las — WEARY

[lah] (adj.) In many cases, the English simply incorporated French words without changing a thing about them. Other times (think of entree) the meaning was contorted. Modern American speakers often memorize these terms before taking SAT tests, promptly to forget them afterwards. Lassitude, spelled the same way in French or English, is such a word and it means lethargy or listelessness. Now, snip off the end of the word and you're left with the French adjective las, which translates to weary, and is pronounced just like the sixth solfège syllable, la.

BONUS: That's not all. Ever heard of poets or great dramatists use the expression alas? It's the Anglicized version of the French expression hélas, which was made up of the interjection hé (think of our own hey) and las. It's all about connecting the dots.

lune — MOON

[LEW-nh] (n. f.) Car cuts you off: what a lunatic! Guy wears plaid shorts with a striped shirt and cowboy boots: look at that lunatic! Back in the 14th century when the word was coined, you had to certifiably, clinically nuts to be lunatic—and also dependent on the changes of the moon. Scientists thought there was a link between our satellite and certain insane folks, so they named the condition lunacy after the French word lune, which means moon.

lever — TO RAISE

[leu-VEH] (v.) Post-Revolution, burgeoning American states needed to raise money. Luckily, cash crops like tobacco, cotton and corn were being grown and governments took their share: they levied taxes on produced goods. The term was taken from the French word verb lever, which means to raise. The U.S. raised taxes. In its rabid absorption of foreign words, English has never shied away from reinventing meaning. Strangely, the French verb lever (to raise) also turned into the English noun lever (the rigid object used to raise large things with little force) and somehow the r became audible.