I chose these words because Kaiti's posting on jealous mentioned that jealous and zealous are both borrowings into English of the same Latin word, zelus. (On a side note, we could trace the words back a little bit more, since Latin zelus comes from Greek zelos.) I was struck by Kaiti's entry because it reminded me of the lovely phenomenon of doublets: words, like jealous and zealous, that have entered English as two distinct vocabulary items even though they come from the same word in their "original" language.
Potion and poison are one of my favorite doublet pairs. These words come from Latin potio, meaning "a drink." But in English they both now signify far-from-ordinary drinks.... And the scope of poison has even been extended so that it needn't be in the form of a drink at all.
Source: AHD
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:) Yay for zealous and jealous. Even more yay for potions and poisons, though. :)
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