894: globerate, glob, conglomerate etc. May 20, 2017

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Either for fun or for research, it can lend a new perspective on words to look into the relation between ones you suspect may share a common ancestry. If you stumble upon the words 'conglobate', 'conglobulate', and 'globulate' (outside of this post) then you might be reading some very odd, old things, but you may notice the similarities. The words are certainly rare, and they all relate to joining things together, especially into a ball, so it wouldn't be crazy to assume they are indeed related. Unsurprisingly then, it turns out that they are, as well as a few other, generally astronomical, geological, or biological terms like 'globular', from the Latin 'globulus' meaning 'sphere', as well as the more commonly found 'globe'. 'Glob' is not among these related words as, though visually, semantically, and maybe even phonologically it may appear similar, it is thought to come from a blend of the words 'blob' and 'gob' (referring to sailors, not mouths). It would also, however, be incorrect to assume that this is related to the far more common, 'conglomerate', which also has its own group of related scientific words like 'glomerular', coming from the Latin, 'glomus' meaning ‘ball (of thread)’.

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