{"id":230,"date":"2004-11-12T13:58:07","date_gmt":"2004-11-12T17:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/11\/12\/illuminating-another-tortuous-etymol"},"modified":"2004-11-12T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2004-11-12T17:58:07","slug":"illuminating-another-tortuous-etymology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/11\/12\/illuminating-another-tortuous-etymology\/","title":{"rendered":"Illuminating another tortuous etymology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a552'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Torch<\/i>, as it turns out, is most likely related to <i>torture<\/i> et al.  We got the word in the Middle English period from Old French <i>torche<\/i>.  This word, in turn, is assumed (because of cognates in the other Romance languages like Sp. <i>antorcha<\/i>) to have come from a late vulgar Latin <i>*torca<\/i>, which would have come from familiar old classical <i>torquere<\/i>, &#8220;to twist&#8221;.  The reference would be to the way they made torches &#8211; by twisting rags or tow dipped in pitch or oil around a stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Torch, as it turns out, is most likely related to torture et al. We got the word in the Middle English period from Old French torche. This word, in turn, is assumed (because of cognates in the other Romance languages like Sp. antorcha) to have come from a late vulgar Latin *torca, which would have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}