22 ms·
Why is that everyone in the village died of smallpox, except for the milkmaids, who never got sick? Is this some kind of milkmaid magic? Or is there something i
by lkrubner 8y ago
Why is that everyone in the village died of smallpox, except for the milkmaids, who never got sick? Is this some kind of milkmaid magic? Or is there something in the biographies of each milkmaid that causes them to become... ah, what is the right word? It's almost as if they are, ah, "immune" to smallpox? Is that possible? It's almost as if they get cine (aid) from the cows (vacca). One wonders if we could deliberately give this vacca-cine to people?
- swombat 8y agoThank you for this. Didn’t know this was the etymology of vaccine!
- bonzini 8y agoIt's not (the cow part is though; vaccine simply means "from cow").
- dunefox 8y agoNo, they're witches!
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoDo you have a source on the etymology? I've searched but couldn't find anything. Genuinely curious.
- typothrowaway 8y agoAt least wikipedia seems to partially agree (on the cow part), with citations I couldn't verify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI meant on the etymology of cine / aid. Must have valued out when I wrote my previous comment.
- 1123581321 8y agoine/inus is a Latin possessive suffix that appears in many words. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-inus https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-inus
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThank you, that's what I was after.
- fao_ 8y agohttps://www.etymonline.com/word/vaccination?ref=etymonline_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/word/vaccination?ref=etymonline_c...
- mrighele 8y agoVaccine comes from the latin "vaccinus", a derivative of "vacca" (cow) and means "related to cow" or in this case more like "of cow origin". For example in italian "latte vaccino" means cow milk. So there is no -cine part, only a "-inus" suffix that simply means "related to" or "coming from". You can see that in a lot of words of latin origin. In fact the term "latin" itself comes from "latinus" which means "related to Latium" or "inhabitant of Latium" (a region in central Italy) Unrelated, but as for the origin of the latin term "vacca", it may come from vedic, with the meaning of "the animal that moos" Edit: made my answer more to the point
- firmgently 8y agoI often search for the etymology of words. I used to overthink it when trying to find the right search terms but eventually realised that "[word] etymology" gives pretty much perfect results every time ('vaccine etymology' gave the answer on Google and DuckDuckGo without even needing to click any links). Just mentioning this for other people who like looking up words. And yes it's obvious... unless you're one of those people who sometimes overthinks search terms.