spirit

This is one of those words that starts with something utterly ordinary: breath. Romans used spirare for the simple act of breathing, and from that came spiritus, which could mean breath, life, or the invisible something that seemed to animate a person. By the time English was borrowing it through Old French in the 1200s, it had already picked up a shadowy second life in church Latin, where it translated Greek pneuma in Bible passages. That’s why spirit sits in such a weird neighborhood: it keeps company with inspire, expire, perspire, and even conspiracy, all of them huffing and puffing around the same ancient idea. So every time we talk about a “strong spirit,” we’re really praising the stuff you can’t quite see but can absolutely feel — the original ghost in the lungs.