[HN Gopher] Surprising Shared Word Etymologies
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Surprising Shared Word Etymologies
Author : DanielDe
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-06-11 16:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.danielde.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.danielde.dev)
| dhosek wrote:
| On the flip side, miniature and minimum are etymologically
| _unrelated_.
| 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.
| msrenee wrote:
| Just to nitpick a bit, it's evangelie - evangelieh. Well,
| in Russian it is. I just realized you were talking about
| old church Slavonic. I just saw modern Cyrillic and went
| straight to Russian. As far as I can figure out without
| any clue about OCS, it still seems like you're missing
| the last syllable there.
| msrenee wrote:
| Yeh-van-gel'-ee-ay to be more precise. I really suck at
| transliterating. With a hard G "guh" sound, rather than
| the kind of soft G/J sound it has in English. I need to
| learn IPA.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Yes this is the Russian form, but all those words are
| usually very similar in Russian and the latest Russian
| forms of Church Slavic, there are many varieties for
| different times and places and the one used in the
| Russian church today feels closer to modern Russian than
| to something like Codex Suprasliensis.
|
| As to the transcription, sure it wasn't precise (and yeah
| it ends with an e in singular) Nowadays it of course
| starts with YE but it's not really clear if that was
| always the case, looking at etymology resources like
| Fasmer: http://expositions.nlr.ru/ex_manus/Ostromir_Gospe
| l/index.php
| msrenee wrote:
| Neat. I learned something today. Thanks!
| mikelward wrote:
| Mozart's full name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus
| Theophilus Mozart (Johann Goldmund Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart).
|
| Theophilus (Gottlieb) is Amadeus in Latin.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_name
| 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_.
| msrenee wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "guest" comes from Old Norse, not Latin. And
| hostile came from Latin through French. They've got the same
| PIE root though, which is what's interesting. Same root, just
| from before the germanic and romance languages split off PIE.
| 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.
| Sharlin wrote:
| A fun example of the opposite - a pair of very similar words that
| have totally different etymologies - are "carouse" and
| "carousel". The former comes via French from German "gar aus", an
| exclamation with the same meaning as "drink up" in English
| (literally, "quite out"). The latter, on the other hand, also
| comes via French but from Italian, and originally means a type of
| military drill or display executed by horsemen.
| 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.
| tkgally wrote:
| I think the American Heritage Dictionary (1969) was the first
| general dictionary to show reconstructed Indo-European
| etymologies for English words [1, 2]. That's where I learned
| about the supposed common origin of "science" and "shit,"
| more than forty years ago.
|
| The first and second editions of the OED did not show many
| (any?) Indo-European roots, at least as far as I can recall,
| and they may not have been incorporated fully yet into the
| current online edition either. It's also possible that the
| OED editors are cautious about accepting Indo-European
| etymologies, which are reconstructed rather than based on
| written evidence.
|
| [1] https://www.ahdictionary.com/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dicti
| ona...
| 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
| programmer_dude wrote:
| Wow, kark is crab in sanskrit.
| danans wrote:
| That should be the least surprising. Sanskrit (especially the
| Vedic stage) preserves a tremendous number of old Indo
| European forms and is often used as a sort of validity check
| for PIE etymologies.
| 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
| flobosg wrote:
| All those words derive from the same Proto-Indo-European
| root, _*kwel-_ : https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel-
| canjobear wrote:
| Apparently also "pole", via a change kw > p in Greek!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In Sweden/DK/NO we call it "hjul" which is pronounced
| like the American nicotine vape brand juul, quite similar
| to English
|
| I can't quite tell, but if you're saying that the American
| brand Juul is pronounced in English as if it were the word
| "you'll", that is not correct. Americans don't think of the
| letter J that way.
|
| (If you're saying Nordic hjul and English wheel are
| similar, they are cognates.)
| canjobear wrote:
| Grimm's Law was a sound change that turned k into h when
| Proto-Germanic split off from Proto-Indo-European. The
| original form was something like *kwel which turned into
| *hwel in Proto-Germanic, then eventually wheel in English
| and hjul in Scandinavian languages.
