The word of the decade - here’s hoping it isn’t the word of the century - is a Latin hybrid. Coronavirus comes from the Latin corona (‘crown’) and the Latin virus, originally meaning a poisonous secretion from snakes - ie a kind of venom.
Used together, though, the words corona and virus these days have only one miserable meaning. Scientists gave the virus the name because those knobbly bits on the surface of the virus are like the crests and balls of a crown.
Once again, even with the worst of modern horrors, it is the Latin language that put it first and put it best - unless ancient Greek got there first, by lending its alphabet to those horrible virus
