We owe the words quantity and quality to Cicero.

Latin didn’t have words for these concepts, so he made them up. He coined quantitas (from quantus ‘how much’) and qualitas (from qualis ‘what kind’) to translate Greek philosophical terms into Latin.

When 14th-century English writers wanted English words for these concepts, they could have followed Cicero’s lead and made something up.

But they copied Cicero’s work instead, so we were deprived of what would have been two glorious words: howmuchness and whatkindness.