Recently, someone joked to me about the connection between the city of Genoa and the word genuflect. Upon further investigation, I discovered that they are indeed related. In Latin and older texts, Genoa was spelled Genua, likely derived from an old Ligurian word for “knee” due to the city’s geographical location resembling a knee where the Italian peninsula bends into the rest of Europe. This ultimately traces back to the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction gnewo, which also means “knee”. I have previously discussed the word genuflect, originating from the same root through Medieval Latin genuflecto, the Latin word for “knee” in the fourth declension, genu, and the Proto-Italic root genu. Additionally, the term genoa can also refer to a type of jib used on cruising yachts, a term borrowed into English around the 1930s, and is the source of the word jeans.
