Pronounced like the first two syllables in the sentence “You were early,” a ewer is a large water-jug used for washing hands before eating a meal. The word appeared in English in the early fourteenth century, and literally means waterer, deriving from the French eau, meaning water. In turn, the French word eau developed directly from the Latinaqua, a good example of how the French like to take words from other languages and strip them of consonants, the goal being to develop a language made up of nothing but As, Es, Is, Os, Us, and sometimes Ys. In the mid fifteenth century, the servant who poured the water from the ewer onto the dinner guests’ hands became known as the ewerer, pronounced like the first three syllables of “You were early.”