NAUSEA: derived from a ship

　　In the dim and distant days folks weren’t any better sailors than we are . They , too, got that type of nausea that we call seasickness and that the French speak of as mal de mer , or ‘sickness of the sea .’The Greeks were the ones who invented the world nausia , and they took it straight from their word naus , ’ship ,’ the vehicle that produced the condition . The Roman satirist , Juvenal ,points out with some bitterness in his Legend of Bad Women , that wives are always seasick , but that a mistress remains healthy and good-tempered during the whole voyage .

　　This word nausea, that in those days meant seasickness, has taken on a broader meaning in English.

　　PANACEA: named from a goddness

　　A panacea is a cure for all ills, and comes by its meaning in all honesty. If you look at the front of a modern physician’s car, you will usually see a metal piece representing a serpent twined medicine . The serpent was taken to represent medicine because he is the symbol of the renewing of youth and eternal life from the fact that he gets a new skin every year. The mythical Asclepius had a daughter with the happy name of Panakecia, “the all-healing,” and from her name was derive our word panacea.

　　PEDAGOGUE: he led the children

　　An instructor of young people is a schoolmaster ,and the history of the word demands that he should be , for this term comes from the identical Greek word pedagogue, which divides into pais , paidos, “child ,” and ago, “lead.” Originally , and quite literally ,the slave who “led” the “child” to school and home again by the hand.. Little attention was paid to the education of girls in ancient Greek days , but the sons were taught by the pedagogues who were slaves in the families of the rich. A demagogue ,by the way ,leads the “people”(demos) in other directions.

　　PUPIL: just a doll

　　When we see a group of young pupils sitting in a classroom, they look a bit like little dolls , and that’s why the word pupil came from the Latin term pupilla ,” a little doll.” And then we have the other English word pupil , the pupil of your eye . When we look another person in the eye, we often see a minute image of ourself reflected there , and this miniature picture also reminded the Romans of a pupilla or “little doll.” And so pupilla contributed the word pupil to us with a second meaning , the pupil of your eye . And it is interesting to know that the Jews were drawn to this same figure of speech. The Hebrew word for the pupil of the eye were eshon ayin, or “little man of the eye.”

　　QUARANTINE: forty days

　　The length of time that a ship is now held in quarantine varies with the nature of the contagious disease that is suspected of being aboard ,but years ago the quarantine was for a flat forty days .The word quarantine comes eventually from the Latin quadraginta, “forty,” and this magic number forty has several uses in our language . Quarentena, for instance , was the Medieval Latin name giben to the desert where Christ fasted for forty days ,and in the early Rome Catholic Church a quarantine was a penance or fast lasting for the same period of time. Now it is an indulgence corresponding to such a penance. In common law, we have the “window’s quarantine” which permits the bereaved woman to live in her deceased husband’s house for a period of forty days after his death . It would seem that there is a bit of religious significance in this mystic number “forty”.

　　QUINSY: choked a dog

　　The Greeks called a sore throat kynanche, from kyon, “dog,” and ancho,”choke.” This word illustrates,in its career, the dramatic shifts in spelling that can occur. In Medieval Latin kynanche became quinancia , which entered Middle English as quinesye, later quinsy, the quinsy sore throat that we have today.