meaning 'out' and a verb.

3. In Greek, the verb behind it meant 'to forsake its usual place', or 'to fail to appear'. Its second part traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *leikw-, meaning 'to leave', which may also lie behind a Sanskrit word for 'inheritance'.

4. DERELICT and LIPOGRAM descend from the same ancient root as this word. DERELICT entered English in the 1640s from Latin, where it meant abandoned, first used to describe ships left at sea. LIPOGRAM entered English in 1711 from Greek, for a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided.

5. By 1608 Shakespeare's King Lear used it to describe omens in the heavens that were read as a sign of coming trouble. In 1671 the poet Milton used it in Samson Agonistes to describe Samson's lost sight. Today it more commonly describes a striking event above.

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1. The word was first recorded in Old English by about the year 1000, inherited from Germanic. The monk Ælfric, in his Lives of Saints, used it to describe what the eagle does better than any other bird at the sun's rays.

2. Native to English, with no borrowing from French or Latin. The same verb ran through Old High German and Old Icelandic, and by about 1250 the anonymous debate poem The Owl and the Nightingale used it to describe an owl that seemed ready to bite.

3. Behind it lay a Germanic verb meaning 'to be rigid'. That verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *ster-, meaning 'stiff', which may also lie behind a Greek word for 'solid'.

4. STARK and TORPEDO descend from the same ancient root as this word. STARK meant hard and unyielding in Old English. TORPEDO entered English in the 1520s from Latin, where it meant numbness, and named an electric ray fish.

5. Around 1523 Fitzherbert's agricultural guide, The Book of Husbandry, used it to describe hair standing on end. John Keats used it in his 1816 sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, in the lines about stout Cortez and his eagle eyes at the Pacific. In 2013 Singapore's Straits Times counted at least nine hours a day of it at our computer screens.

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1. The word was first recorded in English around 1290, from French, and before that, Latin. The Wycliffite Bible, the first complete Bible in English, used the plural in a passage about an army set to hurl stones and darts.

2. Old French had already used the word by the eleventh century. In 1490 the printer William Caxton muddled it with a knights' contest.

3. Behind the French form lay a Latin word for something worked by twisting, built from a verb meaning 'to twist'. That verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *terkw-, meaning 'to twist', which may also lie behind a Sanskrit word for a spindle.

4. DISTORT and RETORT share the same root. DISTORT entered English in the 1580s, from Latin, first meaning to twist the truth, and later to twist a shape. RETORT entered English in the 1550s, from Latin, meaning to return in kind, especially an injury, and later a sharp reply.

5. By 1667 Milton, in Paradise Lost, was using the verb for the war in heaven shaking the air. In 1785 the poet William Cowper called a raw recruit his sergeant's pupil and his trouble. By 1852, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, it could mean hell itself. Today it most often names the keenest distress of body or mind, and, more lightly, what nags at you.

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1. First recorded in English in 1845, in the singular, in the Quarterly Review, a London journal of essays and reviews. The reviewer described an altar screen whose drawing was made by scratching off the upper coat to show the black layer beneath. This word is the plural.

2. Italian was using a verb for scratching by the thirteenth century and a noun for the scratch by the fourteenth. Behind them, probably, lay the Latin word for a stylus, the pencil of the ancient world. English later borrowed the noun's smaller form.

3. In Greek, the source verb began as 'to scratch', the way a stylus marks a clay tablet. From the scratch came 'to draw', and then 'to write'. The verb itself goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root, *gerbh-, whose descendants reach English by a second road, through the Germanic languages.

4. CARVE and CRAB are both said to trace to a root meaning 'to scratch'. CARVE descends from Old English ceorfan, 'to cut', and is the English cousin of the Greek verb for writing. CRAB descends from Old English crabba, and belongs with Germanic words for scratching and clawing.

5. In 1851 it named the scratchings found in the ruins of Pompeii. In 1863 the Scottish archaeologist Daniel Wilson gave the same name to runes that Vikings cut in the twelfth century inside Maeshowe, a 5,000-year-old tomb in Orkney. By 1877 it had moved to crude drawings made in public places. In 1992 the Economist, writing of the footballer Kevin Keegan's standing on Tyneside, quoted an old example: 'Jesus saves, but Keegan scores on the rebound'.

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1. The word was in English by about 1450, from Latin. A Middle English translator of Boccaccio's Latin book on famous women used it to mean what he had done with the goddesses on the page, in the same order as the original.

2. Latin gave English the word, and French had already used it by the thirteenth century. In the Latin Bible, the verb behind it appears when Caesar Augustus orders a census, and the whole world is to be enrolled.

3. The Latin verb was built from a prefix meaning 'down', joined to a verb meaning 'to write'. That verb traces to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to cut', which may also lie behind a Greek verb for scratching an outline.

4. SCRIPT and SHRIFT share a root meaning 'to cut'. SCRIPT entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Latin scriptum, 'a writing', originally as marks carved in stone or wood. SHRIFT, as in 'short shrift', descends from Old English scrift, 'confession to a priest', borrowed early from the same Latin verb.

5. In 1538 Thomas Elyot's dictionary used it to mean drawing lines with a rod. In 1913 the American poet Ezra Pound reminded other poets that the painter can capture landscapes much better than they can. Today it is more commonly used to say what a person, place or thing is like.

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1. The word was in English by 1664, from Latin. John Evelyn, in Sylva, his book on forest trees, quoted the Roman naturalist Pliny's warning against travellers' wine flasks made of a particular wood. Evelyn used the word for what lay in the liquid and not in the wood.

2. French had already used the word by the twelfth century. Late Latin used it figuratively in the sixth century, and literally only in the ninth. In 1601 English met the older Latin noun in Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's encyclopedia of the natural world.

3. The Latin noun came from a Greek phrase for a substance smeared on arrows, whose first word meant 'of a bow'. Some dictionaries trace the Greek word for a bow to Scythian, and one suggests a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to run, flee'. An etymological dictionary of Greek disagrees, since words built on the Greek word already appear in Mycenaean Greek, and argues for a Pre-Greek origin.

4. TAXINE, the poison in yew leaves, was in English by 1907, from Latin taxus, 'yew tree', whose wood was once made into bows. That Latin word is thought to be connected to the Greek word for a bow.

5. In 1949 the Hudson Review used it to describe an atmosphere. By 1986 the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was using it to describe risky investment bonds. In 2018 Oxford Dictionaries named it Word of the Year. Today it more commonly describes a workplace, relationship or behaviour harmful to one's mental state.

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1. The word was first recorded in English in 1531, from Latin. Hugh Latimer, an English clergyman, used it in a letter, doubting that the judges of his day were deeply confirmed in grace, or not capable of sin.

2. French had already used the word by the fifteenth century. Behind it lay a Late Latin adjective, built from a prefix meaning 'not', joined to a verb meaning 'to miss'.

3. The Latin verb is of uncertain origin. It may come from a lost word meaning 'having a defect in one's foot', and so once have meant 'to stumble'. That word would trace to a Proto-Indo-European root, *ped-, meaning 'foot'.

4. PAWN, the chess piece, and IMPEACH both entered English in the late fourteenth century, from Old French, and trace to a root meaning 'foot'. PAWN began as a foot soldier. IMPEACH comes from a Late Latin verb meaning 'to fetter'.

5. In 1620 Joseph Hall, a Doctor of Divinity, used the word in a book defending married clergy. He asked whether, if we honour a man, we must hold his pen to be incapable of error. By 1864 a treatise on logic used it to describe an argument that keeps every rule. Today it more commonly describes manners or taste that nobody could fault.

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