Words are
time machines.

A nickname began as an “eke name” — an additional name. Then the n wandered.

Mortgage came through Old French from words that literally meant “dead pledge.”

Bluetooth was a temporary code name inspired by Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson — and it stuck.

A clue was once a ball of thread — and a famous labyrinth helped turn it into a guide.

The ancestry of disaster leads to Italian disastro — literally “ill-starred.”