A Play on Words, that could really have happened!

In my youth I had a fortunate encounter with the book, Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. Ever since then I have had an affection for etymology and word origins and the history of word usage (especially math terms, which spawned this blog site in the first place.) This old post was prompted by such thoughts. Enjoy:


It never happened, but it could have...

Student reading a medical Journal to Teacher: What is the meaning of idiopathic?

Teacher, without looking up: "I don't know."

Student: "Ok, I'll look it up."

He walks to the dictionary and looks it up... moments later the dictionary is slammed shut, and as he passes the teacher..."That was NOT funny."

Teacher: "My personal feeling is that it would be, if you checked the etymology."

If you are curious, or confused, see here and don't forget to check the etymology.