Language Of Confusion: Ak-!, Part IV

Now for our final look at words descended from the Proto Indo European root ak-, meaning to be sharp, rise to a point, or pierce. Turns out things can get much weirder than last week.
 
Exacerbate means to increase the bitterness of—generally figuratively. It showed up in the mid seventeenth century while exacerbation showed up back in the fifteenth century, and when do you ever used that word these days? It’s from the Late Latin exacerbationem, from the classical Latin verb exacerbare, to exacerbate. The ex- is though to mean thoroughly here, while the rest is from acerbus, bitter, which we actually talked about three weeks ago as being the origin of acerbic! To exacerbate, to make more bitter.
 
I feel like no one’s going to expect this one after all the words we’ve had about sharp smelling things. Oxygen—yes, air!—showed up in 1790 from the French oxygène, because the gas that we breathe was named by a French chemist. It’s from the Greek oxys, which means sharp and is from ak-. Oxygen, the thing famous for not smelling like anything, for some reason has the root word for sharp. I don’t know why. You’d have to ask Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.
 
Epoxy is actually from the same place. It didn’t show up until 1916, with the epi- a word forming element meaning on or upon and the oxy from oxygen. Epoxy is a resin used to make glue, it has oxygen in it, there’s bonding involved, so epoxy.
 
Now for something different: paragon. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the French paragon. That’s from the Italian paragone (a touchstone to test gold), Latin paragonare, and Greek parakonan, to sharpen or whet. Para- means alongside, with akone meaning whetstone and from ak-. Whetstone to touchstone to a paragon of excellence. I can see it. Weird journey, though.
 
How about we look at the opposite of that? Mediocre showed up in the late sixteenth century, from the French mediocre and classical Latin mediocris, average. The first part is from medius, the middle, while the end is from ocris, a jagged mountain. Being mediocre is being halfway up the mountain. Man, I really didn’t expect that one to make sense.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Orbis Latinus