Daily Etymology Puzzles
A wall of old words. Trace each lineage from its ancient root down to the English word it became — one pick per course. Not every path stops at every course: a borrowed (Latin) route leaps a layer, so where it does, pick the dashed skip tile instead of a brick.
The wall is the family tree, laid flat. The top course is Proto-Indo-European — the deepest reconstructed roots. The bottom course is Modern English. The courses between are the stages a root passes through on its way down.
* marks a reconstructed form.)On the harder walls the two routes look nothing alike — because they drifted apart by regular sound shifts. Where Latin kept a sound, Germanic shifted it. Spot the pattern and the cousins line up:
New to the layers? The explains the strata of English.
The six strata of English — where they lived, and how to spot them.