So I'm thinking about termites, and a thought hits me - wow. "What if termite comes from French Terre meaning earth, plus the word 'mite'?" Like an earth mite - a little bug that lives in the ground?
No go. At all, apparently. According to all the dictionaries around, the name comes from termes, which is Latin for 'termite', and which itself derives from the older Latin tarmes, 'wood-eating worm'. Okay. I can deal with that.
And worse, though, turns out mites aren't even insects. They're arachnids. So I am not only wrong, but on very shaky ground.
But it's okay, because now I am wiser.
Also, I learned that termite queens, when egg-filled, increase their size by about a hundredfold, and so can't really move around on their own. So the queen's got to be pushed from place to place by workers. Afterwards, she will shoot a rewarding juice out of her ass for them.
And, termites have soldiers, which can squirt noxious liquids or toxic glue (!!) from their heads. Wow.
Wow.
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