 Welcome to the Endless Knot. While at VidCon, we thought we'd take the opportunity to have a little fun with our friends and fellow educational creators and quiz them about etymologies. I gave them pairs of words and asked them to guess whether or not they thought those words were etymologically related or not. Here's what happened. Did you think about aren't all words related? Alright, so the first pair of words is car and chariot. Maybe yes, those are related. Car and chariot. Interesting. I mean, they both sort of have the same front sound and a car is kind of like the evolution of a chariot. So I guess I would say yes, I think that one does come from the other. I'll go with yes. Something makes me think that those would be like first impression you'd think they'd be similar. So my guess is that they're probably not related because that's the trick. I mean, they both have C-A-R, they're both modes of transportation. It would make a lot of sense for those to be related, which makes me feel like this is a trick question, but I'm going to go with my gut and say yes. You're right, they are related. And in fact, they are related. Chariot actually is the later word. They both come from Latin chorus, which itself is a borrowing from a Gaulish word, which referred to a Celtic war chariot. See, I would have drawn the connection the other way. All right, the next pair of words is island and isle. Isle, isle, isle. Yeah, I mean that, I just can't imagine a world in which isle isn't a shortening of island, but I can see your face. But again, I'm going to go with yes because that feels right. I feel like this is a trick question. They couldn't possibly be not related. Isle and island, because that's how a lot of words are made, is that you just smash them together, right? And especially old English, which is basically proto-German. And isles, isle, land, and I would say yes. No, those are not related. Yes, I think they are related. I guess it would make sense, or I guess I've always assumed that isle came from island because they've got so much of their spelling in common, but maybe they were two different words that wound up meaning the same thing. Yeah, I feel like this is a case of convergent evolution as it were where they both wound up converging on the same idea, but came from two different meanings. Like, yeah? Yes. Surprisingly, they're not related. Island comes from old English, ea, plus land, and ea goes back to the proto-Indo-European root aqua, the water root. So basically it means water land, whereas isle comes from Latin insula and is not at all related. See, like my strategy is to see if you're trying to do a bit, and then one was not a bit and one was a bit, and now I'm like, now I have to actually know things, which is my secret weakness. Alright, you'll enjoy this one. Oh boy. Thrush and ostrich. Thrush and ostrich. Wow. Boy, oh boy. Well, those two kinds of bird are not especially well, like closely related, but as to whether or not the words are closely related. I'm going to say no, but I don't really have a good reason why. Ostrich is a fairly new word to the English language, isn't it? I would have thought that that's something only dating back to like the 18th century. So I would guess no, but I'm guessing I'm wrong. And those feel like I could see a connection, but I also I wouldn't have guessed it. Like it doesn't feel necessarily, but then it could be like ostrich is like some prefix attached to thrush that then got modified. But I'm going to say no. Okay, so ostrich makes me think that it's got some sort of German name, because like Ost, that's East. Thrush also has, it sounds very, the th sound makes me think that it's got some English roots. So I'm going to say they are. They probably have some sort of German past that I don't know about. Those are related. No, they're not. Oh, they are? Okay, okay. Can I guess that like ostrich is like either an Eastern or Western version of thrush, because like the beginning, the Ost sounds familiar? No, it's not. That's a good guess. But that's a good guess. Ost is totally East in some words. Yeah, that's the Germanic East word. Well, I guess otherwise it's Proto-Indo-European. Ostrich Ost? Yeah, that's true. They are in fact related. They both go back to a Proto-Indo-European root that means thrush, and that comes basically straight through Germanic into English. It also goes into Greek, struthos, which also meant thrush, but they then added the word onto the beginning, megas, megastruthos, to mean really big thrush in a massive understatement. And eventually, later on, Latin also added the word aouis to the beginning, meaning bird, and so from aouis struthos, we get the word ostrich. Next we have a group of three words, fear, fright, and afraid. See, like now I'm going with a trick where it's like, what are these words in French? Because I know like half of English words are just French words that have been muddied up a bit. But I think these are not French words, so therefore they probably are related. It definitely sounds like they're related. Again, like just because of the, like if you'd asked me, like if this had just come up in conversation, I would have been like, yeah, they're the same, but just because of the context of you putting me in front of a camera and then asking me whether they're, it becomes a lot harder. But my instinct, you have the FR sounds in all of them, and obviously they're describing similar things, and I would say yes. Fear, fright, and afraid. Well, they're all related in terms of what they describe, and they do all have that sort of plosive F sound in them. But, I don't know. I'm trying to go through what I know of my other languages to think about it, and I don't think all three of them go together. I think that some of them might have come from different places. You keep on making these seem like trick questions and they keep being trick questions. Because gut instinct is yes, but, well, fear and fright and afraid. Because I would think that afraid and fright are similarly rooted, but fear doesn't necessarily have to be. So is this one where it's like two are related and one isn't? Let's go with that. In fact, none of them are related. The hell. So fear goes back to a root that means risk, and therefore from the idea of danger it gets that idea of fear. Fright goes back to a Germanic root that means afraid, basically. And afraid comes from the combination of the Latin prefix X meaning out and the Germanic root fifth that means peace. So literally out of peace. Because fear one still gets me. Yeah, surprising. Because they look so similar and they all have very close meanings. And our last pair of words is black and bleach. No, those are not related. Black and a bleach. Well, in terms of what they do, they're opposites. But again, that like the BL sound. I don't know what language black comes from though, because it's not like the romance root and it's also not the Germanic root. So maybe they do belong together. Yeah, I don't know where those two come from, so I'm going to guess they do. I want to say yes. Yes, those both I think have German roots. Oh wait, no, because they both have some sort of root. Yeah, bleach black. I'm going to go with yes and your face is saying I'm already wrong. You are correct. Ah, yes. Actually, I think I know this one just because I know that black goes back to a proto-European, I believe it goes back to a proto-European root that means white. So I would say yes. And you are correct, do you remember? Absolutely. Correctly. Yeah, I'm sure you got that from your videos. They go back to a proto-European root that means to flash or burn. And so from the brightness of the flash or fire color or whatever, that gives us the idea of bleach, the lightness of the bleach. But from the idea of something that has been burnt, something that's burnt and therefore dark colored, we get the word black. That's great answers, but we forgot to turn on his microphone and therefore couldn't use it. Sorry, maybe next year. In the meantime, check out everyone's channels and thanks for watching.