|
| The other words (chakra, circle, cycle) are from some kind
| of reduplicated form like *kwekwlos, via different routes.
| dotancohen wrote:
| This is easily seen today in e.g. Norwegian Kval and
| English Whale, which still sound similar enough to appear
| related even to the layman.
| DanielDe wrote:
| Ah yes, I think you're right, I got that backwards! I'll update
| the post, thank you!
| armandososa wrote:
| In Spanish we also use "cancel" as gate or fence.
| 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/
| kortex wrote:
| I can't confirm it, but I've studied language and etymology a
| ton, and I think there is a hidden etymology between "man"
| (referring to humanity as a whole) and the mama/mom/mammary
| cluster. Hear me out.
|
| "Ma" is virtually always the first sound a baby makes, and is
| also reminiscent of breastfeeding, with the lips pursing
| together. It's widely hypothesized that because of this, the word
| for "mother" in nearly every language on the planet is some
| variant of "ma(m)".
|
| "Da" and "pa" are the next-easiest sounds to make. Hence,
| "dada/papa" for father (originally pH2ter in PIE, where h2 is the
| "a-colored laryngeal).
|
| Anyway, we have the word "man", related to the Latin "homo",
| which is suspiciously close to "mama". Nowadays, "man" (and the
| Italian "uomo") has mostly masculine connotation. But it strikes
| me as really weird how close it is to such a feminine phoneme. My
| headcannon is that "mam" is the root of words referring to both
| "mother" (the first human a baby experiences) and "humanity" as a
| whole.
|
| It's hard to tease apart the influence of "guma"/dhghem, the PIE
| for earth. Also related to "Adam" (as in "Adam and Eve") who was
| famously made from Earth...yes Genesis is essentially based
| around a giant pun in Hebrew.
|
| Mama/dada/adamah/humana - they all swirl around the same phonetic
| space, and I don't think this is a coincidence.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dhghem-?ref=etymonline_cros...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamah
| 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")
| StavrosK wrote:
| German speakers can also relate, with "apotheke".
| Interestingly, apotheke in modern Greek means "storage room",
| pharmacy is "pharmakeio". Ypotheke does mean mortgage in modern
| Greek too.
| 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!
| narag wrote:
| Or imagine asking the pharmacist for wine :) In Spanish
| "bodega" is specifically where wine is made or kept. I'm
| aware that in English it's used for convenience stores. Just
| a different joke.
| reactspa wrote:
| In Hindi, the word "booti" means medicinal plant (seems similar
| to "botica" here).
| asveikau wrote:
| Spanish has tons of double imports from Latin. Words that
| follow the normal phonetic evolution going from Latin to
| Spanish, then parallel words re-imported from latin later.
|
| Some I can think of offhand are the ones with the consonant + l
| -> ll change:
|
| Plano + llano
|
| Clave + llave
|
| Pleno + lleno
|
| I think there are some others where Latin vowels like /o/ or
| /e/ change to diphthongs like /we/ or /je/ and they get re-
| imported with /o/ or /e/ again. I can't think of examples of
| this right now but I am sure they exist. [Edit: foco + fuego is
| one such example]
|
| Probably others with word initial /f/ put to silent h, then re-
| imported with an f again.
|
| Wiktionary has a long list of these here:
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Spani...
| d_tr wrote:
| > apotheke (basement, literally "under-box")
|
| Actually, "apo" has the meaning of "away" here, so "away-box"
| would be more accurate. Maybe you are confusing it with "ypo",
| which actually means "under" in Greek?
|
| I always enjoy reading about this stuff, btw!
| narag wrote:
| Oops! that's right... "under-box" would be "hipoteca" =
| mortgage.
|
| Anything with the "teca" (or "theque" in other languages) has
| some relation, like modern discoteca or biblioteca = library.
