Everyday lifeMyths & disputes

sincere

Latin sincērus meant 'clean, pure, unmixed'; scholars carried it into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, and through French it came to mean honest and unfeigned in English and Romanian. Nothing to do with wax.

Weakest linkCertain

The story you may have heard

From Latin sine cera 'without wax', for sculptors who did not hide cracks in marble with wax. It is a folk etymology: sine cera would not give sincērus, and no ancient source tells the story.

The road to English

From Latin to Italian

From Latin to Spanish

From Latin to Portuguese

From Latin to Catalan

From Middle French to French, Romanian

200 BCELatin

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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