Word of the Week: páteř – ‘spine’

What have prayers got to do with the human backbone? There’s a connection, at least in the mind of Czech speakers! The Czech word for the spine is páteř, a term in fact inspired by rosaries – those strings of beads that assist praying for Catholics.

The spine, with its row of vertebrae, shares a certain similar look with the rosary, and Catholic Czechs started to call the former thing after the latter. To be specific, they named the spine after an essential prayer of the rosary: the ‘Our Father’, or, in Latin, pater noster. Hence, through this strange route of associations, we get the modern word for ‘spine’ in Czech, páteř.