without any natural relation to their meaning).15 Even so, my point is that we cannot responsibly assume that etymology is related to meaning. We can only test the point by discovering the meaning of a word inductively. Finally, I am far from suggesting that etymological study is useless. It is important, for instance, in the diachronic study of words (the study of words as they occur across long periods of time), in the attempt to specify the earliest attested meaning, in the study of cognate