Sinister
Taken from the Latin word of the same spelling, sinister implies "from the left-hand side" and, by means of the magic of time, has come to mean the inauspicious, unlucky, misleading, or ominous.
It's commonly believed that this arose from the distrust of "normal" people for anyone different from themselves... even different in such a seemingly innocent fashion as the hand they used to write with.
As an interesting side observation, consider that two of the oldest written languages still in existence, Hebrew and Chinese, are written from right to left rather than left to right, as in English and most other modern languages.
This is explained, perhaps, by the observation that a left-handed writer, using ancient writing technology (i.e., a quill pen, ink, and a blotter) would naturally write from right to left, giving the ink a chance to dry rather than resting their hand on the freshly written characters.
What this implies about the sinister nature of the ancient inventors of these two languages, and the less sinister modern writer, I leave to your conjecture.
For a further discussion of this topic - see
Why is Left-Handedness Considered Something Sinister?
Richard
