119: albino and album Apr 6, 2015

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What do music and creatures lacking melanin have in common‽ The words 'album' and 'albino' both are derived from the same Latin word, 'albus', which means white. It is no difficult guess why 'albino' comes from a word meaning 'white', but album is perhaps a bit more complicated; the word 'album' denotes something blank, which is to be filled, by songs or photos or whatever you please, and so an album is simply something blank, and as such, (conceptually anyway) white.

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