The correct answer is A. The study of word origins
Step-by-step explanation:
The word "etymology" refers to a discipline that studies the origin or history of words in languages. This means etymology focuses on understanding the way in which a word is created or originates and the way this word evolves or changes through time. For doing this etymologist or experts in etymology use texts from different historical periods and analyze the use of language in them, which had allowed them to create language families by determining the languages that were the origin of others. Therefore, the word "etymology" means "the study of words".