Tuesday, June 30, 2009

the english hazard vs the portuguese azar

both the english word hazard and the portuguese word azar sounded so similar to me, when I first heard that word used by my Love, so that I considered them to mean the same. that's incorrect, as I had to find out very soon, when we looked up the dictionaries on Sunday evening. what a time for looking up dictionaries? but what else would adults do beyond 23:00 on Sunday evenings?

but me being a little strongheaded I finally found out, that both words go back to the same root, which is the arab word “az-zahr” resp. “al-zahr” meaning “the dice”. weird, isn't it?!? same root, opposite meanings. wow.