Spanish is a fun example of the euphemistic treadmill applying to pronouns. Usted comes from "vuestra merced" meanining "your (plural) mercy" but refers to a si

Spanish is a fun example of the euphemistic treadmill applying to pronouns. Usted comes from "vuestra merced" meanining "your (plural) mercy" but refers to a singular person. We can take that to mean that the second person plural "vosotros" already was a plural-meaning-formal-for-singular thing and then that wasn't enough and we got another word based on it. Fascinating!