Swell

Swell

Say these words aloud (really. It’ll be fun):

bellows - belly - bilge - billow - bolster - bloat - bulge

It’s easy to imagine these words all come from an ancient root meaning to swell. But wait, there’s more.

Another branch of that same root gave us:

ball - balloon - bole - bollocks - bull - bulk - boulder - bowl

And another gave us:

full - fool - follicle - folly

At some point in history, that same root added the meaning to overflow, which gives you the opportunity to say another list aloud: 
fluid - flux - effluent - flume - confluence - influx - fluvial - influenza - mellifluous - reflux 

And it takes little imagination to reconstruct why these words all came from a root meaning to swell or overflow. Pretty swell, eh?

If you’ve got swell comments, please leave them. I apologize before-the-fact that I won’t be able to reply to your comments, as the folks at Blogger (aka Blogspot) seem to have cut off my ability to comment on my own blog. Not too swell, I’d say.

Big thanks to Sioux Thompson for inspiring this post & to this week’s sources, Merriam Webster,  Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, & Wordnik.