Transcript
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Hold my spot guys, hold my spot. I’ll be right back. Hey everyone, I’m Dewayne Thomas from Visual Latin. You know when we finished the series Visual Latin, the producers called me up and said, “Let’s do another one. Let’s make another show.” This time it’s going to be about vocabulary. English vocabulary that comes from Latin and Greek roots. You know all the Latin and Greek roots, so help us out. I said, “No way. Not doing it.” Last time you guys stuck me in a studio with a dusty chalkboard, no help. I’m not doing that again. And they said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What if you could travel? You can be anywhere you want in the world, we just need to contact you and get the input from you.” And I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do that.” So they contacted me and said, “What are we going to talk about in the first show?” And I said, “Psh, I don’t care. Talk about water. Use the Latin and Greek roots for water. Throw some English words out that come from those Latin and Greek roots and leave me alone.” So you know what? I’m going to send you to the studio and I’m heading back to my volleyball game. Guys, where do I get one of those drinks with an umbrella sticking out of it? [MUSIC] It’s Word Up! The Vocab Show! Starring Dwane Thomas! Word Up! teaches you the Latin and Greek roots of countless English words. Use them to amaze your friends and family members. Now sit back and enjoy the show. Can you believe that guy? Hanging out at the beach all day. Must be nice. I’d love to… I don’t know. Welcome to Word Up, the vocab show. In this series, we’re going to teach you to increase your English vocabulary by teaching you the Latin and Greek roots behind our English vocabulary. I bet you didn’t know that 30% of the English, 60% of the English, 60% of the English language is directly influenced by Latin and Greek. As a matter of fact, we’re going right now over to our Latin expert, who’s going to talk to us about the Latin word for water, and he’s going to give us English words that come from the Latin word. Over to you. Thanks for that. By the way, I like that tie. I used to have a tie just exactly like that one. Huh. Guys, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but the Romans, the ancient Romans, red plumes on their helmets, those guys, seen them before. They had water. Oh yeah, it’s true. The Roman civilization knew what water was. Go research it. It’s all there. Not only that, they had a name for it and their name for water was aqua. And from aqua, the Latin word, we get a bunch of English words. Let’s take a look at some of them. The first one is aquarium. Aquarium is a container filled with aqua, filled with water, kind of important, that contains marine life, like plants or fish. As a matter of fact, if you take the fish and the plants out and the marine life out of the aquarium, then you’ve just got a bathtub. The next word is aquatic. Aquatic is something that lives in or near the water. Hey, those fish we were just talking about that were in your bathtub, why are they in your bathtub? Anyway, those are aquatic creatures, unless you take those aquatic creatures out of the water, fry them up, put them on your plate, then those aquatic creatures are food.
The next word is aqueduct. What’s an aqueduct? Well, guess what? Those Romans we were talking about earlier, they actually used to get thirsty. No, it’s true, they did. And they needed water, but sometimes there wasn’t enough water locally. So they would actually build aqueducts into the local mountains or hills and they would bring water into their city using these aqueducts. What is an aqueduct? It’s an elevated transport system or conduit for water. And it actually comes from two Latin words, aqua, which you already know means water, and then ducere, which means lead. So what did the aqueducts do? They actually led water into the cities. So those thirsty Romans could get their aqua. The next word is aqueous. Aqueous is a descriptive word that we use to describe something that is watery, something that contains water or something that looks watery. As a matter of fact, a part of our eye is called the aqueous humor because it’s watery. And this is weird, so let’s