Multilinguo

"Algebra" comes from a 9th-century Arabic book title. al-Khwarizmi wrote Kitab al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala around 830 CE at Baghdad's House of Wisdom. al-jabr (الجبر) literally means "restoration" or "reunion of broken parts": moving terms across the equals sign to balance both sides. The word also had a surgical sense in medieval Arabic: setting broken bones. In 16th-century Spain, "algebrista" meant both algebra teacher and bonesetter.

False friend: sensible. EN: reasonable. FR/DE/ES/IT: sensitive. Same Latin root sensibilis, "capable of feeling". FR sensible (sensitive, emotional)
DE sensibel (sensitive, delicate)
ES sensible (sensitive, easily hurt)
IT sensibile (sensitive, perceptive)
EN sensible (reasonable, practical) Four languages kept the Latin sense. English alone shifted from feeling to judgment by the 17th c. From heart to head, in one language. Multilinguo flags these traps: multilinguo.app

OK started as a joke. March 23, 1839: the Boston Morning Post used "o.k." for a deliberately misspelled "oll korrect". 1830s slang comedy. Van Buren's 1840 campaign borrowed it (nickname: Old Kinderhook). Supporters formed "OK Clubs". It stuck. 1844 telegraph made it infrastructure. WWII took it to every continent. Even the languages that tried to keep it out (French, Icelandic) use it. #Etymology #Linguistics

"Eventually" is a false friend. In English: ultimately, in the end. In French (éventuellement), German (eventuell), Spanish (eventualmente), Portuguese (eventualmente), Italian (eventualmente): possibly. All from Latin "eventualis" ("relating to an outcome"). English narrowed to "ultimate outcome". Every other major European language kept the original "possible" sense. Same Latin root. English took the outlier path. #Etymology #FalseFriend #linguistics