| jlos wrote:
| My favourite is idiot and idiomatic, both coming from the word
| idios - literally meaning one's own. While idiot usually implies
| someone lacking intelligence, an idiotes (idiotes) is a person
| who lacks perspective, namely, one that is not their own.
|
| In other words, an idiot is someone so caught up in their own
| perspective they are incapable of engaging in fruitful public
| conversation. Don't know what Plato would think of Twitter then .
| . .
| stevula wrote:
| This might be more of a modern reinterpretation based on
| etymology. The sense development in Greek was apparently more
| like "private (non-political) person" > "layperson" >
| "ignorant" > "stupid".
| meristohm wrote:
| I listened to The Blindboy Podcast episode "Manchan Magan"[0]
| (The name of the interviewee, author of an etymology book[1])
| yesterday and some of the stories were about shared words.
|
| [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blindboy-
| podcast/i...
|
| [1] Library link: https://www.worldcat.org/title/thirty-two-
| words-for-field-lo...
| 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.
| dustractor wrote:
| My favorite insight lately comes from looking at the letter ell.
| Hebrew lamedh. Familiar to programmers, a 'lambda' function is a
| nameless function.
|
| Looking at a translation of the lords prayer, wondering where the
| word 'hallowed' came in, since it wouldn't have been part of the
| original language, I delved into why hallow was the substitute
| for sacred, and what the origins of 'sacred' were.
|
| Sacere, a set-aside area, so so something set aside is 'sacred'.
| To hallow something is to hold it in high regard, to respect it,
| to put it in another category other than the normal one.
|
| The hebrews had seven holy names and EL was one of them. Imagine
| if you time traveled back to that time and asked random people in
| the fertile crescent, who or what do you worship? They
| technically couldn't answer that because their beliefs told them
| not to say that word, but they COULD say the ____
|
| the ____
|
| el (blank)
|
| the the
|
| EL EL? I worship the ____ (cant say it, leave a blank)
|
| A blank? Like a hollow? A word with a separate category? A set-
| aside-area? Sacere. Sacred. So, our father hallowed be thy name
| is like saying you have a separate category for that name. What
| is the normal category for all the normal words? You can say them
| and you can write them. What is special about the 'sacred' words?
| You don't say them.
| jlos wrote:
| The distinction between "hallow" and "sacred" is a distinction
| that arises only due to the traditional of English
| translations. Sacere is the Latin. Lord's prayer is written in
| Koine Greek and uses agiazo (hagiadzo), the verbal form of
| agios (hagios). Hagios is the by far the most common word for
| "holy".
|
| While modern translations are extremely good, publishers are
| apparently hesitant to modify verses prone to memorization or
| used in liturgies (such as the Lord's prayer),
| StavrosK wrote:
| *hagiazo, btw, a d slipped in there by accident.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > Imagine if you time traveled back to that time and asked
| random people in the fertile crescent, who or what do you
| worship? They technically couldn't answer that because their
| beliefs told them not to say that word
|
| The tradition of not pronouncing the name YHWH is specific to
| rabbinic judaism and was not a feature of either temple judaism
| as practiced in the era of King David nor religions in the
| fertile crescent.
|
| Rather the opposite, as names of Gods were loudly and proudly
| proclaimed. We know this because of poems (which were sung
| outloud) composed that contain names of gods in such a way as
| proper pronounciaton is required for the songs to have the
| right rhythm and meter. (This is also how modern scholars
| believe the correct pronounciation is "Yahweh", e.g. that the
| vav was a "w" sound and the yod was a "y" sound.) In fact the
| very idea of a name that could be written but not spoken
| presupposes a tradition of reading and writing texts --
| something practiced by Masoretes and Pharisees -- rather than a
| service consisting of songs and spoken ceremonies as performed
| in actual temples.
|
| It is a question as to which extra-levitical sects initially
| began this tradition of omitting the name in spoken
| pronunciation sometime during the second temple period, as it
| was most likely related to them not being priests and thus not
| considering themselves worthy to say the name, but when the
| priestly service ended and the temple was destroyed,
| guardianship of law passed to rabbinical groups focused on
| working with texts, and then no one was considered worthy to
| say the name and thus it became a general prohibition even
| though the royal singers singing the psalms loudly sang
| "Yahweh" in almost every song in daily service.
