Degrees of separation

摘要

IT IS NATURAL to try to find resemblances in family photos: grandma's nose here, Uncle Jim's hairline there. When considering the family of English words, it is tempting to look for the same sort of likenesses. Often they are real; for instance, regal and royal derive from the same source, which was imported into English twice, from both Grandpa Latin and Aunt French. But often they are not. In the human world, people sometimes find out to their shock that they are adopted, or take a dna test and discover a surprising parentage. At this point, resemblances that they thought were genetic turn out to be illusory. Similarly, two words can look so alike that it seems they simply must be siblings—yet they aren't.