From there, believe it or not, we’ll make our way to omelets. Take the word “odyssey,” which means something like a long and difficult journey. You can likely guess what English word comes from this figure who provides guidance to a younger counterpart, though in Homer’s version, Mentor is often actually Athena in disguise. Just under a third of English derives from Latin roots, and another third comes from French, itself a Romance language (a language group named for its Roman and thus Latin roots). Things get even more interesting when common words reveal a history of change over time, having undergone odysseys of their own.