Congenital

Con comes from the Latin word cum, and it means with.

Get your mind out of the gutter! We’re here to have a serious adult conversation about linguistics for about two minutes, and then we’ll get right back into the gutter. I promise!

This word is present in modern Portuguese as com, and in Spanish and Italian, it’s con. Modern Romanian, which many argue is the closest to how Latin was spoken during the time of the Roman empire, keeps it brief by using cu to mean with.

Even French keeps the root word alive, albeit in a slightly modified form: avec has a different origin, but com has still made its way into modern French in the form of prefixes. Je comprends breaks down into “I take with”, for instance, which nowadays means “I understand.”

In the English speaking world, we’ve made good use of this prefix. Something is concurrent if it occurs at the same time, or with another thing. Confluences are when two things merge into one, like two fluids in a river.

Combine is a really good one, too. You already know that prefix, com: it means with. Now just think about the "bine” part for a moment. Think of the word binary or bind, and you can imagine combining two things together into one.

Etymological rabbit holes aren’t always this clear and simple to see, but a general rule I like to follow is that if there seems to be some kind of connecting threads between languages, it’s almost always worth unraveling. So, let us now turn to a somewhat more lively conversation.

We say that a trait is congenital if an person or animal is born with that characteristic. Does this mean… does this mean that the person is born with genitals? It sure sounds like it!

Here, we need to travel backward with that core word genital. Gutter time!!!

This word also comes from Latin, but you can easily trace it back just a bit further, over to Ancient Greek. There, the word was genesis.

You’re almost certainly very familiar with this word and its meaning, because even if you’ve never been exposed to any of the Abrahamic religions practiced by around half the world, the word genesis is still very common. Sega even named a major console Genesis during the early 90s.

So, genesis and genitals come from the same meaning. Clearly, our ancient forebears know how babies were formed.

I hear genitals are involved, but maybe that’s just a rumor.