![]() Greek and Latin not only loaned us words but also their “morphology”. To know “insect” you need to understand “arthropod”, and that means understanding “invertebrate” and “phylum” – the list goes on. ![]() Small air breathing arthropod having the body divided into three parts (head, thorax, abdomen) and having three pairs of legs and usually two pairs of wings.Īn insect, unlike a bug, is a scientific concept – it’s an abstract bug. From Latin came, among many others, the word “insect”, which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a: Way back then, English was preparing itself for its part in the “Scientific Revolution”.įor the newly-emerging disciplines of science to get past their L-plates, they needed a special kind of language – new kinds of words, words that declared themselves to be distinct from those of everyday experience.Įnglish borrowed from Latin and Greek and produced a specialised, technical vocabulary. ![]() To fully appreciate Munroe’s achievement, we need to go back at least a few centuries, to the later period of the Renaissance. ![]() Thing Explainer: Complicated stuff in simple words. ![]()
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