[Gonzalo G]

Originally Posted by fearn

The Romance languages use an -one or -on suffix to mean a larger or augmented version of the base word; it's often modified to "-oon" in English. In addition to "trombone", other examples are balloon (big ball), bassoon (deep bass), medallion (large medal), galleon (a ship larger than a galley), cannons and canneloni (big canes or hollow tubes — cannoli are little ones), saloon (a large salle, room), and so on. A squadron is a group of soldiers bigger than a squad. (Squad itself is ex-quadra, a square.) The original meaning of cartoon was a poster-sized image, from Italian carta-one, large paper, and a baboon is etymologically a "big baby". [13Nov08] A macaroon is etymologically a large macaroni, although the taste is now somewhat different. [19Jun09] French bouffer meant to swell or puff up; this led to both buffoon (a clown) and the bouffont hair style. Buffer in the sense of "cushion" or "shock absorber" is also from this root. This has been generalized to anything "in the middle" — buffer state, a computer's buffer memory, and so on.
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Just to aggravate us, French sometimes used the -on or -oon suffix to mean smaller, not larger. A platoon is French peloton, a very little ball (pellet is already a diminutive), and a pontoon seems to have originally been a "small bridge" or maybe "temporary bridge" — Latin pons. The French word for "small cat" is chaton, which has been borrowed into English as kitten."

Not sure it helps, but don't ya love language?

Best,

F

Fearn, you are right, the romance languajes, have this characteristics. But ´peloton´in spanish means big ball, and the word ´pelota´is not french. Pellet is not a romance word, but an alglosaxon word taken by several languajes. Ponton is not the bridge, but the name of certain type of elements designed to make a floating bridge once they are ensambled. The result is called a pontoon bridge or a bridge made of pontoons. But chaton is alright a small cat or a cat´s puppet. Without any reference or proof, I don´t see a ´germanic´presence in the making of the word ´spadroon´, since it seems it has no resemblance in any way with this language, which I know a little.
Regards

Gonzalo