"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 17/11/17 (curator, manicure, accurate, secure)

I'm going to talk about single word, which is curator. When we think of curators, we tend to think of museums, somebody who organises and selects, perhaps displays things. But you can curate content on the web now, so it's taking on new senses as technology develops. But unsurprasingly perhaps, we have to look back to the ancient for its origin, for there, a curator was someone with incredibly heavy responsibilities who was in charge of pretty much all public works. So if you're looking back to ancient Rome, there were curatores, as they were called, of olive oil supplies, corn supplies, food for the people, the rivers, public funds, public buindings, roads... Not taxes - they were left to somebody else - but almost any public administrative role that you can think of was under the jurisdiction of the curatores. It all goes back to cura, which in Latin meant care. If you think about it, it pops up in so many places in English. So we have a manicure, which is the care for the manus, the hand. Accurate, means done with care and if you are secure, then you are free of care. So lots and lots of places that that word, from curator and cura comes into English and it goes to show the Romans did an awful lot of us, really.