Language Of Confusion: Totally Radical

Not sure what prompted me to look at this word, but it seems fun. Especially when you actually look at all the words related.
 
Radical showed up in the late fourteenth century, though back then it meant either something originating in a root/the ground or body parts or fluids vital to life. Sometime in the mid seventeenth century it started to mean essential or originating, and then in the late eighteenth century it was used to refer to radical reform—as in, change at the roots. Then some time in 1921, a hundred years ago now, people started using it to mean unconventional. Anyway, radical comes from the classical Latin radicalis, from radix, which means root. That’s from the Proto Indo European wrad-, which means branch or root and is the origin for many other surprising words.
 
Eradicate at least makes sense for being related to radical. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin eradicatus, uproot. The verb form of that, eradicare, is a mix of ex-, out, and radix, meaning this word is “root out”.
 
Now we might as well look at root since it is related. Root comes from the Old English rot (it was pronounced with a long o, so it was basically still just root), from the Proto Germanic wrot, which is then from wrad-. Basically, it’s what radical used to mean, but it came to us through Germanic instead of Latin. Wort has a similar origin, coming from the Proto Germanic wurtiz, and then wrad-. I don’t even know why they bothered differentiating the words.
 
Now we’re getting into the fun ones. Licorice—the plant and thus the candy—showed up sometime around the thirteenth century as licoriz. It’s from the Anglo French lycoryc and Old French licorece, from the Late Latin liquiritia, and that one is from the classical Latin glychyrrhiza, from the Greek glykyrrhiza. No, a cat didn’t walk across my keyboard, those are words. The first part, glykus, means sweet (it’s related to glucose) and the rhiza means root and is also from wrad-. Licorice is sweet root. But we dropped the G for some reason.
 
The last one’s really going to seem weird: ramification. Really! It showed up in the late seventeenth century from the French ramification, branching out. Apparently a ramification as in a consequence is considered to be an outgrowth, or literally a branching out. The word is from the Old French verb ramifier, the origin of ramify, and that’s from the Medieval Latin ramificari, to form branches, from the classical Latin ramus, branch. And if you haven’t already figured it out, ramus is from wrad-. Crazy how using a word figuratively can cause it to radically change its meaning.
 
Heh, radically.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Fordham University
Orbis Latinus

Language Of Confusion: Deleted, Part I

There’s a surprising number of words that mean getting rid of something. Might as well look at them now!

Delete itself showed up in the early sixteenth century from the classical Latin deletus, which means extinction or annihilation. That’s the past participle of the verb delere, which is just to delete, which itself is from delinere, to smudge—to delete was to erase by smudging something. Delinere is a mix of the prefix de-, from or away, and linere, smear or wipe, so yeah. To wipe away is to erase. Somehow that’s from the Proto Indo European slei-, slime or sticky, seriously that’s where we get the word slime from. No, I don’t know how we get from slime to delete. That’s just how it is.
 
Now let’s look at erase. It showed up in the seventeenth century from the classical Latin erasus, from the verb eradere, erase or scrape off. The e- is from ex-, out [https://www.etymonline.com/word/ex-], and radere literally means to shave or scrape, so to erase is to scrape out. Some people think that radere is from the Proto Indo European root red-, to scrape, scratch, or gnaw, but, well, the fact that it would make sense is suspicious. Never trust making sense when it comes to etymology.
 
Case and point, eradicate. You’d think it would be related to erase, or at the very least rad-. Nope. Not one bit. Eradicate showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin eradicatus, from the verb eradicare, which means to destroy, uproot, or root out. The e- is from ex- again, though it means out here, and the rest is from radix, root. That one is from the Proto Indo European wrad-, branch or root and is actually the origin word for radish. So yes. Because you root something out, eradicate is more related to radish than erase.
 
Obliterate showed up in the seventeenth century from the classical Latin obliteratus, from obliterare, to obliterate, efface, or erase. No shocking revelations here. The ob- means against while the rest comes from littera… letter. Okay, may have spoken too soon about there not being any shocking revelations. Apparently there was a Latin phrase, literas scribere, which meant to write across letters—as in over them, striking them through. So because people had to strikethrough letters, we obliterate things.

What? It makes perfect sense.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language