Some words are like the Sierra Madres: if you dig into them deep enough, you’ll strike gold.

The best words are those with multiple layers of significance. When you peel away the modern cultural meaning and expose the etymological bones, different languages and time periods come together, sparking exciting new meaning at their intersections.

Here is one of those words:

Welcome.

At face value it’s a decent word. A little formal. A pleasant greeting for doormats and place cards. But dig a little deeper, and you immediately see the bones.

Well Come.

[Well, actually Wil + Cuman if you dig into the old English]. Now we have something interesting! It’s even more formal now, but that formality adds a delightful sense of import to the words. Imagine knocking at the doors of some medieval keep, saddle sore and drenched with mud, and upon entering, hearing the feudal lord say “Sir Reader! You are well come!”

What a nice expression! It suggests that you’re just on time. That you were expected and that your arrival solves a problem for everyone present. That you are needed and valued. With subtext like that, how could you not love being welcomed?

Some of my favorite words are from dead languages. They make up the bones of other, more common modern expressions.

Here is one of those words:

Credo.

In Latin, this is how you would say, “I believe.” But almost every variation of the word has developed unique meaning in English.

Take Credo into the third person and you get “Credit,” he, she or it believes. In English, we use this word to describe how much other people believe or trust in you. Your credibility. Other’s faith in your ability to pay your debts becomes your credit score.

Take a few liberties with the pronunciation and you get “Creed,” the set of standards or ethics or dogma that you choose to believe in.

If something is worth believing, it’s creditable. If it’s not worthy of your belief, it’s incredible.

Anyway, some words seem totally meaningless, or like onomatopoeia, until you realize that they aren’t.

Here is one of those words:

Spelunking.

Spelunking is exploring caves. I spelunk. I have spelunked. I am spelunking. I will spelunk.

For my whole life, I thought it was a nonsense word. [How could you not?] Then a few years ago I was reading The Aeneid for a college class and read a passage about “a cave, massive and unfathomed.”

“Hic spelunca fuit uasto summota recessu…”

The latin word for cave is spelunca.

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Maybe I gave English words too much credit by calling them mountains full of veins of gold. English is a language built on the bones and junk of ancient civilizations. Etymologists are just garbage men who live in the scrap heap and try to piece together the bones.

I think it would be a pretty fun job.