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penguin: penguin: [16] Penguin is one of the celebrated mystery words of English etymology. It first appears towards the end of the 16th century (referring to the ‘great auk’ as well as to the ‘penguin’) in accounts of voyages to the southern oceans, but no one has ever ascertained where it came from. A narrative of 1582 noted ‘The countrymen call them Penguins (which seemeth to be a Welsh name)’, and in 1613 John Selden speculated that the name came from Welsh pen gwyn ‘white head’.

Etymologists since have not been able to come up with a better guess than this, but it is at odds with the fact that the great auk had a mainly black head, and so do penguins. The earliest known reference to the word (from 1578) mentions the birds being found on an ‘island named Penguin’, off Newfoundland, so it could be that it was originally the name of the island (perhaps ‘white (i.e. snow-covered) headland’) rather than of the bird.

However, a further objection to this theory is that a combination based on Welsh pen gwyn would have produced penwyn, not penguin.
gram (n.): also gramme, metric unit of weight, 1797, from French gramme (18c.), from Late Latin gramma "small weight," from Greek gramma "small weight," a special use of the classical word meaning "a letter of the alphabet" (see -gram). Adopted into English about two years before it was established in France as a unit in the metric system by law of 19 frimaire, year VIII (1799). "There seems to be no possible objection to adopting the more convenient shorter form, except that the -me records the unimportant fact that the word came to us through French" [Fowler].
ideation (n.): 1829; see idea + -ation. Related: Ideational.
As we say Sensation, we might say also, Ideation; it would be a very useful word; and there is no objection to it, except the pedantic habit of decrying a new term. [James Mill, "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind," London, 1829]
scoundrel (n.): 1580s, skowndrell, of unknown origin. One suggestion is Anglo-French escoundre (Old French escondre) "to hide, hide oneself," from Vulgar Latin *excondere, from Latin condere "to hide" (see abscond). The main objection to this theory is that hundreds of years lie between the two words.
starvation (n.): 1778, hybrid noun of action from starve. Famously (but not certainly) introduced in English by Henry Dundas during debate in the House of Commons in 1775 on American affairs. It earned him the nickname "Starvation Dundas," though sources disagree on whether this was given in objection to the harshness of his suggestion of starving the rebels into submission or in derision at the barbarous formation of the word. It is one of the earliest instances of -ation used with a native Germanic word (flirtation is earlier).
As to Lord Chatham, the victories, conquests, extension of our empire within these last five years, will annihilate his fame of course, and he may be replaced by Starvation Dundas, whose pious policy suggested that the devil of rebellion could be expelled only by fasting, though that never drove him out of Scotland. [Horace Walpole, letter to the Rev. William Mason, April 25, 1781]