A Modest Construct

alcohol

n. (organic chemistry, countable) Any of a class of organic compounds (such as ethanol) containing a hydroxyl functional group (-OH).

n. (uncountable) An intoxicating beverage made by the fermentation of sugar or sugar-containing material.

One would generally expect such a popular item to have more interesting—potentially dirty or morbid—roots, but the clinical term by which we refer to that which we imbibe to get silly is nothing more than an organic chemistry term which applies to many different compounds, most of which we don’t (and shouldn’t) drink. The word alcohol itself is unchanged from the Middle English, which absorbed it as a chemical term from the Arabic al-kuħl. It, too, refer to a whole family of compounds, but popular usage tends to refer specifically to ethanol, which is the tasty sort that we drink at bars.

The word ethanol is a combination of the aforementioned alcohol and the prefix ethyl-, which is from the Greek αἰθήρ (“ether”), but very likely our current use of the prefix is more directly from the German äthyl, since Germany was kicking American butts in chemistry before we finally got our act together.

But what about the common man’s terms for alcohol? What about booze, liquor, hootch, and swill? What about all the various kinds of libations: wine, vodka, beer, rum, bourbon, whiskey, scotch, tequila, brandy, and moonshine? Turns out, the world of alcohol is as wide and elaborate as we initially thought.

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transparent

adj.. clear; having the property that light passes through it almost undisturbed

Transparent is a common word; I’ve known it since I was a child. Slightly less well known is “translucent,” which has largely the same meaning, although the latter usually indicates a lesser degree of transparency.

With a bit of familiarity with Latin roots, its easy to see what these two words have in common: trans indicates “across” or “over,” which leads to such modern English words as “transmit”, “transport”, “transaction”, “transcontinental” and others. But what about the second part of each word: could that tell us how they are different?

The suffix “lucent” comes from the Latin lucere (“to shine”); literally, then “translucent” effectively means “to allow light to shine through/across”. The various forms of the Latin luceo can be seen in words such as “lantern” (weakly), as the modern “light” (→ L. lux → PIE *leuk-).

The parens suffix of “transparent” comes from another Latin root, appareo, which means “to become visible” or “to appear”. We can see its influence in such words as “appear” (a direct lineage of appareo) as well as “apparition”. Also, if you’re wondering, our modern English “parent” does come from this same root. The pareo root can also mean “I submit” or “I am obedient to”, which led to the verb parere (to breed or bring forth), and you can probably guess the rest from there. In fact, the PIE root *per-, which means “to bring forth”, is really applicable in all the words here. In the context of your progenitors, they brought you forth from their loins; in the context of transparent materials, they allow light to come forth in a manner of speaking.