I’ve been having a lot of trouble with this word. The definition I have is insolent; rude—but I can only see not pertinent; not relating to. How does that make sense?

Well (taking Stack Exchange as dogma), impertinent originally meant not pertinent, but starting around 1680 it started to be used for a different meaning in French. The word became used to describe someone who meddled in something they weren’t supposed to: someone who dealt with things to which they were impertinent. So, they were called impertinent in relation to their rudeness from meddling in others’ affairs. And now, impertinent means insolent and rude.

This is a snippet of why I love etymology. I hated learning vocab by rote memorization in school when the words made no sense—especially when learning Spanish. I wanted to understand the words—not know them. A fair number of problems with a word can be resolved with its history and origins.

A bit more broadly, this is a snippet of why I love history. There are many things in our current lives that seem very strange—things that make you wonder how we got here. History will almost always explain how we got to be where we are today. What an incredibly powerful tool.

I would continue expanding to logic and philosophy, but I’ve probably done enough induction for one post.