move on. The next word is aquatint. This one’s gonna fool you. An aquatint is an engraving or an etching that looks like it was painted with watercolors. But it wasn’t. And they fooled you. You got aquatinted. That doesn’t make any sense. Okay, the next word is aqua vitae. It’s actually a phrase. Aqua means water. Vitae means of life. So, water of life. This means somebody has discovered the fountain of youth. Yes, all we All we get to do is drink from the water of life and we’ll live forever. As a matter of fact, I’m 92 years old because I drank from it. You believe that? Well, that would be good news if that’s what I was telling you. If everything I was telling you was true. But it’s not. It turns out, aqua vitae is just a word that means strong drink like brandy or whiskey, a strong alcoholic drink. Ah, so now that’s a major letdown. It turns out that somebody in history liked their brandy way too much and instead of just calling it brandy or whiskey or whatever, they called it the “Aqua Vitae,” the water of life. Oh well. It doesn’t hurt to hope. Keep looking. Maybe it’s out there somewhere. The next word is “aquifer.” Let’s break this one down because it makes a little more sense if I do it that way. Aqua means water. “Ferre” means to carry. This is something that carries water. But this is not somebody carrying water out to the cows with a couple of buckets. This is actually land. This is the ground. And it’s rocky or sandy soil that can actually absorb and hold water. That’s called an aquifer. You may even have an aquifer in your town. Your town probably doesn’t get water from an aqueduct or via an aqueduct, but there’s a good chance that your town does get water from a local aquifer, an underground water source. The next word is aquanaut. Again, let’s break these words down. Aqua means water, nauta means sailor, but this is actually a diver, special kind of diver. It’s not somebody out there just snorkeling around, looking at, snorkeling around a verb, looking at aquatic life or marine life. That’s not what it is. This is a guy, this is actually a research diver who lives in an underwater laboratory or an underwater research station. And he does aquatic research while he’s underwater. The next word is aqualung. This aquanauta we were just talking about, he knows about aqualungs. That’s how he breathes. You’ve seen these tanks on the back of divers. That’s called an aqualung, or we just call it a scuba tank. But guess what? An aqualung is an underwater breathing apparatus. Scuba means self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. S-C-U-B-A. So there it is. A scuba tank is an aqualung. And the last word is aquamarine. This diver who’s down there with his aqualung, this aquanaut who’s down there working, who’s carrying an aqualung, he knows what aquamarine is. Aquamarine is a color. And guess what color it is. If you break the word apart, you have aqua, which means water, and mare, which means the sea. Guess what? Aquamarine is the color of the sea. It’s a pale greenish blue color. You’ve been to the sea before, the coast before, and you’ve noticed that the sea is not perfectly clear, but it’s also not perfectly blue. It’s sort of greenish blue. That’s aquamarine. Aquamarine is also the name of a famous mermaid in a movie about mermaids. And I hate to let you down, guys, but it’s a fictional story. Mermaids don’t exist. Somebody had to tell you. You needed to know. There you go, guys. A bunch of English words enhanced by Latin, all from the Roman word for water, aqua. As a matter of fact, I’m thirsty and I’m gonna go get some aqua while you go back to the guy at the desk, who’s got my tie, I think. Hey, thanks. Thanks for that. That was fantastic. That was very interesting. You know, he didn’t even mention the word agua, which in Spanish means water. Maybe it’s ’cause it’s not English. Or maybe he doesn’t speak Spanish. Hey, let’s see what the Greek guy has to tell us about water. Thanks for that. Is that my jacket? That’s my jacket, isn’t it? It’s a nice jacket, but you gotta give it back. The people I have to work with around here. The Greek word ethor means water, and from the Greek word ethor, we get the English prefix hydra, which means water, and gives this word hydra, gives us all kinds of English words.
