The Book of Kells (a Celtic gospel written in Latin c. 800 CE), in addition to being a masterpiece of calligraphy and the peak of illuminated manuscripts, is also a great example of what’s called uncial script—a tall script written entirely in capital letters (a majuscule script) used from the 4th to 8th centuries CE.

The term uncial comes from Latin ū̆ncia ‘one-twelfth’, which is also where English gets the word inch! It’s called an uncial script because the letters are “inch-high”, i.e. big!

That word ū̆ncia comes from Latin ūnus ‘one’ and is ultimately related to the English word one as well! ū̆ncia means ‘one-twelfth part’ rather than ‘one part’ because the Romans divided many goods into units of 12, so one part of something was often one-twelfth of something.

This is just one of the many surprising etymologies connected to one in English. Read about the rest in this (free) issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter: