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Easy to see the connection for this word when learning that the German word for "window" is "Fenster."
by pssflops 7y ago
Easy to see the connection for this word when learning that the German word for "window" is "Fenster."
- llcoolv 7y agoAnd it is quite cute how civilised throwing someone out of a window sounds once there is a sophisticated word for it :D
- racl101 7y agoMy fave word for something that sounds innocuous but is actually severe is: vivisection. If you didn't look up, it almost sounds like something you might casually get at a spa.
- RodgerTheGreat 7y ago"My friends spent the summer waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay."
- nostoc 7y agoKnowing more than one language can be really helpful to just grok these words quickly, even if you've never seen them before. alive is vivente, viviente, vivant and vida in italian, spanish, french and portuguese If you know what a dissection is, you can then connect the dots.
- blowski 7y agoQuidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur.
- davrosthedalek 7y agoMy favorite: Et situs vi late in isset ab ernit ("dialect" form of "Es sieht aus wie Latein, ist es aber nicht", "It looks like latin, but it isn't")
- jcranmer 7y agoThe French word for window is "fenêtre". And in French, the circumflex accent usually denotes a deletion of an 's', as in words such as "forêt", "hôpital", "île", "conquête".
- marton78 7y agoAlso, it's fenêtre in French and finestra in Italian and Catalan.
- marcosdumay 7y agoWhile Portuguese and Spanish have completely different words. Somewhere the chain was broken.
- kthejoker2 7y agoVentana and Window are root aligned (ventus, wind), fenestra in latin is "light opening", no idea how Portugal ended up with "door" for windows (Janus, janua, janela) .. More impacts of "climate change" : )
- cevn 7y agoHuh, you just enlightened me, I knew a guy named Fenstermacher and now I think I understand his name..
- telmo 7y agoYes, it all comes from the Latin "fenestram".
- blowski 7y agoSomething I learned here - the English word window comes from an old Germanic word vendauga meaning "wind eye". German started using something like fenster vendauga (I don't know the actual phrase) to mean "a window with glass in it", from the Latin word fenestra. It later dropped the vendauga bit entirely. English has now borrowed the word fenster from German, to mean the erosion of a new bit of rock exposing an older bit.