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I was walking across our local isthmus in Queenscliff, Victoria, Australia and paused to reflect on words with -sth- in the middle. And it turns out there are many, including aesthete and anesthetic. Also musth whose meaning is too grown-up for me to go into here; suffice to say, it is something adult elephants do, and whilst it is probably impressive, it may not be pretty.

We are not surprised to find that isthmus is an anglicisation of a Greek word meaning isthmus. But where did the Greeks get it from?

And of course nearly all the other similarly constructed -sth- words are also of Greek origin. Not musth though. That one is Persian apparently and means drunkenness or intoxicated.

I took a gander and found out that we knoweth not whence the Greeks came upon isthmus. I did find isthmian, though. Now I know how to say like or from an isthmus, without saying like or from an isthmus.