|
| But this practice of omitting the name was not shared by other
| semitic groups in the region, nor is it present in Arabic
| cultures. So let's not backpropagate that relatively modern
| scholarly tradition to religious practices in the fertile
| crescent during the dawn of civilization.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Hallowed is a very apt translation, the hebrew word qdvsh
| (which I think is the one that means hallowed?) can also be
| translated as "sperated"; "separated/holy" is pretty much the
| dictionary definition of hallowed
| danans wrote:
| > Looking at a translation of the lords prayer, wondering where
| the word 'hallowed' came in,
|
| Hallowed is word of Germanic origin. It has shared etymology
| with holy and is part of the name of the Anglo-Saxon pagan
| festival Halloween.
| shever73 wrote:
| My personal favourite is "science" and "shit". Both derive from a
| root meaning to separate. Science separating one thing from
| another and...well, you get the idea!
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit#etymonline_v_45328
| 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
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It comes from Latin vanus, meaning "empty". More obvious with
| the "in vain" meaning
|
| Fun fact: the Latin word for "in vain" is _frustra_.
| 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.
| junar wrote:
| Not who you replied to, but it's consistent with basically
| other source I can find. I'm inclined to believe that the
| root for year is indeed different, based on the suggested
| cognates in other languages.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/annual
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anus
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/anus
| 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".
| StavrosK wrote:
| Latin used the V for both V and U today, right? How did those
| two get separated? Why did we get "virus" and not "virvs" or
| "uirus"? I guess they were pronounced differently back then
| too?
| laichzeit0 wrote:
| Consonant v is pronounced as w in modern English. Vowel v is
| pronounced as "oo" as in book. So "virus" in Latin would be
| pronounced "wiroos".
|
| It's really a pet peeve of mine when I hear people pronounce
| Latin words starting with v and using the modern English v.
| It's pronounced as w.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Ah, so they did indeed use the same letter for two distinct
| sounds. Makes sense, thanks!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They used the same letter for two sounds in the sense
| that it had a consonantal use and a vowel use. But they
| did not, themselves, perceive the two sounds as being
| different sounds. They are, to the Romans, one sound in
| two different contexts.
|
| Quoting _Vox Latina_ :
|
| > There is also a much-quoted anecdote of Cicero's, which
| tells how, when Marcus Crassus was setting out on an ill-
| fated expedition against the Parthians, a seller of
| Caunean figs was crying out ' _Cauneas!_ '; and Cicero
| comments [...] that it would have been well for Crassus
| if he had heeded the 'omen', viz. ' _Caue ne eas_ '; this
| hardly makes sense unless, as we presume, the
| [consonantal] _u_ of _caue_ was similar to the [vocalic]
| _u_ of _Cauneas_. A parallel case is provided by Varro 's
| etymology of _auris_ from _auere_
|
| (The book is accurate in representing the Latin spelling
| as being identical for the consonant and the vowel; in
| fact they used V and U is a much later invention. Perhaps
| the book felt English speakers would have more trouble
| accepting V as a vowel than U as a consonant.)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's really a pet peeve of mine when I hear people
| pronounce Latin words starting with v and using the modern
| English v. It's pronounced as w.
|
| It's a little more complicated. The Romans didn't
| distinguish the sounds. But that doesn't mean they always
| produced a sound that you would recognize as W. Sometimes
| they did, sometimes not. You can observe the same effect
| easily in modern languages with the same non-distinction --
| for example, in modern Mandarin, Wen formally begins with
| a W sound, but in practice often begins with what I hear as
| a V.
|
| (For extra interest, contrast Old English, in which -- like
| modern Mandarin -- /f/ and /w/ were phonemes while /v/ was
| not, but -- unlike Mandarin -- [v] was a variety of /f/,
| not of /w/.)
