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alone: alone: [13] Although partly disguised by its pronunciation, alone is in fact simply a compound of all and one (whose /wun/ pronunciation began to develop around the 15th century). In Old English it was a completely separate phrase, all āna, literally ‘completely by oneself’, but by the 13th century this had coalesced into a single word. Loss of its initial ain the 14th century gave rise to the adjective lone.
=> all, lone, one
buck: buck: [OE] Old English had two related words which have coalesced into modern English buck: bucca ‘male goat’ and buc ‘male deer’. Both go back to a prehistoric Germanic stem *buk-, and beyond that probably to an Indo-European source. The 18th-century meaning ‘dashing fellow’ probably comes ultimately from the related Old Norse bokki, a friendly term for a male colleague, which was originally adopted in English in the 14th century meaning simply ‘fellow’. The colloquial American sense ‘dollar’ comes from an abbreviation of buckskin, which was used as a unit of trade with the Native Americans in Frontier days.
=> butcher
line: line: [OE] The closest modern English line comes to its ancestor is probably in the fisherman’s ‘rod and line’ – a ‘string’ or ‘chord’. For it goes back to Latin līnea ‘string’. This was a derivative of līnum ‘flax’ (source of English linen), and hence meant etymologically ‘flaxen thread’. English acquired it in two separate phases.

First of all it was borrowed directly from Latin in the Old English period, and then it made a return appearance via Old French ligne in the 14th century; the two have coalesced to form modern English line. Derived forms include lineage [14], lineal [15], lineament [15], and liner [19]. The last is based on the sense ‘shipping line’, which goes back to the notion of a ‘line’ or succession of ships plying between ports.
=> align, lineal, linen, liner
plate: plate: [13] Etymologically, a plate is something ‘flat’. It comes from Vulgar Latin *plattus ‘flat’, which may go back to Greek platús ‘broad’ (source of English place, plane the tree, and platypus). It reached English via two separate Old French words, which have since coalesced: first plate, which gives the sense ‘flat sheet’, as in silver plate and plate glass; and then, in the 15th century, plat, ‘dish for food’.

Related forms in English include plateau [18], platform [16] (etymologically a ‘flat form’), platinum [19], platitude [19] (a ‘flat’ or dull remark), and platter [14].
=> flat, place, plane, plateau, platform, platinum, platitude, platter, platypus
point: point: [13] ‘Sharp end’ is the etymological notion underlying point. For it comes ultimately from Latin pungere ‘prick, pierce’ (source also of English expunge, poignant and pungent). The neuter form of its past participle, punctum, was used as a noun, meaning ‘small hole made by pricking, dot, particle, etc’ (it is the source of English punctual, punctuation, etc), which passed into Old French as point.

Then in the post-classical period a further noun was created, from the feminine past participle puncta, meaning ‘sharp tip’, and this gave Old French pointe. The two have remained separate in French, but in English they have coalesced in point. The Spanish descendant of Latin punctum, punta, has given English punt ‘bet’.
=> compunction, expunge, poignant, punctual, punctuation, punt
sheet: sheet: Sheet ‘cloth’ [OE] and sheet ‘rope attached to a sail’ [OE] are distinct words, although they have a common ancestor. This was the Germanic base *skaut-, *skut- ‘project’, which also produced English scot-free, scuttle ‘sink a ship’, shoot, shot, shout, shut, and skit. This produced two Old English nouns, scēte ‘cloth’ and scēata ‘sail-rope’, which have formally coalesced in modern English as sheet, but retained their distinctive meanings. (Sheet ‘cloth’ was not used specifically for ‘bed sheet’ until the 13th century.)
=> scot-free, scuttle, shoot, shot, shout, shut, skit
coalesce (v.): 1540s, from Latin coalescere "to unite, grow together, become one in growth," from com- "together" (see co-) + alescere "to grow up" (see adolescent). Related: Coalesced; coalescing; coalescence; coalescent.
-ful: word-forming element attached to nouns (and in modern English to verb stems) and meaning "full of, having, characterized by," also "amount or volume contained" (handful, bellyful); from Old English -full, -ful, which is full (adj.) become a suffix by being coalesced with a preceding noun, but originally a separate word. Cognate with German -voll, Old Norse -fullr, Danish -fuld. Most English -ful adjectives at one time or another had both passive ("full of x") and active ("causing x; full of occasion for x") senses.

It is rare in Old English and Middle English, where full was much more commonly attached at the head of a word (for example Old English fulbrecan "to violate," fulslean "to kill outright," fulripod "mature;" Middle English had ful-comen "attain (a state), realize (a truth)," ful-lasting "durability," ful-thriven "complete, perfect," etc.).