[HN Gopher] Surprising Shared Word Etymologies
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Surprising Shared Word Etymologies
Author : DanielDe
Score : 133 points
Date : 2021-06-11 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.danielde.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.danielde.dev)
| schoen wrote:
| There was a great puzzle in the MIT Mystery Hunt this year about
| calques between Latin and Greek, where words would be literally
| equivalent if you translated them morpheme-by-morpheme. While
| this is sometimes a source of etymology (because someone
| consciously translated a foreign word this way), in this case it
| was just a source of humor because the particular calques in the
| puzzle are _not_ equivalents.
|
| The example I most remember is "suppository" (from Latin) and
| "hypothesis" (from Greek), both literally meaning 'put under'.
| (The actual etymological calque would be "supposition".)
|
| As https://devjoe.appspot.com/huntindex/ isn't updated with 2021
| puzzles yet, I don't know how to find the specific puzzle I'm
| thinking of to show the other examples. :-)
| Grustaf wrote:
| Well, isn't Latin a whole cloth calque of Greek anyway...
|
| But that aside, if you're interested in calques, checkout Old
| Church Slavonic, they calqued massive amounts of Greek words,
| rather than going the lazy route of English and just borrowing
| them. They hade the same issue, no way to express these complex
| religious ideas, but solved it in different way. A lot of these
| words are still used in modern slavic languages.
|
| preobrazhenie = transfiguration (pre-obrazhenie, pere =
| through, obraz = image)
|
| Bogoroditsa = Theotokos (bogoroditsa, bog = god, rodit' = give
| birth)
|
| I especially love that S:t John Chrysostomos is called Ioann
| Zlatoust (Golden mouth) and Constantinople is Tsargrad or
| Konstantinograd.
| schoen wrote:
| Those are great!
|
| > but solved it in different way
|
| Different from what? You were mentioning that Latin calques
| of Greek are common, which is my impression too (ana-stasis -
| re-surrectio, upo-stasis -> sub-stantia, and non-religious
| sum-patheia - com-passio).
| Grustaf wrote:
| I mean that in English they just took the Greek or Latin
| word and anglicized it a bit, but in OCS they mostly
| calqued more complex words.
|
| Some common words were borrowed though, like gospel which
| is evangelii - evangeli.
|
| Chinese and more traditional Japanese is also good at
| calquing or inventing new words, instead of borrowing, like
| computer in Chinese being called electrobrain, or orthodox
| in Japanese is sei-kyou, meaning correct church or
| something like that.
|
| Of course Japanese is basically made up of Chinese calques
| and ancient loanwords, which is also a fascinating story.
| JackFr wrote:
| "Christ" and "grime" both come from the proto Indo-European root
| for rub or smear. Christ as in anointing with oil, grimy from
| tubing in dirt.
| bloak wrote:
| That's a good one. I like it.
|
| However, although Wiktionary gives the etymology of "grime" as
| "from Proto-Germanic _grimo ("mask") ", it also says: "Possibly
| influenced by Danish grim ("soot, grime"), Old Dutch grijmsel,
| Middle Dutch grime, Middle Low German greme ("dirt")." The
| former goes back to "Proto-Indo-European _gkrey- ("to paint,
| streak, smear"), from _gker- ("to rub, stroke") ", which is
| also the origin of "Christ", but the latter goes back to
| "Proto-Indo-European _gkrem- ("to resound; thunder")".
| According to Wiktionary. But that doesn't really make much
| sense, does it? I think there must be a mistake in there
| somewhere.
|
| Amusingly, "Grim" is also one of the names of the Norse god
| Odin, presumably because he wore a mask. (Is that perhaps
| mentioned in the film "The mask"?) So Christ and Odin have the
| same name, sort of.
| jfengel wrote:
| My favorite shared etymology is "guest" and "hostile", along with
| "host" both in the sense of "person who hosts a guest" and "an
| army". They both go back to a Latin word meaning "stranger".
|
| Cross-language ones are also fun. I like that the German word for
| poison is "Gift", which etymologically means "something given".