| 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.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Whaaat? That's crazy, thanks for that!
| 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
| spoondan wrote:
| Kimono is Zhao Wu which transliterates to "wear-thing." It's
| the word for clothes, not just the traditional robes, and it's
| not etymologically related to a word for Winter in any
| language.
|
| Japanese has many -mono words based on verbs: tabemono Shi beWu
| is food (eat-thing), nomimono Yin miWu is a beverage (drink-
| thing), tatemono Jian Wu is a building (build-thing), kudamono
| Guo Wu is fruit (reward-thing; the Japanese word for "to
| fruit" being related to the verb for achieving, similar to
| English "come to fruition").
| [deleted]
| 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!"
| taejo wrote:
| The "present" meaning survives in German in _Mitgift_ (dowry,
| a gift given _with_ the bride)
| 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 names of the planets (martis,
| mercurii, jovis); and in english the rough translations into
| anglo-saxon/norse gods applies (tyr/tiw, thor, freija)
|
| Apparently it's unlikely to be an accident, but it's a very
| ancient connection, via the chinese, who have in more recent
| times ditched the system.
| uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| I have always assummed these are dna-baked-ins, the language is
| different but the underlying ideas are instinctual like dam
| building in beavers.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > Apparently it's unlikely to be an accident, but it's a very
| ancient connection, via the chinese, who have in more recent
| times ditched the system.
|
| China is a relative latecomer here and typically lags these
| types of ancient civilizational innovations, with the oldest
| being Mesopotamia and Egypt. In China, the seven day week was
| adopted in the late 4th Century A.D. in the Jin dynasty roughly
| 3000 years after it was adopted in Mesopotamia.
|
| There are two theories as to the origin of the seven day week,
| one that it started in ancient Babylon and another that it
| started in ancient Egypt.
|
| The concept of a "week" is directly tied to the concept of a
| sabbath (a special holy day to mark the end of the week). This,
| in turn is related to Babylonian numerical systems -- they had
| a base 6 system corresponding to 6 days of work followed by the
| religious day, and hence the origin of our seven day week.
| Interestingly, unlike in judaism where the seventh day is
| considered one in which work was forbidden as God rested on
| that week, in Babylonian tradition, the seventh day was
| considered unlucky for work and thus work was to be avoided. It
| is a fine line separating these different notions of a Sabbath
| and thus of the week.
|
| Another speculated origin for the week was via lunar
| observations -- e.g. a quarter phase of the moon corresponding
| to a half-moon either waxing or waning with a lunar month being
| roughly 29.5 days, so 1/4 of that would be 7.4 days. But there
| are different ways to divide this -- e.g. a sequence of 7 day
| units followed by a sequence of special days tacked at the end
| or some other combination. You actually see these types of
| divisions in some ancient Babylonian calendars. But with a base
| 6 system, there are some nice divisions, e.g. 6 days of work
| followed by the holy day = 1 week
|
| 4 weeks followed by a holy day at the end = 1 month
|
| the residual .5 day, can accumulate so that after 12 months,
| 12*.5 = 6. 6 special days to be added at the end of 12 months.
|
| In the ancient past, you had different regions practicing their
| own calendar system and one of the first innovations of the
| first (known) empire in Mesopotamia was the standardization of
| weeks and months as different cities were brought into the
| Sumerian empire. Sargon I of Akkad is said to have standardized
| the week by ensuring that the different cities he conquered
| were synced up and observed the same set of extra holy days in
| what is the first (known) empire
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/0308018827898012...
|
| However there is some linguistic evidence that the Sumerians
| merely borrowed the concept of a week from the Akkadian
| civilization, so the earlier Akkadian civilization is believed
| to have held the concept of a week first.
|
| Once you have the notion of a week, it is not hard to name it
| after the sun, moon, and 5 celestial planets, as these were the
| primary astronomical phenomena. You can see these names in
| ancient languages here:
| https://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/hlwc/why_seven.htm
| jolmg wrote:
| > the days of the week associate correctly with the days of the
| week
|
| Maybe for the second one you meant "names of the planets"?
