"I've always found it interesting," writes Bob Fliegel of St. Augustine, Fla., "that the shortest and simplest words have the most elusive and counterintuitive etymologies. Why?"

The key factor is time. Because most of these basic words first appeared in English nearly a thousand years ago, their sources are often obscure and forgotten.

Just as genealogists have more difficulty tracking ancient ancestors than more recent ones, linguists often lose their way in the fogs of history.

Time also gives words many opportunities to change and, sometimes, even to reverse their meanings.

One of our shortest and oldest words — "up" — which entered Old English during the 1100s, traces back to the Old High German "uf" (up). The German "uf" may be derived from the Latin "sub," which means, of all things, "under."

So "under" came to mean "up." Now THAT'S counterintuitive.

But I can top that. "Down" (or "dun") was the old English word for a hill. Although this meaning of "down" is now obsolete, it survives in "dune" for a hill of sand and in "downs" for an open expanse of high ground.

In England treeless, grassy uplands provided ideal locations for community gatherings that sometimes included impromptu horse races. Thus, to this day we refer to some horse-racing tracks as "downs," as in "Churchill Downs."

Another ancient preposition — "with" — which we usually think of as meaning "accompanying, alongside," originally meant "against." That explains why "withstand" means, not "stand alongside," but "stand against."

Similarly, the old word "fast" originally meant "firm, fixed, permanent," a meaning we still use in "fast friends" and "fast asleep." But during the 1200s, "fast" acquired a contradictory meaning — "speedy."

Why? Because people thought that someone or something moving quickly displayed a firm, fixed determination — a steadfastness of purpose.

And how could that most basic of words — "bread" — have ever meant anything else?

In fact, when "bread" first appeared during the 1100s, it meant simply "a piece or fragment of something." Back then, for instance, people would ask for "a bread of meat" or "a bread of a loaf" (of baked flour). But soon "bread" came to refer to an entire loaf of baked flour.

I like to think that a tiny morsel of the original meaning of "bread" survives in the verb "bread," meaning "to cover a food, such as fish or chicken, with tiny particles of bread." But that's probably a "crumb-y" idea.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Susan Q Yin at Unsplash