Affection

So. I'm dorky enough to sometimes just pick up the dictionary and read it... not often, but sometimes. When you really get down to reading all the meanings of a familiar word, or jsut reflecting on its roots, every so often you discover a new meaning that you had never noticed.

Like I cracked up after looking up "affection"

Affection means love. But it also means a malady or a disorder. To be affected has the obvious, common meaning, but then it also means to be pretentious. Check out this definition from Websters':

1) Good disposition, as towards another; fond attachment; kind feelings. Usually distinguished from love as less powerful or intense
2) a mental state brought about by any influence; an emotion or feeling (eg: to influence men by playing on their affections)
3) An abnormal state of the body; disease
4) the act of affecting or influencing or the state of being influenced
5) A property or attribute (eg: thought is said to be an affection of matter)

See synonyms under attachment, friendship, love, influence, disease.

haha, don't you love that? How did love, influence, pretentiousness, and disease come to have the same name?