| Makes for some good puns.
|
| This is a very clever approach to determining these
| automatically. There is a field of Computational Humor and I
| suspect you could combine this with a GPT-3-type mechanism to
| make some good jokes.
| Jiocus wrote:
| > Cross-language ones are also fun. I like that the German word
| for poison is "Gift", which etymologically means "something
| given". Makes for some good puns.
|
| "Gift" means poison in Swedish as well, and adding to that, it
| also means "married". When I was a kid (before I really
| understood that words are shared) I remember feeling worried
| about some friends of the family that were about to get
| married. From the sound of it, I thought something bad was
| about to happen.
|
| I had simply learned, in quite sensible order, the meaning of
| _poison_ before _married_.
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| Related: I've been listening to the History of English podcast.
| If this kind of content is your thing, it's highly recommended.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Super cool! This reminds me of a fascinating fact I learned the
| other day, about the history of the Coptic language in Egypt (the
| final stage of the Egyptian language before Arabic was
| introduced):
|
| The Phoenician alphabet was heavily based on Ancient Egyptian
| hieroglyph script. The Greek alphabet was in turn originally
| based on the Phoenician alphabet. Finally, the Coptic alphabet
| was based on Greek, bringing it full circle back to Egypt!
| iib wrote:
| I really like that definition of "surprising".
|
| While I am amused by auto-antonyms, and words that mean opposite
| things while having the same root, I never found them to be
| surprising, because being the complete opposite of something is
| actually related to that something, akin to the bitwise "not"
| operation.
|
| I am glad this definition took that into account.
| Tagbert wrote:
| To find out more cognates and some of the history of how those
| words evolved, I recommend the History of English podcast. You'll
| get language history and etymology as well as lots of social and
| historical drivers for those changes.
|
| From this, I learned that "white" and "black" are cognate with an
| IE root that meant both burning and burned.
|
| https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
| hprotagonist wrote:
| My favorite is "shit" and "science", both of which have a root
| sense of "to cleave or separate".
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=shit
|
| _The notion is of "separation" from the body (compare Latin
| excrementum, from excernere "to separate," Old English scearn
| "dung, muck," from scieran "to cut, shear;" see sharn). It is
| thus a cousin to science and conscience._
| jfk13 wrote:
| Interesting... though for what it's worth, the Oxford English
| Dictionary doesn't confirm that origin for "science". Once you
| get back to _scire_ 'to know', it says "of unknown origin":
|
| > Etymology: < Anglo-Norman _cience_ , _sience_ , Anglo-Norman
| and Middle French science (French _science_ ) knowledge,
| understanding, secular knowledge, knowledge derived from
| experience, study, or reflection, acquired skill or ability,
| knowledge as granted by God (12th cent. in Old French), the
| collective body of knowledge in a particular field or sphere
| (13th cent.) < classical Latin _scientia_ knowledge, knowledge
| as opposed to belief, understanding, expert knowledge,
| particular branch of knowledge, learning, erudition <
| _scient-_ , _sciens_ , present participle of _scire_ to know,
| of unknown origin + _-ia_ -ia suffix1.
|
| Not claiming the OED is right and etymonline is wrong, of
| course (it could equally well be the other way around); just
| noting that this may not be a universally accepted etymology.
| Grustaf wrote:
| The word science definitely comes from scio - to know, but it
| seems correct that shit and science ultimately come from the
| same proto indo-european root, *skei.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/science
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit
| xefer wrote:
| "cannabis" and "hemp"
|
| https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/107526
| SamBam wrote:
| > These words all descend from the Greek "karkinos", meaning
| "crab", which became "cancer" in Latin.
|
| > "Cancer" later took on an alternative meaning, "enclosure",
| because of the way a crab's pincers form a circle.
|
| I am not an expert, but I think this may be backwards. I think
| the original meaning was circle, from which both the "enclose"
| meaning and the "crab" meaning (because the pincers form a circle
| or an enclosure) derive.
