Homonyms, Etymologically Speaking: X

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 continue an A to Z list of such words and look at how that word came to have two different meanings.

X is for x ..... well it isn't for anything as there isn't a single homonym beginning with that letter. So let's have some fun with etymologies of words beginning with X and we will begin with....

Xenon, a gas named in 1898 by Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay from the Greek word xenon meaning 'foreign, strange' and coming from the Proto-Indo-European root ghos-ti 'stranger, guest, host'.

Xylem is named from the German xylem and the Greek xylon 'wood'. It is the woody tissue found in the most evolved of plant life.

Xerox, the trademark name of a copying device, it held by Haloid Co, of Rochester, New York State. It comes from xerography, defined as 'photographic reproduction without liquid developers'. In 1965 the word became listed in the dictionary as a verb meaning 'to produce using a copier', and while the company strongly objected to inclusion in the dictionary, thus making it acceptable, they were ultimately unsuccessful.