Simples, were at one time, the pure element sample used by alchemists. One can see how that transferred to a general meaning of simple – not complex. This would appear to be a change of use or an additional meaning that often happens in language. Simplifying langue is also a natural occurrence as we dropped the ‘es’ ending and used apostrophe s instead.
Today I hear the use of the American ‘un’ as a negative prefix on words that used to follow the rules of Latin to English and negatives were ‘ir’ before a word beginning with R. No longer. I am waiting for the same to happen to the Greek prefix ‘dis’ and then some words will no longer sound English to me.
#greek
#latin