The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Pending

The Latin pendere meant to hang, and its past participle was pensum. In meant not, de meant from, sus meant down …

If you are independent you are not dependent because the only things that are dependent are pendulums and pendants that hang around your neck. Pendants are therefore pending, or indeed impending. They are, at least, suspended, and are therefore left hanging in suspense.

Weighing scales hang in the balance. Scales can weigh out gold for paying pensions, stipends and compensations in pesos (but not pence, which is etymologically unrelated).

All such dispensations must, of course, be weighed up mentally. One must be pensive before being expensive. You must give equal weight to all arguments in order to have either equipoise or poise. If you don’t give equal weight to all things, your scales will hang too much to one side and you will end up with a preponderance and propensity towards your own penchants. Whether these penchants make you perpendicular, I am too polite to ask.

I hope that this section on the pendulous hung together. If it did, it was a compendium. And though there are a few more words from the same root, to include them all would require the appending of an appendix.

An appendix, in either a book or a body, is where you put all the useless crap. However, the bodily tube is more properly known as the vermiform appendix, which makes it sound even less pleasant than it is, because vermiform means wormlike, which is something to consider next time you eat vermicelli.