Society and politics

The seventeenth entry is a lei, and English is the odd one out here. A lei comes straight down from Latin legem, and everything the language says about laws comes down with it: legal, ilegal, a legislação, o legislador, legítimo. One root, one family, visible to the eye. English built the same field out of two pieces that are not related at all. The everyday noun « law » is not Latin: it came into late Old English from Old Norse lagu, a plural meaning the things that have been laid down, and it is a cousin of the verb « to lay ». The whole learned half arrived centuries afterwards from lex, legis, by way of the lawyers — « legal », « legislation », « legislature », « legitimate ». That is why « law » and « legal » look like strangers to each other: they are. Two things follow. A lei and legal can be guessed from one another, which our pair cannot. And « lawful » beside « legal », one Germanic and one Latin, carries a difference of tone that legal has to manage alone.