|
| wiktionary [1] has the most in-depth etymology I can find, and
| has for "cancer" (meaning crab) the etymology is: _karkros
| ("enclosure") (because the pincers of a crab form a circle), from
| Proto-Indo-European_ kr-kr- ("circular"), reduplication of Proto-
| Indo-European *(s)ker- ("to turn, bend") in the sense of
| "enclosure", and as such a doublet of carcer. Cognate with
| curvus.
|
| Anyway, that aside, I felt stupid not having realized the
| etymology of "cancel," since in Italian (one of my languages)
| "cancello" means "gate."
|
| 1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cancer#Latin
| canjobear wrote:
| Relatedly, "cycle", "wheel", "circle", and "chakra" are all
| from the same Indo-European root via different languages.
| jeofken wrote:
| How does "wheel" relate? In Sweden/DK/NO we call it "hjul"
| which is pronounced like the American nicotine vape brand
| juul, quite similar to English
| DanielDe wrote:
| Ah yes, I think you're right, I got that backwards! I'll update
| the post, thank you!
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| Do stationary (not moving) and stationery (paper, envelopes and
| stuff) count?
|
| Roving peddlers were the norm in the Middle Ages; sellers with a
| fixed location often were bookshops licensed by universities;
| hence the word acquired a more specific sense than its
| etymological one.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/stationer
| stakkur wrote:
| https://www.etymonline.com/
| narag wrote:
| My favourite in Spanish (but I think English speakers can relate)
| is "botica" (pharmacy) and "bodega" (cellar), both from Greek
| apotheke (basement, literally "under-box")
| schoen wrote:
| Or "boutique" (in English via French). The perceived level of
| fanciness in shopping at a boutique as opposed to a bodega is
| rather different!
| reactspa wrote:
| In Hindi, the word "booti" means medicinal plant (seems similar
| to "botica" here).
| ineptech wrote:
| My favorite example of similar words with seemingly-unrelated
| meanings is "capitulate" (surrender) and "recapitulate" (repeat
| or summarize).
|
| Turns out that they both derive from "caput" (head) in its sense
| of chapter or heading, due to the formal process of surrendering
| in war, which involved drafting a document explicating the terms
| of surrender which was divided into chapters.
| decuran wrote:
| I love this! I had no idea about the Etymological Wordnet and it
| probably would have saved me a ton of time developing my app for
| finding "interesting" cognates: https://etymologyexplorer.com
|
| I've always loved the same thing--finding hidden connections
| between everyday words. I recently did this with "vain". It comes
| from Latin vanus, meaning "empty". More obvious with the "in
| vain" meaning, but the modern day comes from the idea of an
| exaggerated self image, with no substance behind it. It has a ton
| of "empty" cognates: vanish, evanescence, vanity (table), vaunt,
| vacuous, vacuum, vacation, void, devastate, wanton, wane
| carlob wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that you can't have devastate in they list
| without mentioning waste.
| carlob wrote:
| There is a fun triplet in Italian:
|
| anello (ring, think annular)
|
| anno (year, think annual)
|
| ano (anus)
|
| all come from the Latin word for ring: the year because of the
| repetition of seasons and the anus, well, because of its shape.
| gfaure wrote:
| Unfortunately, this isn't correct according to my sources --
| Italian anno < Latin annus < PIE _h2t-no-s from a root_ h2t-
| "to go", while ano < Latin anus < PIE *h1eh2no- "ring".
| carlob wrote:
| That's the English Wiktionary and it doesn't cite any
| sources. The paper etymological dictionary I've checked gives
| both theories and a number of references for each.
| causality0 wrote:
| I know I'm being pedantic here but if you're going to insist on
| writing Greek words with Greek letters you need to stop writing
| Latin words with the modern "u".
