"Spare me the polemic on woman's lib and clean up your room-at least pick up the clothes that are growing to the floor!"
Today's word started out as Greek polemikos "hostile," the adjective from polemos "war, battle." The root of the Greek word originally meant "beat, hit, thrust." The same root turns up in Old English "anfealt," which today is "anvil," something you beat on. Old English "felt" is also a relative that may have been borrowed into Medieval Latin as the root in filtrum "felt, filter," which returned to English as "filter." In Latin the original root became pellere "to push, drive, hit," whose past participle is pulsus "beat" from which we derive "pulse."
Charles Mims
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