Homonyms, Etymologically Speaking: A

Many words have two meanings, sometimes more, which are often very different. Such words have identical spelling and pronunciation, they are known as homonyms. Here I start a list of words and look at how that word came to have two different meanings - just to make life easier for me I will start at 'A' and go through alphabetically.

A is for address. The verb came first, an English loan-word from France where Old French adrecier was used to mean 'straight, to the point, direct' and from Latin addirectiare 'make straight'. In English the word's oldest sense is seen when we 'address' a golf ball. Later used as where a person lives from around 1450; to speak to a person from around 1500; power of directing one's actions from around 1590.