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this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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Admiral comes from Arabic "amīral". "Amir" means king, prince, chief, leader, and "al" is the definite article, in English "the" (compare algebra or alchemy).
So admiral means "leader of the", the Arabic for "leader of the sea", Amīr al-Baḥr, was too long to survive the whole game of telephone.
apropos algebra, that comes from al-Jabr, which (approximately) means reunion, resetting of broken parts, or balancing, and is a shortnening of the title of the book (copy-pasted from wiktionary) al-kitāb al-muḵtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqābala, "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing". the author of this book, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi also gave us the word "algorithm" (from al-Khwarizmi)
Most of the words starting with 'al' in Spanish come from Arabic. I think the weirdest one is 'ojala' (I hope) which comes from "Inshallah".