impeach

Watching the second impeachment of the president today, I wondered why we have this verb impeach and this adjective impeccable that seem to be at odds with each other. Presumably, you cannot impeach a person who is impeccable, so what caused these words to diverge? The answer is that they’re not actually related, in the way that religion and sacrilege seem like they should share a history but don’t. Impeach comes to English via French through Latin, going back to the verb impedicare, “to fetter, catch or entangle,” which ultimately comes from pes, “foot.” The legal and political senses of impeach, which is mostly the way it gets used today, has been in use in English since the 1560s, and Etymonline theorizes that the shift may have resulted from association with the Latin verb impetere, “to attack or accuse.”

But impeccable is completely different, coming from the im- prefix meaning “not” and the Latin verb peccare, “to sin.”

Peach, meanwhile, goes back to Persia, with Persikon malon, “Persian apple” being the Greek name for the fruit.