Empresa (Spanish for “business”) is from the Latin imprendere, which itself comes from the Latin im– (“on”) plus prehendere (“to grasp”).

From the same Latin root, we get the English (via Italian), impresario.

An impresario, after all, is just a flashy businessman! True Italian style.

From the original Latin prehendere, we also get the Spanish prender, “to attach, fasten” — almost the same as grasping!

We can see the -m-p-r root in both words.

The Spanish for “throat” garganta sounds completely unrelated to any similar word in English.

But it is actually a close cousin of both gargoyle and gargle.

All come from the Latin gula, meaning “throat”. You do gargle with your throat… and a gargoyle — although we associate it with the demon statues in churches — is, literally, a water spout. Yes, water used to spout out of the mouths of the gargoyles!

The Spanish for “honey,” miel, comes from the Latin mel — also meaning honey. We can see the m-l root obviously and simply in both!

(The –fluous ending comes from the Latin fluere, meaning “to flow” — and we can also see the f-l root there!)

So, mellifluous words are… flowing like honey.

The Spanish cerca (“near”, as in the common phrase, cerca de) comes from the Latin circus, meaning ring. From that same root, we get the English… circus (which does have a circular ring as its defining feature!) as well as circle (in the same shape!). The c-r-c root is clearly visible in all!

Falta (“lack of”) is an interesting word in Spanish because, it is one of those words, along with cornudo that is a grammatical construction that, literally, is less common in the English but rather, in English, the same point is made very commonly in a different way. Falta is very common in Spanish: La casa falta calefacción is literally “the house lacks heating” but the way an English speaker would make that point — since few today say “lacks” in everyday speech! — would be, The house doesn’t have heating.

Falta comes from the Latin Fallita, which means, “a fault.” Indeed, Fault itself comes from the same root — and we can see that with the f-l-t mapping in both. Fallita itself comes from the older Fallere (“to disappoint”) from which we get many English and Spanish words such as fail and fallar.

Siglo, Spanish for “century”, closely related to the English secular.

How? The connection seems surprising.

Both come from the Latin saeculum, meaning, “age, span of time, generation”.

The evolution from saeculum to siglo is obvious: a century is just a unit or breakdown of time.

But in English, it evolved into the sense to mean “worldly.” While the religious concerns itself with the spirit and the “other-worldly,” it is the characteristics of time — growing, aging — that are the most fundamental characteristics of this world.

Life in the real world, in other words, is defined by getting old.