I was just reading about William Jones, one of the philologists who discovered the Indo-European language group. One of his jobs was that of “Puisne judge”. I just had to look that up. What it means is a junior, or lower ranking judge on a court. But the world puisne really 1/3

Stood out to me. Puisne is a French compound word. It’s constituent pieces are puis, meaning later, and ne. (Or nee) meaning born. So, a later born (or junior) thing. It’s not entirely unlike the word petty, which comes from the French petite/petit. 2/3

The fun part! We took that world, changed the spelling, and put it into service as a word that means small. What’s that word?

*drumroll*

Puny.

Isn’t that neat?

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