The word freelance was first used in Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel Ivanhoe, where it exclusively referred to a type of mercenary warrior during the Middle Ages. The idea was that these soldiers and their weapons were not sworn to any particular liege, but were instead free to hire. A figurative sense of this emerged in the 1860s, and by today the historical definition has been largely replaced with connotations of consultants and journalists. The word free, through Old English freo, comes from the Proto-Germanic root friaz, meaning "beloved" (that's from Proto-Indo-European pri, "to love"), and the word lance is from Latin lancea, which possibly comes from a Proto-Indo-European root sounding like plehk and meaning "to hit". Literary usage of the word freelance peaked in 2002 and has been declining since.

Apparently, Americans pronounce the word lieutenant as loo-ten-unt, but British people say lef-ten-unt. There are several different theories for why that's the case: some think it got confused with Germanic words or that people just misread the u as a v, but the Oxford English Dictionary dismisses these theories. According to it, changes like this are rare and it's "difficult to explain" but most likely has something to with the labio-velar approximant (a w sound) being pushed a little further back to become realized as a labio-velar fricative (f or v) in certain dialects. The word comes from Old French lieu tenant, which literally meant "place-holder" because lieutenants were considered substitutes for higher-ranking officers. Lieu, which is the same as in the phrase in lieu, comes from Latin locus, meaning "place", and tenant, which is the same as the English word for "occupant", comes from the Latin verb tenere, meaning "grasp".

The modern meaning of the word ordeal emerged in the mid-seventeenth century. Before then, it was strictly a legal term, used by the Anglo-Saxons to describe divine judgements made through physical tests (think dunking accused witches in water or trial by combat). These were typically protracted painful experiences, hence today's definition, which was probably first used by the French, and then borrowed back into English. At the time, it was usually spelled ordale or ordel, and that traces to the Proto-Germanic reconstruction uz-dailjam, which meant "judgment". More literally, though, it translates to "that which is dealt out", coming from the prefix uz, meaning "out" (from Proto-Indo-European uds, "up") and the root dailiz, meaning "part" or "deal" (also the etymon of deal, from Proto-Indo-European dail, "to divide").

Someone asked me today if the word orangutan has anything to do with the color orange. While it would be awfully convenient if that were the case, the real etymology is far more interesting. The noun was borrowed into English in the late seventeenth century through Dutch orang-outan, and that was picked up by sailors from the Malay phrase orang hutan, which described people who lived in the forest (and did not actually refer to the ape - they had a separate word for that, mawas). The name literally translates to "forest person", coming from orang, meaning "person" (from Proto-Malay urang, "outsider") and hutan, meaning "forest" (from a Proto-Malay reconstruction with the same spelling and definition). Interestingly, the genus name, pongo, comes from a Kongo word for "gorilla", because people thought they were the same type of animal for a while.

The word splendid emerged in the 1620s as a shortening of the existing adjective splendidous, and that was taken directly from Latin splendidus, which had a lot of different definitions, including "bright", "glittering", "distinguished", "fine", and "noble", among others - kind of a catch-all for describing excellent things. Splendidus traces to the verb splendere ("to be bright"), which is also the source of splendor, through Anglo-French esplendour, and resplendent, with the addition of the re- prefix (which in this context is intensive and not the "again" definition you're probably most familiar with). Finally, splendere is reconstructed back to the Proto-Indo-European root splnd, which had to do with things manifesting in general. According to Google Ngrams, literary usage of splendid has been declining since a peak in the 1830s, which is sad, because it's such a splendid word.

The word bungalow was borrowed in the late seventeenth century, when it was spelled Bungale. Later attestations have included bungala, bungelow, bungilo, bungallow, and bungalo, with the modern form becoming standardized in the early 1800s. The reason for these early variations is that it's a transliteration of the Hindi word bangli, which was their name for the Bengali people, since the house style originated from the country. We're not exactly sure where that demonym comes from, but it might be after Banga, a founding chief. In Bangladesh itself, the people call the building a banglaghar, and it's pretty much something along those lines everywhere else, too. According to Google Ngrams, literary usage of bungalow peaked in 1922, and according to Google Trends, searches for the term spike every year in mid-summer.