15 ms·

Surprising Shared Word Etymologies

272 points by DanielDe 5y ago

leipert 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Bankrupt, or Bankrott from German means rotten bench. You can work out the rest :)
    - tomjakubowski 5y ago
      -rupt comes from Latin rompere meaning to break. (see also "rupture")
      - Sharlin 5y ago
        And "erupt", "disrupt", and "abrupt", which come from roots literally meaning "out-break", "apart-break", and "away-break", respectively :)
    - leipert 5y ago
      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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 für das Gift!"
  - rhodin 5y ago
    Ah, and the Swedish "gift" (married) and "gift" (poison).
  - taejo 5y ago
    The "present" meaning survives in German in Mitgift (dowry, a gift given with the bride)
jfengel 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
  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.
hprotagonist 5y ago
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 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 5y ago
  Interesting... though for what it's worth, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't confirm that origin for "science". Once you get back to scīre '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- , sciēns, present participle of scīre 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 5y ago
    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/science https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit
  - tkgally 5y ago
    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/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictiona...
narag 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  In Hindi, the word "booti" means medicinal plant (seems similar to "botica" here).
- d_tr 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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.
- asveikau 5y ago
  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:Spanish_doublets https://en.m.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Spani...
Jun8 5y ago
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
eysquared 5y ago
Fans of this type of thing may enjoy listening to The Allusionist podcast: https://www.theallusionist.org/ https://www.theallusionist.org/.
- madcaptenor 5y ago
  Also the Endless Knot podcast: http://www.alliterative.net/podcast http://www.alliterative.net/podcast
codeflo 5y ago
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 https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/imaginary
- DanielDe 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      And "fancy" still retains some links to "fantastic" and "fantasy", as in "fancy dress" or "flight of fancy".
    - StavrosK 5y ago
      "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).
  - cecilpl2 5y ago
    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.
ineptech 5y ago
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.
harimau777 5y ago
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)
JackFr 5y ago
“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 5y ago
  That's a good one. I like it. However, although Wiktionary gives the etymology of "grime" as "from Proto-Germanic grīmô (“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 gʰrēy- (“to paint, streak, smear”), from gʰer- (“to rub, stroke”)", which is also the origin of "Christ", but the latter goes back to "Proto-Indo-European gʰrem- (“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.
  - randomswede 5y ago
    More importantly, Odin is clearly The One (at least if we trust out Slavic friends). Stick that in your non-Asgardian pipe and smoke it, Neo!
DanielBMarkham 5y ago
Related: I've been listening to the History of English podcast. If this kind of content is your thing, it's highly recommended.
Tagbert 5y ago
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/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
SamBam 5y ago
> 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 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cancer#Latin
- DanielDe 5y ago
  Ah yes, I think you're right, I got that backwards! I'll update the post, thank you!
- canjobear 5y ago
  Relatedly, "cycle", "wheel", "circle", and "chakra" are all from the same Indo-European root via different languages.
  - jeofken 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      All those words derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *kwel- : https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel-
russellbeattie 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Whaaat? That's crazy, thanks for that!
- stevula 5y ago
  Skipping through several stages of English and French, the derivation is: male < Latin masculus < mas “male (animal)” female < Latina femella < femina “woman” masculus and femella are diminutives of mas and femina respectively.
  - russellbeattie 5y ago
    I think the key bit is that "fe-" is not some sort of prefix, but part of a totally different word that had its spelling changed for consistency. This is unlike the "wo-" in woman, which in fact a prefix originally meaning "wife". Weirdly, English got "man" from Old German (meaning a person), but "human" from the Latin "homo", so just like female, the "hu-" in human isn't a prefix either, but derived from a totally different word. Then again, "man" extends back to proto-Indo- European, so maybe it's all related regardless.
tboyd47 5y ago
One of the more interesting ones I've come across lately: France - frank (being unencumbered in speech) - franchise (the right to vote)
- schoen 5y ago
  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-ciavón ("Slav"), from Latin Sclavonia (“Slavonia”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slave#English 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/slov%C4%9Bnin%D1%8A https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...
  - ajuc 5y ago
    > 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 "słowo" is "word" and "słowianin" 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 5y ago
      The Wiktionary quick summary of why it's disputed is one researcher's assertion that "slověne can't be formed from slovo because -ěninъ, -aninъ only occurs in derivations from place names". (Maybe słowianin < slověninъ 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/Paronymic_attraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_forc... 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.
schoen 5y ago
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/ 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 5y ago
  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. преображение = transfiguration (pre-obrazhenie, pere = through, obraz = image) Богородица = Θεοτόκος (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 5y ago
    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 (ἀνά-στασις → re-surrectio, ὑπό-στασις -> sub-stantia, and non-religious συμ-πάθεια → com-passio).
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      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 евангелии - 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.
decuran 5y ago
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 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 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that you can't have devastate in they list without mentioning waste.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > It comes from Latin vanus, meaning "empty". More obvious with the "in vain" meaning Fun fact: the Latin word for "in vain" is frustra.
mikelward 5y ago
