Although we seldom think about it, our language is in gradual but constant flux. New words come into use, old words take on new meanings and other words simply drop out of use.

            If we could take a time machine back to say, 15^th-century England, we’d find ourselves among English-speaking people, but we’d have a hard time both understanding them and making ourselves understood. For example, who among us knows what these words mean: forsooth, withal, bilbo, astonied, zounds, wert? They were all part of the vocabulary back then.

            Even if we went back only to 1860 and stayed right here in the United States, we’d have to learn the meaning of such words as coiner, rantipole, cag-mag, whitlow and bobbish.¹

            Here’s a word, however, that we’d probably understand if we dropped back to either of those times: discover.

            According to etymologists — people who study the origin of words — discover has been in use in the English language since at least 1555 with the meaning of “to obtain knowledge or sight of what was not known.”²

            But of course, the activity to which that word refers has been around much longer than that. You may recall from your high-school lessons that one era of history was referred to as the “Age of Discovery.” That was a period from the early 15^th century to the early 17^th century during which European ships traveled around the world searching for new trading routes, goods not readily available back home and wealth from foreign lands. During those expeditions, the Europeans encountered peoples and mapped lands previously unknown to them. The explorers of that period included Christopher Columbus, Vasco <

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