Intransigent comes from
Spanish intransigente, meaning "uncompromising." Its root is
transigir ("to compromise"), which is related to Latin transigere
("to come to an agreement"). The French have a similar verb,
transiger, which also means "to compromise." Transigent as an
opposite of intransigent has yet to become recognized as an acceptable word in
the English language.
In the beginning, a piece
of writing was one big amorphous chunk of text: no punctuation, no
upper/lowercase, no spaces. Writing real estate was expensive, whether tablets,
skins, or papyrus. With time punctuation marks entered the language. A pilcrow
signified a change in topic, even though the text still flowed without any
visual breaks.
Eventually, actual
paragraph breaks were employed and the pilcrow sat at the beginning of the
paragraph, often embellished in red color. When printing came along, the hand
embellishment of the pilcrow disappeared though the space marked for it
remained at the beginning of the paragraph as an indent.
The pilcrow took a
well-earned retirement and is no longer used.
Originally, mettle was simply a variant
spelling of the word metal (which dates to at least the 13th century), and it
was used in all of the same senses as its metallic relative. Over time,
however, mettle came to be used mainly in figurative senses referring to the
quality of someone's character. It eventually became a distinct English word in
its own right, losing its literal sense altogether. Metal remained a term
primarily used for those hard, shiny substances such as steel or iron, but it
also acquired a figurative use. Today, both words can mean "vigor and strength
of spirit or temperament," but only metal is used of metallic substances.