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Along these lines, the words "male" and "female" came to English
| from Latin along totally different paths, even though they seem
| like they'd have been created together.
| gfaure wrote:
| "suture" and "sutra" are cognates in Latin and Sanskrit
| respectively. A sutra suutr is literally a thread or fibre. This
| also explains why it was calqued into Chinese as Jing (among
| other meanings, "weave").
|
| Similarly, "joust" and "juxtapose" are cognates via French and
| neo-Latinate French respectively (ultimately from iuxta, a Latin
| preposition meaning "near", "next to").
|
| However, my most favourite pair of surprising cognates that I
| discovered recently is "durian" (the fruit) and "iwi" (a word
| loaned from Maori into New Zealand English meaning "tribe"). This
| one goes way back into Proto-Austronesian...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Beyond the etymologies, I learned what a calque is from your
| comment, so thanks for that.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| Just finding Latin verbs and adding different prefixes is also a
| fun way to find etymologically related words. Some examples:
| (English is not my native language, so I don't know how obvious
| they are to native English speakers / people who didn't learn
| some Latin in school.) iacere = to throw *
| inject: to throw in (could be a vaccine injection, or e.g. data
| injected in a program) * eject: to throw out *
| reject: to throw back * abject: to thow away => cast aside
| => despicable ("abject coward") => miserable ("abject poverty")
| * conjecture: something thrown together * interject: to
| throw inbetween * subject: throw under => something placed
| underneath something else ("a British subject", the subject of a
| sentence, "subject to terms and conditions", the subject of a
| paper) * object: thrown against/facing => to expose =>
| something tangible/material * objective: a material
| object => not influenced by emotions but based on observed facts
| vs subjective: subject to emotions/personal opinions *
| objective: thrown against/facing => goal * trajectory: to
| throw accross * project: to throw forth * adjective:
| to throw towards => something added/additional => an adjective
| * jet: a "throw" => a jet e.g. of water => a spout that jets
| => jet engine => a jet (plane with jet engines) => jet
| set (lifestyle of people that can travel for pleasure)
| legere = to choose, to collect/gather, to read * elect,
| elective (optional), elite ("chosen out"), 1337 (= leet, from
| elite), elegant * select * collect * lecture,
| college, lector, lectern, lesson * neglect *
| intellect, intelligent (originally "discerning", literally
| "choose between") * diligent (to choose apart) *
| legion (a collection of soldiers in the Roman army, now also
| meaning "numerous") * legend: "that which must be read"
|
| Who would've thought the words 1337, elegant, lesson, and legend
| are related? Or superjet and adjective?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Also the mathematical term "surjection", a mapping that is
| "over" its codomain, so covers all of it.
| noncoml wrote:
| kimono and winter
| mkl wrote:
| This is not true [1], it's a line from the movie _My Big Fat
| Greek Wedding_ which doesn 't even mention the etymology of
| "winter": "Ah, of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word
| cheimonas which is mean winter. So what do you wear in the
| wintertime to stay warm? A robe."
|
| [1]
| https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=QQovEeLHVl0C&pg=PA115&lp...
| Jun8 wrote:
| If you like this sort of thing there's a whole book on them that
| I found really enjoyable: _Dubious Doublets_ by Stewart
| Edelstein.
|
| Some pairs I found interesting from that book: *
| Aardvark - Porcelain * Brassiere - Pretzel (bonus: bracelet
| and embrace) * Bid - Buddha * Hieroglyphics - Clever
| * Zodiac - Whiskey
| leipert wrote:
| English is my second language and Latin my third. While the
| latter is not as useful as learning Spanish or French in day to
| day communication, it really helped my English capabilities as a
| lot of words in English are Latin based.
|
| My favorite etymological thing is the German ,,Bank" which can
| mean bench or bank. Funnily enough the financial institution is a
| loan via the Italian ,,banca" but that itself goes back to the
| same old Germanic root as the bench you sit on.
| DanielDe wrote:
| Ha, I love this! A bit more history from the Wikipedia article
| on banks:
|
| > Benches were used as makeshift desks or exchange counters
| during the Renaissance by Florentine bankers
| jahnu wrote:
| Bankrupt, or Bankrott from German means rotten bench. You can
| work out the rest :)
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| -rupt comes from Latin rompere meaning to break. (see also
| "rupture")
| Sharlin wrote:
| And "erupt", "disrupt", and "abrupt", which come from
| roots literally meaning "out-break", "apart-break", and
| "away-break", respectively :)
| leipert wrote:
| Seems like a false assumption.
