Cete

I stumbled across this word this past week, while looking up the latin roots in the dictionary for words. It's definition is given in the AHD as "A company of badgers"!!! I just thought that was really cute. I hadn't ever really thought of what a group of badgers would be called and the definition just caught my fancy. According to the OED, this probably comes from the latin word coetus, which means "meeting, assembly, company".

I was surprised to find in the OED that there was another definition for the word spelled 'cete' as well -- "A whale or sea-monster". This word was adapted from the Latin word cetus, meaning "whale", which in turn was adopted from the Greek ketos (which also means "whale"). Interesting to see how two different words can evolve into the same spelling and pronunciation in a different language!