words wholly unrelated

penthouse & house

i was leafing through a well-read 1998 penthouse magazine at my barbershop when i started to wonder what most gentleman wonder when reading this particular periodical—just what exactly is the etymology of penthouse and how has it come to mean the top level of a building?

had pent something to do with 5? was the penthouse the 5th floor? if so, that’s a pretty low top level. perhaps pent was in reference to pressure and the original penthouse was a boiler room or something.

after my haircut (i got the “junior executive”), i raced home and looked it up. i found that house (the word, not the curmudgeon doctor) has nothing to do with penthouse. it turns out that penthouse is actually from the middle english word, pentis which can be traced to the latin word, appendicium which meant something like “a small building depending on a larger one.”

thus penthouse is more closely related to appendage than house. a mnemonic device for remembering this is to think of an engorged wiener which is a type of appendage.