Some of the most interesting, unusual words describe everyday things. Who would have thought that the fleshy, spongy, white thing inside an orange had a word for itself… and that it would share it with astronomers? Or that it would have the same ancestor as the words for an egg part, a photo book, or the smearing of a canvas?
What all these words have in common is whiteness or albus, Latin for white. Albumen is egg white, an album is a book with white pages, and when we daub a sheet of paper, we de-albus it.
albedo (al-BEE-doh) noun
1. The fraction of light reflected from a body or surface.
For example, earth’s albedo is around 0.39.
2. The white, spongy inner lining of a citrus fruit rind.
[From Latin albedo (whiteness), Latin albus (white).]
-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
On a related note (to related words), Margie ran across something over the weekend pointing out how parkour (the free-running sport around the city) and “par course” exercise tracks come from the same French root.