river in Ireland, the name is said to mean something like "old man river," from a Proto-Celtic word related to Irish sean "old" (from PIE root *sen- "old").
the later Romans evidently found words beginning in sc-, sp-, st- difficult or unpleasant to pronounce; in Late Latin forms begin to emerge in i- (such as ispatium, ispiritu), and from 5c. this shifted to e-. The development was carried into the Romanic languages, especially Old French, and the French words were modified further after 15c. by natural loss of -s- (the suppression being marked by an acute accent on the e-), while in other cases the word was formally corrected back to the Latin spelling (for example spécial). Hence French état for Old French estat for Latin status, etc. It also affected Romanic borrowings from Germanic (such as espy, eschew).
A different e- is a reduced form of Latin ex- before consonants (see ex-), and the e- in enough is an unfelt survival of an Old English alternative form of ge-.
bacteria inhabiting the gut of man and animals, by 1921, short for Escherichia coli (1911), named for German physician Theodor Escherich (1857-1911) with Latin genitive of colon "colon" (see colon (n.2)).
1982, short for electronic mail (1977; see electronic + mail (n.1)); this led to the contemptuous application of snail mail (1983) to the old system.
Even aerial navigation in 1999 was found too slow to convey and deliver the mails. The pneumatic tube system was even swifter, and with such facilities at hand it is not surprising that people in San Francisco received four daily editions of the Manhattan journals, although the distance between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate is a matter of 3,600 miles. ["Looking Forward," Arthur Bird, 1899]
Associated Press style guide collapsed it to email 2011.
by 1998, from electronic (compare e-mail) + commerce.
motto of the United States, being one nation formed by uniting several states, 1782, Latin, from e "out of" (see ex-); ablative plural of plus "more" (see plus (n.)); neuter of unus "one" (from PIE root *oi-no- "one, unique"). Not found in classical Latin, though a variant of the phrase appears in Virgil (color est e pluribus unum); the full phrase was the motto of the popular Gentleman's Magazine from 1731 into the 1750s.
1780, typeface named for 16c. French type-founder Claude Garamond.
by 1829 in reference to the socialistic system promoted by Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) of France.
1936, "pertaining to Ugarit," ancient city of northern Syria, and especially to the Semitic language first discovered there 1929 by Claude Schaeffer, from Ugarit, which probably is ultimately from Sumerian ugaru "field."
