One of my favorite stories has to do with the verb “llegar”; meaning to arrive in English. While Italian typically uses the verb “arrivare” and French “arriver”, Spanish has “llegar” which is related to the Latin verb “plicare”, from which English gets a word like “pleat”. What’s going on?
It’s amazing how the simplest things had such meaning at the roots of our language. In Spanish the word for bred is “pan” and bread is still at the heart of words such as acompañar (to accompany), compañero (companion), compañía (company). With whom would you break bread or be close?
Companion being one of my favorite words in English for this reason.
The Romans would more typically sail to the Iberian peninsula, and when they “arrived”, they would fold their sails. Hence “plicare” (“to fold” in Latin) came to signify arriving.
But in Romanian it means to fold up your tent and... leave. The opposite!!