| dnautics wrote:
| thanks, edited.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > via the chinese, who have in more recent times ditched the
| system.
|
| What? They use the same seven-day week today.
|
| They name the days "one", "two", "three", etc, which was
| actually an innovation by Christian missionaries in China, not
| the Chinese themselves. The seventh day is named "day" rather
| than being numbered, so that the full name is Li Bai Tian "the
| day of worship", anchoring the week firmly to the Christian
| week.
|
| (The same effort to rename the days of the week along more
| Christian lines was also made in Europe, but it didn't take
| there.)
|
| > the rough translations into anglo-saxon/norse gods applies
| (tyr/tiw, thor, freija)
|
| I was kind of amused to see "anglo-saxon/norse" followed by
| "tyr/tiw"; Tyr is the Norse form and Tiw is the English form.
|
| (The goddess honored by Friday was Frig in English, and Thor is
| of course Thunor -- his name is nothing but the ordinary word
| "thunder".)
| weinzierl wrote:
| This sounds very similar to the naming scheme used in
| Portuguese, which interestingly differs from Spanish. In
| Portuguese the five workdays are numbered starting from two,
| because the first day is Sunday which isn't numbered but has
| - like Saturday - its own name.
| dnautics wrote:
| Sorry, by system I mean "naming system", not base-7 system.
| jlg23 wrote:
| > At least in japanese, the other days of the week are also
| associated with celestial bodies
|
| The naming scheme also holds for French, except for Saturday
| (samedi [0]) and Sunday(dimanche [1]), which originates from
| "Day of Shabbat" and "Day of the Lord". But according to
| wikipedia [0], samedi replaced the "Day of Saturn".
|
| [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samedi
|
| [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimanche
| stevula wrote:
| "Saturday" is from "Saturn".
| armandososa wrote:
| And dimanche sounds like "domingo" in spanish.
| fbellag wrote:
| Domingo comes from Dominicus, or "belonging to the Lord" as
| in French, or the Italian "Domenica". All share the same
| etymology
|
| "Sabado" is Spanish for Shabat as is Sabato in Italian
|
| (I'm sure other romance languages are similar, even
| Portuguese, that has Sabado and Domingo, but the rest of
| the days are numbered from 2nd to 6th, oddly enough)
|
| All of them coming directly from Latin
| xiaq wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#...
|
| > The Chinese had apparently adopted the seven-day week from
| the Hellenistic system by the 4th century, although by which
| route is not entirely clear. It was again transmitted to China
| in the 8th century by Manichaeans, via the country of Kang (a
| Central Asian polity near Samarkand).[20] The 4th-century date,
| according to the Cihai encyclopedia,[year needed] is due to a
| reference to Fan Ning (Fan Zhu ), an astrologer of the Jin
| Dynasty. The renewed adoption from Manichaeans in the 8th
| century (Tang Dynasty) is documented with the writings of the
| Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing and the Ceylonese Buddhist monk Bu
| Kong.
|
| > The Chinese transliteration of the planetary system was soon
| brought to Japan by the Japanese monk Kobo Daishi; surviving
| diaries of the Japanese statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga show
| the seven-day system in use in Heian Period Japan as early as
| 1007. In Japan, the seven-day system was kept in use (for
| astrological purposes) until its promotion to a full-fledged
| (Western-style) calendrical basis during the Meiji era. In
| China, with the founding of the Republic of China in 1911,
| Monday through Saturday in China are now named after the
| luminaries implicitly with the numbers.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Interestingly, the more ancient Chinese system of ten-day
| weeks still survives in modern usage to refer to the early /
| middle / late parts of a month, Shang Xun / Zhong Xun / Xia
| Xun .
| skhr0680 wrote:
| It's explicit in Japanese that the days of the week are named
| after planets. Huo Yao Ri means "Mars day" not "Fire day".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Sort of. Etymologically, you're correct that Huo Yao Ri
| originates as the term Huo Yao -Ri , the day (Ri ) of the
| fire light (Huo Yao ).
