pillar
ES [piˈʎaɾ] · Spanish for “to catch, to grab” · same spelling as English pillar, a column
I picked this one up from a game I had switched into Spanish, where a guard yelled ¡te pillé! while walking straight past my hiding place. Pillé? The only pillar I had ever met was a stone column, so for a second I braced for some threat involving architecture.
He meant got you. Pillar is to catch or grab and it turns up everywhere once your ear opens to it - taxis, colds, jokes you finally get. The guard, in fairness, had not caught me at all.
Nothing joins these two. English pillar came through Old French from Latin pila, a pier or column, and has stood still ever since. Spanish pillar is a verb and turned up late, probably out of Italian pigliare or French piller, both of them about seizing and taking. Its genuine English relative is pillage, off that same French verb, which kept the violent end of the job while Spanish went mild. Today you pillar a taxi, you pillar a cold, and in the playground whoever is it runs round pillando everybody. One word holds up a roof. The other has you by the arm.