https://youtu.be/ZAsNO9eXLgM 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.
KoftaBob 5y ago
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!
AndrewOMartin 5y ago
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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/stationer
noncoml 5y ago
kimono and winter
- mkl 5y ago
  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&lpg=PA115&dq=kimono+winter+related+etymology&source=bl&ots=ZFknswAqkN&sig=ACfU3U3ZmPr_pl_OGGaJ1tM-2law5gYmlg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifgav1x5DxAhWXYisKHcZFDaEQ6AEwFXoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=kimono%20winter%20related%20etymology&f=false https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=QQovEeLHVl0C&pg=PA115&lp...
- spoondan 5y ago
  Kimono is 着物 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 食べ物 is food (eat-thing), nomimono 飲み物 is a beverage (drink-thing), tatemono 建物 is a building (build-thing), kudamono 果物 is fruit (reward-thing; the Japanese word for “to fruit” being related to the verb for achieving, similar to English “come to fruition”).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
junar 5y ago
I'd nominate "casual" and "cadaver". The Latin cadō 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".
captaincrowbar 5y ago
My favourite example of apparently unrelated words with an unexpected common root: "government" and "cybernetics" both come from the Greek "kubernetes" (helmsman).
- kortex 5y ago
  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 *pH₂tér)
  - asveikau 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
      - deleted 5y ago
Grustaf 5y ago
Etymology is to linguistics what pyrotechnics are to chemistry, a gateway drug.
aatharuv 5y ago
Yoga (Sanskrit) and yoke (English). Yoga literally means union and is derived from a prefix yuj meaning to attach, join, harness, yoke.
xefer 5y ago
"cannabis" and "hemp" https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/107526 https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/107526
iib 5y ago
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.
carlob 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Unfortunately, this isn't correct according to my sources -- Italian anno < Latin annus < PIE h₂t-nó-s from a root h₂t- "to go", while ano < Latin anus < PIE *h₁eh₂no- "ring".
  - carlob 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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/annual https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anus https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anus https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/anus https://www.etymonline.com/word/anus
  - stevula 5y ago
    The existence of Gothic aþnam (athnam) “years (dative)” and Oscan “akno-“ [1] strongly suggests the presence of a consonant in there, which supports the separate root theory. 1. https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual
JW_00000 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Also the mathematical term "surjection", a mapping that is "over" its codomain, so covers all of it.
stakkur 5y ago
https://www.etymonline.com/ https://www.etymonline.com/
causality0 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Ah, so they did indeed use the same letter for two distinct sounds. Makes sense, thanks!
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        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.)
gfaure 5y ago
"suture" and "sutra" are cognates in Latin and Sanskrit respectively. A sutra सूत्र is literally a thread or fibre. This also explains why it was calqued into Chinese as 經 (among other meanings, "weave"). Similarly, "joust" and "juxtapose" are cognates via French and neo-Latinate French respectively (ultimately from iūxtā, 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 5y ago
  Beyond the etymologies, I learned what a calque is from your comment, so thanks for that.
dnautics 5y ago
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.
- jolmg 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    thanks, edited.
- xiaq 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#East_Asian_tradition 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 (范寧), 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.
Sharlin 5y ago
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.
dang 5y ago
Ikura in sushi restaurants always makes me think of ikra (икра), 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=ikura&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=икра&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=икра&tbm=isch
- junar 5y ago
  Japanese borrowed it from Russian. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9-30248 https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9-30248
  - dang 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      It maybe makes a bit more sense when you consider 'икра' doesn't just mean caviar but alsо fish roe in general and is also applied even more broadly in entirely fishless things like 'икра балкажанная'
- dnh44 5y ago
  It's also ikra in Romanian.
kortex 5y ago
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 pH₂tér 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_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dhghem-?ref=etymonline_cros... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamah
- stevula 5y ago
  Why would one of baby’s first/simplest words be something so abstract as “person” (=man) instead of “food” or “milk”?
dustractor 5y ago
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.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > 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.
dhosek 5y ago
On the flip side, miniature and minimum are etymologically unrelated.
jlos 5y ago
My favourite is idiot and idiomatic, both coming from the word ἴδιος - literally meaning one's own. While idiot usually implies someone lacking intelligence, an ῐ̓δῐώτης (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 5y ago
  This might be more of a modern reanalysis based on etymology. The sense development in Greek was apparently more like “private (non-political) person” > ”layperson” > “ignorant” > “stupid”.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
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/ https://www.wordsense.eu/norsu/
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  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.!
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      He means "indigenous" words that evolved along with the rest of the language rather than being adopted from another language.
      - StavrosK 5y ago
        Right, but Greek fits that description. Three languages in Europe have a native word for elephant.
        5y ago
namenotrequired 5y ago
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).
shever73 5y ago
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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit#etymonline_v_45328
meristohm 5y ago
I listened to The Blindboy Podcast episode “Manchán 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/id1300577518?i=1000496303922 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blindboy-podcast/i... [1] Library link: https://www.worldcat.org/title/thirty-two-words-for-field-lost-words-of-the-irish-landscape/oclc/1227875558&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/thirty-two-words-for-field-lo...
int_19h 5y ago
Etymologies of various profanities and swearwords can be fun to look up. Not so much in English, but it's kinda amazing how many Slavic swearwords still have recognizable proto-Indo-European roots in them.

