Flesh

Although it's been several weeks since my last etymology post, this is going to function as a sort of "Odd Etymologies: Part 2" post. Its connection to flesh will become apparent in a moment.
This summer, when I was at the Spelling Bee of China's North America Spelling Champion Challenge in California, I had the opportunity to give a short presentation. Cooper Komatsu, another speller who placed seventh at Scripps last year, also gave a presentation. When talking about his love of words, he mentioned the word "sarcasm" and how its etymology involves the phrase "to tear flesh like dogs." Since then, that has been one of my favorite etymologies, and, as it turns out, many words that share a root with "sarcasm" have interesting etymologies as well. All of the words I'm about to discuss share a common root: the Greek word sarx meaning flesh.
The first one is "sarcasm." Sarx evolved into sarkazein, which means "to tear flesh like dogs." Since the caustic language often associated with sarcasm is usually figuratively biting, it makes sense that sarcasm tears flesh in a sense. Sarx didn't just evolve into sarkazein, though--it evolved into other things as well.
"Sarkinite" comes from sarx as well. It's a mineral occurring in flesh red monoclinic crystals. Usually, when sarx is used in an English word, it's in the form of the combining form sarc-, which makes "sarkinite" something of an odd one out because of the K. However, the word also passed through Swedish, resulting in the usage of the letter K instead of the letter C. 
"Syssarcosis" also uses sarx, which turned into syssarkousthai over time, meaning "to be overgrown with flesh." This then became "syssarcosis," which is the junction of bones by attached muscles--not exactly flesh overgrowth, but related to it anyhow.
Lastly, "sarcophagus" (Paige Kimble's winning word at the 1981 Scripps National Spelling Bee) comes from sarx. In this case, sarx became the Greek word sarkophagos meaning flesh-eating stone (phagos is a Greek word meaning eating). A sarcophagus is a type of coffin, which could be interpreted as a flesh eating stone given that dead bodies (flesh) are placed into coffins (made of stone).

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