There are plenty of words in our language with numbers in their etymology, and most of them still make sense. Most of them.
The “bi” in “bicycle” makes sense, because that word refers to a cycle with two wheels. We know that a bilingual person can speak two languages, while a trilingual person can speak three. A “quatrain” is a stanza with four lines.
However, some words with numbers in their etymology have changed in meaning over time. “Decimate” has its roots in the Latin word for "ten." It used to mean “to kill one in every ten,” but now we use it to talk about destroying something in large part: “The disease decimated the deer population.”
The “quint” in “quintessential” or “quintessence” is the same “quint” in a word like “quintuplet.” What does “quintessential” have to do with the number five though?
"Quintessence" came into English in the mid-1400s. The Oxford English Dictionary explains how in classical and medieval philosophy, it was a fifth essence that existed in addition to the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. In the late 1400s, the meaning of “quintessence” had generalized to refer to the essence that can be extracted from any substance, as in “the quintessence of gold” or “the quintessence of a poison.”
By the mid-1500s, “quintessence” could refer to the essential feature or part of any non-material thing. Someone could talk about the “quintessence of mischief” or “the quintessence of reason.” This meaning is related to the one many of us are familiar with today, with “quintessential” referring to the most typical or purest example of something: “Baseball is often thought of as the quintessential American pastime.”
To hear more about “quintessential,” including usage issues some commentators are keeping an eye on, listen to the audio above.
