Sometimes, as I wait for the water to boil, I start thinking about words. Where do they come from? What hidden meaning do they bring? What influenced what, and why? Encouraged by my girlfriend, I've decided to write down my attempts at amateur etymological erudition.

In my dialect, "thing" as in "can you pass me that thing" or "what a thing!" is called "laür", which literally means "work". It comes from Latin, "labor", which however means "effort". In Italian we say "lavoro" nonetheless. The famous motto "ora et labora" could be then translated in "pray and toil" or "pray and act" rather than the common interpretation "pray and work". In Neapolitan dialect, "work" is "fatica", which literally means "effort", bringing everything to a full circle. Needless to say, "labour" as synonym of "work" comes from Latin "labor". Another Italian word for "work" is "impiego", from which "impiegato", employee. "Impiegato" is generally used to mean someone in a generic office job, as if it was a title or a specific profession. This might say something about the confusion when white collar jobs started to become more popular. "Impiegare" comes from Latin "implicare", meaning to make part of, to bring someone in. "Implicare" however has a different meaning in Italian, namely "to deduct" or "to make suspect", similar to English "implicate".

Interestingly, in German "stuff" can be called "Zeug", meaning "tool", however "Werk", the root of the English word, means "work" only figuratively, e.g. "The complete work of Sigmund Freud" would be "Freuds Gesammelte Werke". One could even say that "Werk" is the product resulting from the "work". In Latin something similar is "Opus", from which "opulent", fruitful, bountiful. In German there are a few words related to work. "Arbeit" is the most direct translation of salaried work, it can also be used for a strenouos activity "that must have been a lot of work!". While it can sometimes mean "effort", a more common word would be "Mühe", as in "Das ist doch zu viel Mühe!". According to DWDS, one declination of the word "Arbeit" is Old English "earfoþe", which sounds a lot like "effort", which however comes from Latin "ex fortis", literally "out of strength". "Mühe" is from Germanic "muoen", meaning to complain, from which "to moan". "Beruf" is used to connotate status or a title, "what's your job?". It contains the prefix "be" and the root "ruf", meaning "the call". This might explain why many Anglosaxon and German last names indicate a profession, while Italian last names are mostly toponyms. "Betrieb" is related to the organization of the work, e.g. "Betriebsrat" is the work council, "Betriebschaftdienst" is the on-call duty. It contains the root of "treiben", meaning "to move in a certain direction", e.g. "übertrieben", exaggerated, gone too far. "Employee" would translate to "Angestellter", someone who is at their post. Notice the use of "-er" to indicate profession, similar to English and different from Latin "-tor".

Note that in other European languages, "work" takes another root. In French "travail", Spanish "trabajo", Portuguese "trabalho". This is a famous false friend of the English "travel". But where does it come from? It comes from Latin "tripaliare", meaning to torture, to torment, to suffer. "Travel" and "trabajo" are false friends only in modern times, as they share the Latin root. English "travel" substituted the Old English "faran" from which German "fahren", which now means to drive or ride a vehicle. "Employee" is "employé" in French, "empleado" in Spanish, "empregado" in Portuguese, sharing again the same root. But what is the root? "Employ" still comes from Latin "implicare", very literally "to fold".