afflatus

[Pierre Abbat]

I've been trying to figure out what "hallar" means (it occurs in some songs at 
church) and one of my guesses was "find" and I guessed it might be the 
cognate of Portuguese "achar". The same sound correspondence occurs in 
Spanish "lluvia", Portuguese "chuva", which come from the root of Plover. So 
I googled "hallar achar" and found a writeup about Romance sound changes. The 
word turns out to come from "afflare", which is the infinitive of our beloved 
afflatus. "Afflare" means "to blow on", so how did that turn into "find"? The 
intermediate form, "afllare", means "to find by scent". Now it makes 
scents ;)

Pierre