(Latin) Perire: to
perish, to be destroyed
To abash is to
shake up someone's self-confidence or self-possession. English speakers have
been using abashed to describe feelings of embarrassment since the 14th
century, but they have only used unabashed (brazenly or otherwise) since the
late 1500s. Both words can be traced back to the Anglo-French word abair,
meaning "to astonish."
(Latin) Vanitas: vanity,
emptiness, aimlessness
Concatenate
(kahn-KAT-uh-nayt)
To link together in a series or chain. Concatenate comes directly from Latin
concatenare, which in turn is formed from con-, meaning "with" or
"together," and catena, meaning "chain." (The word chain
itself also evolved from catena.) Concatenate has a somewhat longer history as
an adjective, meaning "linked together," than as a verb. The adjective
first appeared in English in the 15th century and the verb wasn't in use until
more than a century later. Catenate, a verb in its own right meaning "to
link in a series," had also arrived on the scene by the early 17th
century.
Torpedo can be
traced back to the Latin verb torpēre, meaning "to be sluggish or
numb." In Latin torpedo literally meant "stiffness" or
"numbness." Torpedo was also the name given in Latin to the fish
known as the electric ray, and it was as a name for the fish that torpedo first
entered English. During the Napoleonic Wars, the American inventor Robert
Fulton experimented with an explosive charge for use against warships which he
called a "torpedo" (and which we would now refer to as a mine) after
the electric ray's ability to incapacitate creatures with an electrical
discharge. Fulton was also the inventor of the Nautilus, an early hand-powered
submarine which was one of the precursors of the vessels that would deliver the
more familiar cigar-shaped torpedoes with such devastating effects during the
20th century's two World Wars.
(Latin) Brevior:
Brief, shorter, smaller, too short
Skosh: A small
amount, bit, smidgen. The word skosh comes from the Japanese word sukoshi,
which is pronounced "skoh shee" and means "a tiny bit" or
"a small amount." The Japanese word was shortened by U.S. servicemen
stationed in Japan after World War II. Later, in the Korean War, a small
soldier was often nicknamed Skosh.