I came across an unfamiliar word in the translation of Don Quixote I’ve been reading: guerdon. (Walter Starkie was fond of archaism.) According to the Oxford American Dictionary, it means ‘a reward or recompense.’ This isn’t terribly exciting, but the etymology is.
Get this: guerdon comes, via Old French, from the Medieval Latin widerdonum. I know what you’re saying: there’s not supposed to be a ‘w’ in Latin. You’re right, and in fact widerdonum is an alteration of an Old Germanic word widerlon — c.f. Modern High German wieder (again) and Lohn (wages) — resulting from a mis-indentification of lon with the Latin donum (gift). Isn’t that awesome?
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