Talk:debauchery

How closely is this word related to the name of the Roman god Bacchus? It looks to me like the word means something like "to do the works of Bacchus" who was a god of over-eating, drinking, and sexual immorality. --67.172.10.82 23:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * No relation at all. Bacchus seems to have developed out of Latin bacca (berry); debauchery, OTOH, is from Middle French debaucher < Old French desbaucher (to lead astray), a compound of des- (privation, removal, separation) + bauch (beam) < Frankish balk < Proto-Germanic *balkan- (beam, rafter) < Proto-Indo-European *bhelg- (beam, plank). —Stephen 00:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)