Etymology

Driving through a small Texas town this weekend I saw a sign on a building: Parlor for Funerals. The wording was odd but it set me off on a spiral of thinking about words whose origins are more synergistic than their current usages belie.

Parlor is one of them. Originally meaning “a room for receiving or entertaining visitors,” it comes from the French word parler, “to speak.” So beauty parlor seems appropriate, but funeral parlor, a term rendered archaic by the even more perplexing “funeral home,” makes less sense. But the cadence of the word and the way it makes the mouth move is so beautiful when it is spoken.

Another word that falls into this category? Sangria. Literally, “bloody.”