One of my favourite reference books is Eric Partridge's Origins - a Short [ha-ha ! 972 pages] Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. It is full of surprises. I recently looked up the word 'epic' in order to see how far backwards it can be traced, and found myself diverted to the entry 'vocation'. The two words don't look as if they're related: but they are.
'Epic' derives from old Greek epos meaning a word: 'vocation' comes from the Latin vox meaning a 'voice'. Both of these are derived from an even older (prehistoric) Indo-European stem *wek-, signifying 'speech'.
Our vocal and vocation and vociferous, not to mention (which of course I now am) provoke and invoke and vocabulary and vocalist, and evoke and vouch, advocate and avow, equivocal and vowel, etc etc, are among our English words with an echo of Latin vox. While its Greek cousin epos has bequeathed us the one word 'epic', and no more*.
* Epithet looks as if it might be derived from Greek, and so it is: but the epi- bit has no relation to epos. It consists of a verb element -thet- signifying 'put' with a prefix epi- signifying 'on to' - so an epithet is a word added in explanation or further definition. In the phrases 'big cat' and 'house mouse', the adjective 'big' and the noun 'house' are both epithets; but the term has nothing to do with epos meaning a word.
And an 'epitaph' is something inscribed 'upon a tomb (Gr taphos)'.
Vox Populi and Voces Populorum
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