"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean," said Humpty Dumpty to Alice. But outside of Wonderland, words usually evolve from other words, often by a rather torturous path. See if you can untangle our modern words from their historical derivations.

1		This three-letter noun, which refers to a mischievous child or minor prankster, derives from the Latin imputare, "to trim, prune, graft into or on." In Old English, it came to mean "a young shoot of a plant" by the 14th century, "offspring, child" and later "small demon or wicked spirit." It has now lost this harshness.
2		Hand-lettered books used a pigment made from red lead to contrast titles from the black ink of the text. Our nine-letter noun derives from the Latin miniare, meaning to color with this red lead; in Italian, it became "to illuminate a manuscript." From this reference to small book illustrations, today's word encompasses a variety of small works of art.
3		This six-letter noun refers to a popular type of fictional character. It was borrowed from the Old Norse sloth and meant "the track of an animal or person" in Middle English. It also named a Scottish hound symbolizing intense pursuit, and eventually took on the connotation of a person.
4		This six-letter noun used in advertising originally described Celts shouting their clan names as a war cry, a combination of the Celtic sluagh ("host") and the Gaelic gairm ("to shout"). Losing its war connotation, the word came to symbolize an "attitude, position or goal: a motto"--the meaning it still retains.
5		This eight-letter adjective is from the Latin gurges, or "whirlpool," which later added the meaning of "throat." In Middle French it became gorgias, or wimple, a garment covering the throat and shoulders that was associated with beautifully dressed, fashionable woman. The word has lost its relation to the wimple, but kept its association with elegant beauty.
6		Today a popular breakfast dish, this six- (or eight-) letter noun originates from the Latin lamella, a "small metal plate." La lemelle in Old French, mispronounced as "l'alemelle," became alumette with the -ette ending. By modern French, the word acquired the meaning of a prepared food resembling this "small metal plate."
7		This seven-letter noun derives from Latin through the French of feudal society, meaning a serf attached to a villa or a common villager. Since these classes were seen as inferior, the word took on a negative sense, as "a person of uncouth mind and manners." As the concept of manners and morals became intertwined, the word took on the meaning of a person with poor morals, a scoundrel--or, today, one who thwarts the plans of the heroic protagonist.
8		Although Arnold Schwarzenegger might be shocked, the diminutive of the Latin word meaning "mouse" has today become a six-letter noun describing a bundle of cells or fibers that can be contracted and expanded to produce bodily movements (and that was thought to resemble the movements of a mouse).
9		This four-letter adjective has its earliest roots in the Latin rapere, "to seize." By the time it reached 15th-century England, it had come to describe either a physical or spiritual carrying away. Contemporary usage of the word has lost its sense of a physical carrying away, but has retained its more spiritual reference to one who is "deeply absorbed."