The English language contains more words than any other tongue. To some extent, that’s because we are quite happy to ‘steal’ words from other languages, especially when the word has a special nuance (nuance – there we go again, from the French word for ‘shade’)

For example, one word has variants with different meanings: hospital – spital – hospice – hotel – hostel - hospitality … they all come (via different pathways) from one word in the original Latin. Note also, that in this living language, the word ‘hospice’ has recently gained a new meaning. Another word: place – plaza – piazza  … different shades of meaning of the same basic word, each expropriated from different Romance languages.

There are lots of words used in our Masonic parlance and elsewhere that owe their origin to Latin.
The word ‘candidate’ has an interesting history.

The Latin word for ‘white’ is ‘album’ (we didn’t miss an opportunity to steal that word, as well!), but there was also a word for ‘shining white’. Now it was hard enough in the days before Tide and Oxydol to get a garment white. To get it extra-white took effort and money. People who wanted to stand out from the crowd – those running for office – needed to be ‘pure white’ or candidatus.
In time the adjective became a noun and took upon itself the meaning of ‘one running for office’.

English being what it is, didn’t leave it at simple theft. We stole ‘candid’ (straightforward, lacking in pretense), and from the same Latin root ‘to shine’, we purloined candent – candescent – incandescent… and even candle. Not a bad collection of loot from one word root!

You can begin to see why English has so many words, and is so rich in expression.

From Rural Lodge Newsletter 10
26 January 2006