|
| But I don't think even most Japanese people are aware of this
| today; the only common use of Yao is its use in the name of
| every weekday, so people think of Huo Yao Ri as being
| segmented Huo -Yao Ri , the weekday ("Yao Ri ",
| etymologically spurious) of fire (Huo ).
|
| I don't know the modern Japanese word for Mars, but in
| Chinese it's Huo Xing , not Huo Yao .
| skhr0680 wrote:
| > the day (Ri ) of the fire light (Huo Yao ).
|
| The fire light being Mars.
|
| > I don't know the modern Japanese word for Mars, but in
| Chinese it's Huo Xing , not Huo Yao .
|
| Huo Xing is the same. I don't know about Chinese, but in
| Japanese Yao can be a general word for the sun, the moon,
| and stars (Qi Yao ).
| 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.
| ajuc wrote:
| Indeed I can't find in Polish any other singular -anin
| not derived from place, But slowianin in plural is
| slowianie, and there's lots of -anie words not derived
| from places.
|
| For example abstract nouns formed from verbs, like:
|
| pisanie (writing) from pisac (to write)
|
| palenie (smoking) from palic (to burn)
|
| sniadanie (breakfast) from archaic sniadac (to eat)
|
| jedzenie (food) from modern jesc (to eat)
|
| bieganie (running) from biec (to run)
|
| etc. There's easily hundreds of these.
|
| Then it would be
|
| slowianie (abstract noun for people who can talk) from
| archaic slowic (to express in words)
|
| The only weird thing would be that slowianie is plural
| and all of the other -anie nouns made from verbs are
| singular.
| schoen wrote:
| That seems pretty strong, but Wiktionary analyzes these
| two kinds of -anie as different suffixes
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anie#Polish
|
| without stating whether they're etymologically related.
| It would also be good to know whether both exist in other
| Slavic languages.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anin#Polish
|
| has another example in Serbo-Croatian, which in turn has
| a different suffix corresponding to Polish -anie:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-anje#Serbo-Croatian
|
| I don't know any of these languages, so I don't have any
| intuitions about this.
| 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]
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Finnish word "Norsu" means elephant but there are no nor have
| there been since at least after last ice-age Elephants in those
| northern latitudes. So whence the word "Norsu", which does not
| seem to be a word in any other language?
|
| Well it is explained below. Turns out that Finns had another word
| "Marsu" for walrus, which also have tusks. So therefore they
| started using a similar word for a (somewhat) similar animal.
|
| https://www.wordsense.eu/norsu/
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| No, it's not as simple as that. Finnish and the Slavic
| languages are the only ones in Europe that have a native word
| for "elephant". (Everyone else uses variants of the Greek
| "elephas" or Arabic "fil".)
|
| The question is, _why those two languages and only those two_?
|
| What's worse, the Slavic word dates to proto-Slavic times, it's
| one of the basic animal words like "deer", "rabbit", "cow",
| etc.!
| milansm wrote:
| Just wanted to mention that! In Serbian (and most other south
| Slavic languages) we use a word slon (slon) for elephant. I
| was always wondering why is that, how can we have native word
| for the animal we could hardly had chance to see. However,
| there's some evidence that (south) Slavic people lived
| somewhere near India. And India is mentioned a lot in some of
| the tradional folk poems. There's even a town in Serbia
| called Indija. Really interesting stuff, but not sure how
| credible that theory is.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Finnish and the Slavic languages are the only ones in
| Europe that have a native word for "elephant". (Everyone else
| uses variants of the Greek "elephas" or Arabic "fil".)
|
| So the only languages in Europe except the other language in
| Europe? :)
| namenotrequired wrote:
| He means "indigenous" words that evolved along with the
| rest of the language rather than being adopted from another
| language.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Right, but Greek fits that description. Three languages
| in Europe have a native word for elephant.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Depends; etymonline says this:
|
| > from Greek elephas (genitive elephantos) "elephant;
| ivory," probably from a non-Indo-European language,
| likely via Phoenician (compare Hamitic elu "elephant,"
| source of the word for it in many Semitic languages, or
| possibly from Sanskrit ibhah "elephant").
