Having a spotty face from time to time is nothing new. Even the ancient Greeks got acne! And when they needed a word to describe the red pimples sticking out from their faces they thought of their existing word akme, which meant ‘a point’.

Now, we all make spelling mistakes sometimes, and as it turns out that’s nothing new either! Centuries ago, a scribe writing a book misspelled akme as akne and the change stuck.

As it happens, the name for an outbreak of pimples is linked to an awful lot of other English words that you would never guess!

Not only is acne related to acme, a word that still exists and means ‘the highest point’ of something, but it has connections with lots of other words, too. These include acid, which gets its name because of its sharpness or pointedness, and acute, which comes from a word meaning a needle. An acacia is a very thorny tree, and an acrobat walks right at the very tip or top of something — the first acrobats were tightrope walkers. An acropolis is a city at the top of a hill, while an acronym takes the first letter or ‘tip’ of a word to make a new one.

Next time you use a text acronym, like ‘paw’ (parents are watching!), or hear about a ‘BOGOF’ in a supermarket (buy one, get one free), you are actually looking back to a spotty-faced teenager from ancient times!