|
| According to wiktionary it comes from ,,banca rotta" where
| rotta goes back to Latin ,,rumpere" which means ,,to
| break". Whereas the English rotten or the German go back to
| old Norse ,,rutna" (to rot). The two don't share the same
| root.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Also Modern Greek bank = Trapeza = ancient Gk for table, so I
| guess this derivation via furniture that you sat on / traded
| money over is common
| PennRobotics wrote:
| The difference between German's Gift (poison) and the English
| gift (a present) amuses me. Evidently, they both derive from
| something being given e.g. a lethal dosage, in the German case.
|
| Related: Be mindful when your Denglish tempts you to say,
| "Danke fur das Gift!"
| rhodin wrote:
| Ah, and the Swedish "gift" (married) and "gift" (poison).
| Grustaf wrote:
| Etymology is to linguistics what pyrotechnics are to chemistry, a
| gateway drug.
| dnautics wrote:
| I had always thought it a strange coincidence that in Japanese,
| sunday is 'sun day' and monday is 'moon day'.
|
| At least in japanese, the other days of the week are also
| associated with celestial bodies, tuesday 'fire day', wednesday
| 'water day', thursday 'wood day', friday 'gold day', and saturday
| 'dirt day'.
|
| mars: fire planet
|
| mercury: water planet
|
| jupiter: wood planet
|
| venus: gold planet
|
| saturn: dirt planet
|
| If you're familiar with any romance language, the days of the
| week associate correctly with the days of the week (martis,
| mercurii, jovis); and in english the rough translations into
| anglo-saxon/norse gods applies (tyr/tiw, thor, freija)
| tboyd47 wrote:
| One of the more interesting ones I've come across lately:
|
| France - frank (being unencumbered in speech) - franchise (the
| right to vote)
| schoen wrote:
| Wow! Wiktionary suggests that the Franks (from whom these
| derive) themselves were named after a word for "spear".
|
| An amazing one that I've found striking for a while and that
| also involves an ethnic group is
|
| ciao - slave - Slav
|
| > Borrowed from Italian ciao ("hello, goodbye"), from Venetian
| ciao ("hello, goodbye, your (humble) servant"), from Venetian
| s-ciao / s-ciavo ("servant, slave"), from Medieval Latin
| sclavus ("Slav, slave"), related also to Italian schiavo,
| English Slav, slave and Old Venetian S-ciavon ("Slav"), from
| Latin Sclavonia ("Slavonia").
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slave#English "because Slavs
| were often forced into slavery in the Middle Ages"
|
| The etymology of the Slavs' autonym itself is much more
| disputed, but possibly derives from the Slavic word for "word",
| so meaning "people who can talk", among several totally
| different suggestions.
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...
| ajuc wrote:
| > The etymology of the Slavs' autonym itself is much more
| disputed, but possibly derives from the Slavic word for
| "word", so meaning "people who can talk", among several
| totally different suggestions.
|
| Well in pretty much every Slavic language analog of "slowo"
| is "word" and "slowianin" is Slav. And in most of these
| languages the word for Germans (the most common non-Slavic
| foreigners) is analog of "Niemiec" which is the same word
| root as "mute person" (niemy).
|
| I don't see how it can be disputed.
| schoen wrote:
| The Wiktionary quick summary of why it's disputed is one
| researcher's assertion that " _slovene can 't be formed
| from _slovo because _-enin',_ -anin' only occurs in
| derivations from place names". (Maybe slowianin <
| _slovenin' is an exception, but you can see where someone
| might be skeptical if it 's supposedly the _only*
| exception!)
|
| Sometimes etymologies that feel super-logical turn out to
| be more complicated historically. In many of these cases,
| the later perception that two words were related influenced
| their subsequent meaning or spelling, even if they were
| originally _not_ related.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paronymic_attraction
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_for
| c...
