Word origins…

I was doing the NY Times crossword the other evening. It contained clues for the words mercurial, venial, martial, ETs, jovial, and saturnine. While today these words mean capricious, forgivable, warlike, extraterrestrials, jolly, and gloomy (except for ETs, those were the clues), their common origin can be found among the names of planets, i.e. Latin. Maybe that only appeals to a sci-fi fan like me, but in general I find such word origins fascinating.

English is a mongrel language, of course...