272 points by DanielDe 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Bankrupt, or Bankrott from German means rotten bench. You can work out the rest :)
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    -rupt comes from Latin rompere meaning to break. (see also "rupture")
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      And "erupt", "disrupt", and "abrupt", which come from roots literally meaning "out-break", "apart-break", and "away-break", respectively :)
  - leipert 5y ago
    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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 für das Gift!"
- rhodin 5y ago
  Ah, and the Swedish "gift" (married) and "gift" (poison).
- taejo 5y ago
  The "present" meaning survives in German in Mitgift (dowry, a gift given with the bride)

jfengel 5y ago

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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
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.

hprotagonist 5y ago

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 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 5y ago
Interesting... though for what it's worth, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't confirm that origin for "science". Once you get back to scīre '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- , sciēns, present participle of scīre 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 5y ago
  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/science https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit
- tkgally 5y ago
  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/ https://www.ahdictionary.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Heritage_Dictiona...

narag 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
In Hindi, the word "booti" means medicinal plant (seems similar to "botica" here).
d_tr 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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.
asveikau 5y ago
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:Spanish_doublets https://en.m.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Spani...

Jun8 5y ago

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

eysquared 5y ago

Fans of this type of thing may enjoy listening to The Allusionist podcast: https://www.theallusionist.org/ https://www.theallusionist.org/.

madcaptenor 5y ago
Also the Endless Knot podcast: http://www.alliterative.net/podcast http://www.alliterative.net/podcast

codeflo 5y ago

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 https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/imaginary

DanielDe 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    And "fancy" still retains some links to "fantastic" and "fantasy", as in "fancy dress" or "flight of fancy".
  - StavrosK 5y ago
    "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).
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  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.

ineptech 5y ago

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.

harimau777 5y ago

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)

JackFr 5y ago

“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 5y ago
That's a good one. I like it. However, although Wiktionary gives the etymology of "grime" as "from Proto-Germanic grīmô (“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 gʰrēy- (“to paint, streak, smear”), from gʰer- (“to rub, stroke”)", which is also the origin of "Christ", but the latter goes back to "Proto-Indo-European gʰrem- (“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.
- randomswede 5y ago
  More importantly, Odin is clearly The One (at least if we trust out Slavic friends). Stick that in your non-Asgardian pipe and smoke it, Neo!

