That’s a nice looking car,
albeit an old one. And that's the topic of today's "Where the heck did that come from?" post. The word `albeit.'
I know what it means but couldn't see its origins easily. Didn't seem like it had a Greek root, or Latin. So I looked it up and was happy to have found yet another in our long list of words that were created by smooshing together an entire phrase and then tossing out some letters for good measure.
It comes from combining "al be it" which itself is a contraction of "although be it" (or "although it be" in modern usage) and is from the 14th century. That's OLD. That also explains what seems like an odd word order.
And it makes good sense, doesn't it? Expanding it out, the sentence that led off today's post would be "That's a nice looking car, although it be an old one." (Using "be" instead of "is" makes us sound all piraty, doesn't it? Arrrr)
- And that's today's word from the bird
