Dear Straight Dope,
I’ve have noticed that every time someone asks a question regarding the origin of a particular word, Cecil always mentions the original Latin word root. Well, where did the original Latin words come from? Was there actually a Latinese guy sitting around thousands of years ago making up crazy words for things so that today we’d have an origin for the word “boogie”? Are Latin words still being created to describe modern things that weren’t around during the original Latin period?