Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

I've been studying for graduate entrance exams (which hopefully will excuse my blogging absence), and I've rediscovered something that I knew when I was two: language is difficult. Ironically, I discovered this while studying prefixes and roots, which are supposed  to aid me in figuring out the meaning of any word (assuming it is Greek or Latin based). Instead I find myself pondering how two such different meanings could be linked to the same root. Examples: Ami . means love (amorous) also means friend (amiable). May explain the friend zone, although if ami is love AND friend, maybe there IS no friend zone. Bell . means pretty (belle) and war (belligerent). Were wars fought for beauty (well, check  on the Trojan War), or did some ancient culture think wars were pretty? Is this why love and war are paired in "All's fair in love and war"? Fort . means luck (fortuitous) and strong (fortify). Usually, if someone says, "oh, you were just lucky in that game,...

Yesterday morning at shift change, one of the night nurses was telling me how she was so tired, because it had been a long night (literally, since she stayed an extra hour or so finishing up charting), but that she needed to go to church or else her mother would yell at her. I was missing church, too, and so I shared with her how I consoled myself: "How can being here be bad? Didn't you know Jesus healed on the Sabbath?" At this point, the nice eavesdropping doctors sitting next to me laughed, so I know I made an impression, but I don't know if I made my point. It's a tricky situation, really. I've been told that if you go to church every week, you will never become inactive. That's a rather tongue-in-cheek adage, because if you attend services every week, I'm pretty sure that means you are not inactive as a member of your church, because you are there. It's like saying that you always find something the last place you look. Well, duh. Except the...