The word mystery has an interesting history, I am glad to tell a transition-year student in a Dublin school who asks about it.
To pronounce the Greek letter mu - our M - you must compress your lips as if you were about to pout, or make a moue, as the French have it. That mu gave rise to the verb muo which means `I put my lips together.'
In ancient Greece some ceremonies of a religious nature were held in front of people who were sworn to secrecy: such a person was called mustes because he had to keep his lips shut tight on the secret. The religious rituals themselves were called either musteria or mysteria (the same Greek letter could be represented by either Y or U).
Eventually the Christian church took over the word mysteria in relation to the Sacraments, and so mystery took on the sense of `that which has a hidden significance'.
No names, dear reader, as you requested. Mum's the word! Now you know the history of that mum, too, a word suggestive of closed lips, and in English since the 14th century by way of the above.
The word chaperone is, I was not very surprised to hear, almost obsolete. Jane Kelly of Youghal asks about its pedigree.
Its history starts with the ecclesiastical vestment called in English the cope. In late Latin it was cappa, which comes from the root of caput, a head. The French borrowed this word as chape, and this had a diminutive, chaperon, a kind of hood which became very fashionable in Renaissance times. The original Little Red Riding Hood was Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.
The modern sense of chaperone comes from the notion of an older lady protecting a younger one, as a hood protects the head or face. The word should be spelled chaperon, of course. Because the word was used metaphorically of a woman, the English decided to give it a feminine ending in e.
John O'Riordan of Cork's Blackrock wants to know where the expression to hazard a guess originated. There is no doubt that a gambling game called in latin azardum, in Italian azzardo, in Old French hasard, and in English hazard arose in the time of the Second and Third Crusades. The origin of the word is the Arabic azzahar, to die.