Today's word, a noun of Greek origin, has not been idle during its 400-year sojourn in English, having picked up many specific meanings. Its most common meaning is the figurative one, "a mark of disgrace," but it also has particular meanings in medicine, zoology, and botany. The original meaning was "a mark left by branding."

Today's word, a noun of Latin origin, began as a noun referring to the quality of being pleasing. Today it mainly names a feature or service that provides comfort and pleasure. A single amenity rarely suffices, for we tend to talk about them in the plural -- often in connection with the ones available in a particular place.

Those who consider themselves to be God's gift and who are also highly influential or effective might be on to something: charisma, a word from Greek, is from a verb that means "favor" and was often used of those thought to be favored by the Gods. We use charisma today to designate a quality of leaders that makes people want to follow them.

English has a handful of words that designate horse velocities and among them, canter probably has the most interesting history. It's a shortening of Canterbury, which originally designated the pace at which pilgrims bound for Canterbury traveled: a three-beat gait between a trot and a gallop.

Lying is a very direct and strong word to characterize someone given to truth avoidance. You may want to enlist mendacious to hit the same target from a slightly oblique angle, owing to the fact the mendacious is somewhat formal and infrequent. Its root is Latin mendax, "lying," which turns up in the related noun mendacity and also has less direct descendents in emend and amend.