Etymology, the study of origin or root words is a fascinating subject in any language. It provides an insight not just into a word's truly intended meaning, but also how the imagination of our early ancestors worked. A lot of times, the evolution of some words represents how the natural elements around us impacted our lives majorly- fire, water, rains, sky or earth.
Let's pick for example 'star'. In Latin, a star is called aster, and the adjective astral refers to the concepts out of the world cosmic realm. The celestial bodies which twinkle brighter than normal stars (because of closer distance to Earth) are called asteroid. The art of predicting future based on relative positions of these heavenly bodies is called Astrology; the study of celestial phenomenon occurring beyond the Earth is called Astronomy; while application of laws of physics around celestial events in space is known as Astrophysics.
A man visiting the space is of course called an Astronaut. And figuratively speaking, for something of vast proportions, Astronomical is used as an impressive adjective. The star-shaped key on your keyboard is called an Asterisk and a family of star-fish is known as Asterozoa.
Those who are a staunch believer in Astrology, or those who like to blame fate for a grave misfortune, it's a consolation sometimes for them to hear that 'the stars were not favorable'. This practice gave way for the word disaster : dis-aster, meaning dis-alignment of stars.
Do you know any common words which were influenced by a historical event or were popular practice, please share in comments below.
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