 Today, in surprisingly connected etymologies, we're taking a look at some animal-related word origins. An ass, as in a donkey, and an easel don't seem all that similar at first glance, but in fact they both come from Latin assinus, ass. It's ultimate etymology unknown, but perhaps with Greek onus, ass, borrowed from a language from Asia Minor such as Sumerian unsu, ass. The word ass probably came into English through a Celtic root, but easel passed through a Germanic root, borrowed from Dutch ezel. The metaphor of a beast burden as a wooden frame for holding something can also be seen in words such as saw horse and clothes horse. In other ungulate news, what's the connection between buckaroos and vaccines? Cows! Buckaroo comes through Spanish bakero, cowboy, from Latin waca cow, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European guac cow. Vaccination was so named when Edward Jenner produced a vaccine for smallpox from the closely related cowpox. And continuing both the ungulate and disease connections, bison and weasels are pretty different animals, but etymologically they're probably related. Both animal names seem to come from the same root, vice to flow. Also the source of the word virus from Latin wirus slime poison, that in this case refers to the musky smell these two animals give off. And staying in the farmyard for a minute, a hog in a hyena may not seem all that similar to you, but apparently they did to the Greeks. Hog comes through the British Celtic huck from the Celtic expressive form suko from the Proto-Indo-European root su, which itself may simply have been imitative of the sound of a pig. In addition to giving us words such as swine and sow, this root comes into Greek as hus, swine, also giving us the word hyena. I guess the Greeks could make a hyena out of a sow's ear. Finally, in the game hungry hungry hippos, we see hippopotamuses with quite an appetite, and etymologically this makes sense. This comes ultimately from Greek made up of the elements hippos, horse, and potamos, river. Potamos, meaning literally rushing water, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root pet to rush or to flop, which comes into Latin as petera, to go seek out, which when combined with the prefix add to, produces apetera, to desire strive for. And after passing through French, this gives us the English word apetite. That Proto-Indo-European root also comes into the Germanic branch of languages, eventually giving us the word feather, but I don't think you'll be finding any feathered hippopotamuses. Thanks for watching. This is one in a series of occasional short videos about connected etymologies. To see more, you can also follow the endless knot on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.