A new thread with the function of spreading those little snippets of eye-opening knowledge that we bump into as we live and learn.
To start the ball rolling.
The etymology of many English words is fairly easy to discern and the meaning can often be deconstructed syllable by syllable, but in some cases it's obfuscated a little.
The English word helicopter comes to us via the French from Greek, but the two units that compose it are not HELI + COPTER, as I'd always supposed, but HELICO + PTER, which originate from the helix (ἕλιξ) "helix, spiral, whirl, convolution" and pteron (πτερόν) "wing", as in pterodactyl.