verse [OE] In his poem ‘Digging’ (1966), Seamus Heaney resolves to carry on the family tradition of digging the soil by ‘digging’ himself, not with a spade like his father and grandfather, but with a pen. The link between agriculture and writing poetry goes all the way back to the origin of the word verse, as Latin versus meant both ‘a turn of the plough, furrow’ and ‘a line of writing’. The idea here is that of a plough turning and marking another straight line or furrow. Versus is also the source of versatile [E17th] and version [LME], and it is based on Latin vertere ‘to turn’, from which vertebra [E17th], vertical [M16th], vertigo [LME], the Latin for ‘whirling’ from vertere and many other words such as adverse [LME], convert [ME], and pervert [LME] ‘turn bad’. Vortex [M17th] is closely related, from the Latin for ‘eddy’. Versed [E17th], as in well versed in, is different, coming from Latin versari ‘be engaged in’.