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The etymology of words and phrases can be very interesting IMO. One of my favourites is the origin of the word 'school':

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School

"The word school derives from Greek σχολή (scholē), originally meaning "leisure" and also "that in which leisure is employed"".

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In the same vein, one of my favorite etymologies is the origin of the word "pedant":

"derived from Greek παιδαγωγός, paidagōgós, παιδ- "child" + ἀγειν "to lead", which originally referred to a slave who escorted children to and from school"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant

A darker one I heard recently is "boondocks", it's a Tagalog/Philipino word that came into English to basically mean everywhere outside the US concentration camps in the Philippines.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=boondocks

I am also interested in etymology. For those who don't know you can type in "define xxx" on Google and get the etymology tree for word/phrase xxx.

It is remarkable how easy it is to find out an English word's etymology, which is very hard if not impossible in most other languages.

CNTRL have a decent website for etymology of French words:

http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/h%C3%B4pital

En français, naturallement!

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