|
| As a non-speaker of Slavic languages, I'm pretty convinced
| about the "word" connection, especially with the example
| you mentioned about the Germans being called "non-talkers",
| since it's not very unusual for ethnic groups' autonyms to
| mean something like "speakers". But there are lots of
| etymologies that feel natural and straightforward and are
| later shown to have a folk etymological component.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > Wiktionary suggests that the Franks (from whom these
| derive) themselves were named after a word for "spear"
|
| That is only one possible origin. The other one is "frec"
| (greedy, bold, brave).
| twic wrote:
| There's an interesting complex around the Proto-Indo-European
| root 'walhaz':
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Germanic...
|
| From which we get Wales, Cornwall, Gaul, Walloon, and
| Wallachia. Originally the name of a particular tribe, but
| came to refer to angry foreign neighbours more generally.
| [deleted]
| eysquared wrote:
| Fans of this type of thing may enjoy listening to The Allusionist
| podcast: https://www.theallusionist.org/.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Also the Endless Knot podcast:
| http://www.alliterative.net/podcast
| mikelward wrote:
| https://youtu.be/ZAsNO9eXLgM
|
| Explains how "ciao" comes from "servus" via "schiavo", meaning
| slave or servant.
|
| It's also related to words in other languages meaning fame, word,
| and language.
| harimau777 wrote:
| A set that I found interesting:
|
| - Defense (protecting something)
|
| - Fencing (protecting yourself with a sword)
|
| - Fence (a wall that protects your property)
|
| - Fence (someone who buys stolen goods which allows the thief to
| protect themselves from getting caught)
| junar wrote:
| I'd nominate "casual" and "cadaver".
|
| The Latin _cado_ root had multiple meanings, like "fall", "die"
| and "decay". So while "cadaver" is obvious, "casual" took a
| circuitous route of "fall" -> "accident" -> "by chance", and
| eventually "informal".
| aatharuv wrote:
| Yoga (Sanskrit) and yoke (English).
|
| Yoga literally means union and is derived from a prefix yuj
| meaning to attach, join, harness, yoke.
| codeflo wrote:
| Can someone explain to a non-native speaker what's surprising
| about this?
|
| > The leap from a word meaning "imaginary" to a word meaning
| "fantastic" struck me as odd initially, but apparently it comes
| from the sense of the word "imaginary" as "unreal".
|
| What other sense is there that Wiktionary doesn't know about?
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/imaginary
| DanielDe wrote:
| Author of the post here, I'll try to elaborate.
|
| My primary association with the word "fantastic" is simply
| "great" or "very good", as in "you did a fantastic job!". It's
| this meaning of the word that I found oddly disconnected from
| the word "imaginary". How do you get from something meaning
| "not real" to something meaning "very good"?
|
| But the word "unreal" helped me make the leap, since that's a
| word I would use to describe something I thought was "very
| cool" or "well done".
| missblit wrote:
| Fantastic can still be used to describe something fantasy-
| esque in modern usage. Albeit it's probably getting more
| rare.
|
| Like "fantastic voyage", "fantastic beliefs", "fantastic
| visions".
| tesseract wrote:
| And "fancy" still retains some links to "fantastic" and
| "fantasy", as in "fancy dress" or "flight of fancy".
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| That seems very roundabout. "unreal" seems like relatively
| recent slang to me, just like the "very great" meaning of
| "fantastic".
|
| "Fantastic" also means "based on fantasy", so the leap to
| "imaginary" is short.
| derbOac wrote:
| I'm a native speaker and this wasn't really surprising to me.
| "Fantastic" is still used in the sense of "imaginary"
| sometimes.
|
| The link between "fantastic" and "phenotype" was surprising to
| me, even though it makes sense reading it.
| captaincrowbar wrote:
| My favourite example of apparently unrelated words with an
| unexpected common root: "government" and "cybernetics" both come
| from the Greek "kubernetes" (helmsman).
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(page generated 2021-06-11 23:00 UTC)