Pound, street, and cheap are actually Latin words in disguise: pondo 'by weight,’ strata ‘paved (road)’, caupo ‘innkeeper.’

They look nothing like the long, fancy words we normally associate with Latin borrowings: formula, curriculum, decimation.

What's going on here?

The reason: they were borrowed so long ago that their distinctive Latin shape has been worn away by centuries of phonetic erosion.

There are lots of these stealth Latin words hiding in everyday English: kettle, kitchen, pit, wall…

How do we know these are Latin at all, when they look so English?

You've got to reverse the sound changes they've undergone. And when you do, you see that they sort into three distinct layers, some borrowed before the Anglo-Saxons ever set foot in Britain.

Even the most homely, Anglo-Saxon-sounding words in your vocabulary might be Latin in disguise.