Qualität kommt von Qual

"Qualität kommt von Qual" is a Standard German phrase that translates to "quality comes from agony".

As both words begin with "Qual" in German, it makes sense to the German speaker. Yet, ironically, the etymologies (origins) of the two words come from two different sources:

• Qualität comes from Latin qualitās meaning "kind, sort, type"
• Qual comes from Proto-Germanic kwelaną meaning "to suffer"

A similar analogue in English would go something like "funerals come from fun". The words have nothing to do with each other, except for coincidentally beginning with the same three letters (and not even with the same three sounds!)

• funeral comes from Latin fūnus meaning "funeral, death, corpse"
• fun perhaps comes from Nordic sources meaning "foolishness"

Most of the time, these "coincidences" make for harmless and amusing puns, but they can often hurt the layman's understanding of vocabulary and etymology.