Brewer's: Pen and Feather

are varieties of the same word, the root being the Sanskrit pat, to fly. (We have the Sanskrit pattra, a wing or instrument for flying; Latin, petna or, penna, pen; Greek, pteron; Teutonic, phathra; Anglo-Saxon, fether; our “feather.”)

Analogous examples are TEAR and LARME, NAG and EQUUS, WIG and PERUKE, HEART and COEUR, etc.

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