Let’s take a look at a bunch of them. Here we go. The first one is hydra. The hydra is a mythological sea serpent. You see the connection to water? See that? Anyway, the hydra had multiple heads, and the trick with the hydra is if you cut off one head, multiple heads grew back. So if you’re ever being chased by a hydra, Avoid the temptation to chop the heads off. Find another way to get rid of the mythological sea serpent that’s chasing you. The next word is hydrant. A hydrant is a pipe connected to an underground water source. It has a valve and a spout, which the firefighters use to put the fires out. Anyway, a hydrant, well, they tell me that it’s used to put fires out, but honestly, guys, I’ve never actually seen that happen in my town, but I have seen a hydrant used for this purpose. The next word is hydrangea. A hydrangea is a shrub or a plant that produces pink, white, or blue flowers. And what does that have to do with water? Well, it turns out in the history of hydrangeas that somebody looked at the seed pod and said, “Check that out. “It looks like a bunch of little water jugs “or water cups all combined together.” Let’s call it a hydrangea, which literally means the water jug plant. By the way, if you’re not exactly sure what a hydrange is, go talk to your grandmothers about it. All grandmothers seem to enjoy hydranges and have one. I don’t know why. The next word is hydrate. To hydrate means to fill with water or to moisturize something. If you’re working out, let me give you an example. You’re working out, you’re working out in the sun, you’re running, you’re jogging, you’re hiking. You need to hydrate. you need to put water in yourself. Because if you don’t, you’ll become dehydrated, which means lacking water. And if that goes too far, you may become anhydrous. An in Greek means no, anhydrous means water. Anhydrous, completely dry, no water. Don’t take it too far. You don’t want to become anhydrous. Remember to hydrate. The next word is hydraulic. Hydraulic power is power generated by water pressure or by fluid pressure. Take a look at these machines. This is actually the power behind these machines and they can do some amazing things is actually generated by water or fluid. Seems simple, but look what they can do. The next word is hydrogen. You’ve heard of hydrogen before, maybe not quite so sure what it is, but you’re actually very familiar with it as I’ll show you in just a second. Hydrogen is the most simple and the most basic element and it’s the source of water. It’s what generates water. In fact, the word hydrogen, that gen part at the end of the word is related to the word generate, which means to create. It’s also related to the word genesis, which means beginning. Hydrogen is the beginning of water. You’ve seen pictures of water before with H2O stuck in front of it. Well, that H2O is the formula for water. Two parts of hydrogen, So the H stands for hydrogen. The two stands for, you guessed it, two. And the O stands for oxygen. And that is the formula for water. The next word is hydrophobia. What is hydrophobia? Hydrophobia is fear of water. You guys know what phobias are. Phobias are fear. Personally, I suffer from camera phobia. I could never do a video series in front of a camera because I’m afraid of cameras. It would be impossible. A hydrophobe, however, is afraid of water. Famous hydrophobe in history, Moses. Takes the Jews out of Egypt. They’re on their way to the Promised Land. They’re on their way to Israel. And what do they find? They get about halfway and they bump into the Red Sea. And I don’t know if you know this, but back then and today, the Red Sea is filled with water. Well, they didn’t want to cross because Moses was a hydrophobe. So they had to wait until there was dry land And then they crossed. Hydrodipsia, extreme thirst. Remember the guy who didn’t hydrate? He became dehydrated, eventually became anhydrous. My guess is, my guess is before he became anhydrous, he was suffering from hydrodipsia. You hear my voice cracking? Yeah, it’s hydrodipsia. I’m thirsty, I’m tired of talking about water. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna go get some water after I teach you one more word, and that word is hydronaut. Hydra means water. Unfortunately, the latter part of this word, nauta, comes from Latin. Hydronaut, nauta, I forgot to tell you what it meant, because it’s Latin. Anyway, it means sailor. A hydronaut is a diver, but he’s not just any diver. He’s not a snorkeler. He’s also not an aquanaut. He’s not doing research down there in a lab. A hydronaut is a specially trained rescue and research diver. So he’s operating vessels underwater, not necessarily submarines, but he’s operating research and rescue vessels in the deep sea. So he goes down to the wreckage of a ship and does research down there or searches for whatever hydronauts search for down there. That’s it guys, 10 English words enhanced by the Greek word ethor, I was thinking of hydra, which is actually the English prefix, But enough about that, I’m suffering from hydrodipsia. I’m out of here, I’m gonna go get some water, and I’m gonna get my jacket back. Thanks for that, Greek expert. I have to admit, I’m surprised and impressed that he pulled it off. I didn’t think that he’d be able to come up with 10 English words off of that Greek word, but he did. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, 20 new English words that you’ve learned from Latin and Greek roots. Get out there and use them this week. Look smart, impress people aquatically, and we’ll see you next time. Seriously, the guy’s at the beach. I mean, it’s so cold here. Love to be at the beach. [MUSIC]