MemeMachineGo!

In an old school technique of duplicate verification, contracts were written in duplicate or triplicate on the same piece of paper, then cut apart with an arbitrary jagged or wavy pattern. If the two parts fit, you knew they were from the same original. From the toothed pattern, the contracts were called "indentures", hence "indentured servants."

I'd always assumed "plantations" were so-called because they were places where things were planted. And while the OED has citations for that sense dating as far back as 1569, its use to describe the English plantations in Ireland and North America derives from their being an implantation of settlers.

Though it remains illegal for U.S. citizens to spend money in Cuba, per the terms of the Platt Amendment (re-affirmed in the 1934 Treaty of Relations) the U.S. government writes a $4,085 check to the Cuban government annually to pay the rent on Guantanamo Bay.

Since 1959, Cuba has refused to cash the check. Castro's government cashed the first it received in the confusion of their early days.

Yesterday, looking at UC Berkeley's Campanile, I at least half-convinced myself that campus must derive from place where there's a bell tower.

That's hooey, of course. campus is Latin for "field." Campanile is simply Italian for "bell tower", from th Italian for "bell", campana. It appears to be disputed whether campana comes from the Latin Campania, "land of fields", for the region of Italy that includes Naples, purportedly the home of Italy's first bell foundry.

If we were to assume that we knew campana was unrelated to campus, is there a word for the relationship between the English words campus and campanile? Two things that appear to have a common root but don't? They're not false friends or false cognates.