4 ms·
Interestingly college comes from the eponymous word in 14th century French [1] and the French term from Latin collegium. On the other hand, collage comes from
by jxub 9y ago
Interestingly college comes from the eponymous word in 14th century French [1] and the French term from Latin collegium.
On the other hand, collage comes from coller in Old French and this one from kolla in Ancient Greek.
It's a strange quirk of history that two such simillar words have such different origins.
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/college https://www.etymonline.com/word/college
[2] https://www.etymonline.com/word/collage https://www.etymonline.com/word/collage
- tbassetto 9y agoAnd to add some confusion, the French word “collège” is roughly the equivalent of middle school…
- CPLX 9y agoWhile in Spanish colegio is the equivalent of high school.
- chrisweekly 9y agoAnd in German, "gymnasium" is high school. (No wonder the Germans do so well in sports!) /jk
- jxub 9y agoIn Poland "gimnazjum" used to be middle school until recently when the 8 year primary school system was restored because of heavy critique.
- kgwgk 9y agoIt can also be primary school. In Spain, high school is instituto. And escuela, like ecole in French or school in English, can refer to primary school or higher education institutions.
- jxub 9y agoThis rabbit hole goes deep... In Castillian Spanish "colegio" is often used for primary school, but sometimes as a placeholder name for any kind of compulsory education from preschool up to high school (sometimes in the shortened form "cole").
- raverbashing 9y agocollege (n.) late 14c., "organized association of persons invested with certain powers and rights or engaged in some common duty or pursuit," From where expressions like "electoral college" come from I wonder if there's a linguistic term for having a broad term become a more specific one (in some occasions like this) Another interesting term is Faculty, which meant "branch of knowledge" then finally became "the group of teachers/professors in an educational institution" https://www.etymonline.com/word/faculty https://www.etymonline.com/word/faculty
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> I wonder if there's a linguistic term for having a broad term become a more specific one (in some occasions like this) Almost certainly there is, but if I ever learned it I can't bring it to mind. This would be an example of the more general phenomenon "semantic shift", though. Edit: a quick Google search suggests that this particular shift is known fairly intuitively as "semantic narrowing".
- grkvlt 9y agoInteresting, in the UK (in fact, most of the world except the USA, I think) the term Faculty still means a branch of a university dealing with a particular subject group, like 'Faculty of Arts' or 'Faculty of Science' with departments arranged under the Faculties. It's always odd to me seeing e.g. the teachers at a kids school referred to as 'Faculty' on American TV shows!