CORD from the Laitn word for "heart," turns up in several common English words. So does its Greek relative card-, which is familiar to us in words such as cardiac, "relating to the heart."

CULP comes from the Latin word for "guilt." Its best-known appearance in English is probaly in culprit, meaning someone who is guilty of a crime.

DICT comes from dicere, the Latin word meaning "to speak." So, a dictionary is a treasury of words for speaking. And a contradiction (with its prefix contra-, "against") speaks against or denies something.

GNI/GNO comes from a Greek and Latin verb meaning "to know," and can be found at the root of know itself. Among other words built from its root, you may recognize ("know again") some and be ignorant of ("not know") others. But only an ignoramus would know absoultely none of them.

GRAPH comes from the Greek verb graphein, "to write." Thus, a biography is a written account of someone's life (see BIO), a discography is a written list of recordings on disc (records or CDs), and a filmography is a list of motion pictures. But lots of uses of -graph and -graphy don't mean literally "writing" (as in autograph or paragraph), but instead something more like "recording," as in photography, seismograph, or graph itself.

ART comes from the Latin word for "skill." This reminds us that, until a few centuries ago, almost no one made a strong distinction between skilled craftsmanship and what we would now call "art." And the word art itself could also mean simply "cleverness." The result is that this root appears in some words where we might not expect it.

PORT comes from fortis, Latin for "strong." The familiar noun fart, meaning a building strengthened against possible attacks, comes directly from it. And our verb comfort actually means "to give strength and hope to."

CIS comes from the Latin verb meaning "to cut, cut down, or slay." An incisor is one of the big front biting teeth; beavers and woodchucks have especially large ones. A decision "cuts off" previous discussion amd uncertainty.

Animal Words