Why are the series of monosyllables by which notes are indicated, do, re, mi, fa, so, la? They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn:
"Ut (do) queant laxis resonare fibris
Mira questorum famuli tuorum
Solve polluti labü reatum
Sancte Iohannees ..."
Professor Weekley invites us to watch words as they travel, an amusing game.
Apricot starts in mediæval Greek, through vulgar Latin as præcox (early ripe), through Arabia. It first crossed the Adriatic, passed on to Asia Minor or the north coast of Africa, and then travelling along the Mediterranean re-entered Southern Europe. Carat does much the same, being a corruption through French, Italian and Arabic of the Greek κερατιον (fruit of the locust-tree, little horn). Hussar is a doublet of corsair, and has travelled a long way since the separation first took place. The cocoa of cocoanut is a Spanish baby word for a bogey-man.
Then there are words of popular manufacture like ortolan, guinea-pig (which is not a pig and does not come from Guinea), parrot ("little Peter"), pinchbeck and nicotine (from the names of men), and so on.
Phonetic accidents account for many vagaries, as we see only too commonly with the letter "h." It is noteworthy that in Imperial Rome educated people sounded the aspirate, while it completely disappeared from the everyday language of the lower classes, the vulgar Latin from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned.
That is why the Romance languages have no aspirate. Our "educated" h in modern English is mainly artificial, as we saw before: cf. Armitage with hermitage.
Then there are sound changes by assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis: the lime and linden is an example of the first; tankard for cantar, wattle and wallet examples of the third. Some words shrink, like Spittlegate near Grantham for hospital gate, gin for Geneva, grog from the admiral who wore grogram breeches, navvy for navigator. Words have a habit too of completely changing their meaning. Treacle used for balm in Coverdale's Bible from theriaca, a remedy against snake-bite, a lumber-room, is really a Lombard room, where the pawnbrokers stored pledged property.
Adjectives are especially subject to change. Quaint used to mean acquaint; restive used to mean standing stock still; smug used to mean trim, elegant, beautiful; homely used to mean ugly, disagreeable, coarse.
Miniature ought to mean something painted in minium (red lead).