Daniel Chaikin’s Reviews > Dictionary of Word Origins > Status Update

In which I learned that volume comes from the latin word to turn and revolve, because that's how scrolls were read. Presumably other means of volume, outside as a book, hopped off that meaning somewhere (sound volume is discussed here, but 3 dimensional volume is skipped, oddly).

Also I learned that vanilla and vagina mean practically the same thing in Latin...(a sheath or scabbard- vanilla means little sheath)

Sir Thomas More "coined Utopia from Greek ou, 'not', and topos, 'place' so that the island was literally called 'nowhere'. "

Trivial has two origins. One is from the trivium - grammar, rhetoric and logic - which were considered the lower disciplines. Trivium in Latin also meant a fork in the road - a 3-way intersection. "People invariably bump into one another and exchange gossip at busy crossroads and so the derived adjective trivialis, which literally meant 'belonging to the crossroads', carried the sense 'commonplace, ordinary'.

Tawdry; St. Audrey was well loved and her shrine became a popular visiting place for pilgrims. On 17 October each year, her saint's day was marked with a holiday and fair at Ely. Here were sold laces and fringes for wearing about the neck in her honor. These were known as St. Audrey laces, often corrupted to Tawdry laces or tawdries.

I keep thinking I'll just take to and finish this. And the first entry is always so interesting (who knew that "miniature" has a history entirely separate from min, mini, etc, or that "nightmare " was independent from the horse, a mare (or knights- but maybe I was the only one with that idea)). But then I get to word two...and fall asleep.