FAME: what they say

　　When you are talked about enough you are famous, or infamous, perhaps, for fame is from the Latin fama, “report,” which is related to the Greek phemi, “speak.” Thus fame is what they say about you. Reputation, however, lasts longer, for your reputation is not what they “say” but what they “think” about you. From the Latin reputo, from re-, “again,” and puto, “think”; that is, to think over again, to consider.

　　FOIBLE: originally a fencing term

　　One of the rules of the game of fencing is to receive your enemy’s foible with your own forte, two French borrowings. His foible is the weak part of his foil, from the middle to the tip. Your forte is the strong part from the middle to the hilt. So the foibles of a human being are his weak points and his moral frailties, while his forte is his strong point, that in which he excels.

　　FOOL: tongue-wagger

　　Let those who talk too much take care, for the Latin word follis, which gave us fool, means “a windbag.” And yet there is a more innocent way than this to get the reputation of being foolish. The ancient Greeks called those who didn’t hold public office idiots, whence our word idiots, and this may be what our politicians think of us today.

　　FREE: once, beloved

　　The word free ties into the Old English freo, a close relative lf the German word frei which meant “l(fā)oving” or “beloved.” In meant “agreeable” or “beloved.” In the ancient Sanskrit language priya-, diatantly related to free,meant “agreeable” or “beloved.”. If you had been a patrician in those olden days, your “l(fā)oved ones” who would have been free ,and your slaves .Or if your should have been slaves enough, you would probably have bought his liberty and made him free too, so finally our Old English word fero evoluted into the modern word free, that is ,”not slave”; and freond ,”loving one”, grew into “friend”.

　　HERMAPHRODITE : originally a god’s name

　　Biologically ,today ,a hermaphrodite is a living being having both male and female organs. This highly technical word, however , has a romantic history .Hermaphroditos was the son of the Greed god Hermes and of Aphrodite, goddess of love ,and was supposed to have not only the names, but the beauty of both his parents. On a certain occasion, a susceptible nymph, Saimacis by name , saw the handsome son bathing in her pool and she immediately fell head over heels in love with him. To her horror he turned her down.. But she was a resourceful girl and prayed to the gods for an indissoluble union with him .The gods answered her prayer and arranged that the body of the nymph and the body of Hermaphroditos should grow together as one. Our biological name hermaphrodite was taken from this story and was applied quite logically to bisexual individuals.

　　HOTTENTOT: just gibberish

　　The musical comedy stage has made the savage Hottentots familiar to us. They were a native tribe of the Cape of Good Hope. When the Dutch landed there they couldn’t understand the native dialect at all since it was full of clicks and jerks and sounded like so much stammering .The only syllables that the Dutch sailors could understand were hot and tot, and so the mariners named the people just that : hot-en-tot ,for en is “and” in Dutch.

　　IMPEDE: putting your foot in it

　　When you are impeded ,that is ,when there are obstacles in your way that hinder you from doing what you wish ,it means that your “foot “ is “in” something ,from the Latin im-.”in” ,and pes, pedis ,”foot”. That is ,your “foot” is entangled “in” something and your can’t get it out. You have really “put your foot in it,” or more literally ,you have something “in the way of your foot.” That’s why we call heavy baggage impedimenta,it tangles up our feet. But when someone expedites matters for you (ex, “out,” and pes, pedis, foot”) he gets your “foot” “out” of its entanglement so that you can do what you want to without hindrance.