It’s funny how our daily vocabulary changes with events in life, whether on a personal or a global level. Take, for example, the word ‘impeach’. It’s not a word many of us, particularly outside the US, need very often. But now it’s on everybody’s lips and in everybody’s posts. It sounds sweet and soft. I mean, who doesn’t love a peach?😊 From the old French verb – empecher (that explains the peach at least) meaning to hinder or prevent and the Latin verb ‘impedicare’, meaning to catch or entangle. You can see it in the modern English word ‘impede’. The noun ‘pedica’ – a fetter. When you fetter someone (or an animal), you shackle their legs together so they can no longer walk properly. This is also sometimes done with a ball and chain. When you tie a horse’s legs together (I know, why on earth would you do that?) it’s called hobbling them. If you’re hobbling when you walk, it’s probably because you’ve hurt your foot. Or, if you were a woman in the early 1900s, because you were wearing a hobble skirt which was so tight around the ankles that it had the effect of fettering you. Impeding your process. Impeaching you! Apparently, some women even tied their legs together at the knee so they wouldn’t tear the skirt!
Impeachment UK
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36049575