|
| So the Greek word is not necessarily native to Greek.
| 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".
| namenotrequired wrote:
| In the same list as "estate" and "contrast" and "status" we have
| country names like "Afghanistan"... it is the place where the
| Afghans are (stand).
|
| Also the Spanish/Portuguese "estar" (to be).
| 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".
| spoondan wrote:
| Similarly, awesome is great, but awful is terrible. And
| terrible and terrifying are bad, but terrific is awesome.
| 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".
| StavrosK wrote:
| "Fantastical" is probably more used for that nowadays (and
| that very rarely), but it didn't occur to me that there
| could be any other explanation, as in Greek we use
| "fantastic" for both meanings commonly, ie "fantastic job"
| and "fantastic world" (imaginary world).
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 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).
| asveikau wrote:
| When Latin borrowed the root of "govern" from Greek, it was a
| nautical term, to steer.
|
| We have a tendency to think of "cy" as an S followed by an "ai"
| diphthong. But if we consider the "c" as a hard /k/ and the "y"
| as a vowel similar to /u/, there isn't a huge difference
| between "cyber" and "guber", the latter form showing up in
| Latin and ultimately in English words like "gubernatorial".
| kortex wrote:
| You start to notice a lot of roots by applying a "toki pona"
| style phonetic rule: collapse all voiced and unvoiced
| consonants. Reverse Grimm's law. Th -> t. And then apply Arabic
| vowels: a, i, u. This is pretty much reversing the most common
| sound shifts over time.
|
| f=v=b=p, g=k, d=t, y=o=u, e=i.
|
| Cybernetics -> kupirnitics
|
| Government -> kupirnit
|
| It's probably also related to "operatus" (Latin for "work",
| things like cooperate and opera come from it) but I can't find
| sources. (co)operatus -> (k)upiratus
|
| Another example is the famous "father" etymology:
|
| Father/vader/pater -> patir (PIE *pH2ter)
| asveikau wrote:
| That doesn't seem plausible to me when you consider that
| opera is the plural of opus. Afaik in early latin, /s/ often
| went to /r/ when it fell between vowels. That is why it has
| /s/ in the nominative but /r/ when you start to inflect it
| with suffices.
|
| This happens a lot for third declension nouns where
| nominative ends in -s (opus is one such example)
|
| Other examples of this pattern:
|
| Corpus -> corporem (not *corpusem)
|
| Venus -> Venerem (not *Venusem)
|
| Flos -> florem (not *flosem)
|
| Colos -> colorem (not *colosem)
|
| Or more simply, we can look at opus and see it comes from a
| different PIE root from cyber. (When i look it up, the former
| has a root meaning "work", and the latter has a root meaning
| "turn")
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I was under the impression that the underlying /r/ became
| [s] in the nominative case where it was followed by an /s/,
| rather than -- as you seem to suggest -- an underlying /s/
| becoming [r] when intervocalic.
| dang wrote:
| Ikura in sushi restaurants always makes me think of ikra (ikra),
| which is caviar in Russian. It can't be a coincidence but I don't
| know how it got there.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=ikura&tbm=isch
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=ikra&tbm=isch
| dnh44 wrote:
| It's also ikra in Romanian.
| junar wrote:
| Japanese borrowed it from Russian.
|
| https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9-30248
| dang wrote:
| Hmm - the Google-translated version of that page says that
| Russian POWs in the Russo-Japanese war used salmon roe (i.e.
| ikura) as a substitute for caviar. Interesting--thanks!
| pvg wrote:
| It maybe makes a bit more sense when you consider 'ikra'
| doesn't just mean caviar but also fish roe in general and
| is also applied even more broadly in entirely fishless
| things like 'ikra balkazhannaia'
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