DanielBMarkham 5y ago

Related: I've been listening to the History of English podcast. If this kind of content is your thing, it's highly recommended.

Tagbert 5y ago

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/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/

SamBam 5y ago

> 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 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cancer#Latin

DanielDe 5y ago
Ah yes, I think you're right, I got that backwards! I'll update the post, thank you!
canjobear 5y ago
Relatedly, "cycle", "wheel", "circle", and "chakra" are all from the same Indo-European root via different languages.
- jeofken 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    All those words derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *kwel- : https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel-

russellbeattie 5y ago

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 5y ago
Whaaat? That's crazy, thanks for that!
stevula 5y ago
Skipping through several stages of English and French, the derivation is: male < Latin masculus < mas “male (animal)” female < Latina femella < femina “woman” masculus and femella are diminutives of mas and femina respectively.
- russellbeattie 5y ago
  I think the key bit is that "fe-" is not some sort of prefix, but part of a totally different word that had its spelling changed for consistency. This is unlike the "wo-" in woman, which in fact a prefix originally meaning "wife". Weirdly, English got "man" from Old German (meaning a person), but "human" from the Latin "homo", so just like female, the "hu-" in human isn't a prefix either, but derived from a totally different word. Then again, "man" extends back to proto-Indo- European, so maybe it's all related regardless.

tboyd47 5y ago

One of the more interesting ones I've come across lately: France - frank (being unencumbered in speech) - franchise (the right to vote)

schoen 5y ago
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-ciavón ("Slav"), from Latin Sclavonia (“Slavonia”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ciao#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slave#English 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/slov%C4%9Bnin%D1%8A https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s...
- ajuc 5y ago
  > 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 "słowo" is "word" and "słowianin" 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 5y ago
    The Wiktionary quick summary of why it's disputed is one researcher's assertion that "slověne can't be formed from slovo because -ěninъ, -aninъ only occurs in derivations from place names". (Maybe słowianin < slověninъ 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/Paronymic_attraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology#Productive_forc... 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.

schoen 5y ago

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/ 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 5y ago
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. преображение = transfiguration (pre-obrazhenie, pere = through, obraz = image) Богородица = Θεοτόκος (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 5y ago
  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 (ἀνά-στασις → re-surrectio, ὑπό-στασις -> sub-stantia, and non-religious συμ-πάθεια → com-passio).
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    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 евангелии - 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.

decuran 5y ago

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 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 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that you can't have devastate in they list without mentioning waste.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> It comes from Latin vanus, meaning "empty". More obvious with the "in vain" meaning Fun fact: the Latin word for "in vain" is frustra.

mikelward 5y ago

https://youtu.be/ZAsNO9eXLgM 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.

KoftaBob 5y ago

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!

AndrewOMartin 5y ago

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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/stationer

noncoml 5y ago

kimono and winter

mkl 5y ago
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&lpg=PA115&dq=kimono+winter+related+etymology&source=bl&ots=ZFknswAqkN&sig=ACfU3U3ZmPr_pl_OGGaJ1tM-2law5gYmlg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifgav1x5DxAhWXYisKHcZFDaEQ6AEwFXoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=kimono%20winter%20related%20etymology&f=false https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=QQovEeLHVl0C&pg=PA115&lp...
spoondan 5y ago
Kimono is 着物 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 食べ物 is food (eat-thing), nomimono 飲み物 is a beverage (drink-thing), tatemono 建物 is a building (build-thing), kudamono 果物 is fruit (reward-thing; the Japanese word for “to fruit” being related to the verb for achieving, similar to English “come to fruition”).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

junar 5y ago

I'd nominate "casual" and "cadaver". The Latin cadō 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".

captaincrowbar 5y ago

My favourite example of apparently unrelated words with an unexpected common root: "government" and "cybernetics" both come from the Greek "kubernetes" (helmsman).

kortex 5y ago
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 *pH₂tér)
- asveikau 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - deleted 5y ago

Grustaf 5y ago

Etymology is to linguistics what pyrotechnics are to chemistry, a gateway drug.

aatharuv 5y ago

Yoga (Sanskrit) and yoke (English). Yoga literally means union and is derived from a prefix yuj meaning to attach, join, harness, yoke.

xefer 5y ago

"cannabis" and "hemp" https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/107526 https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/107526

iib 5y ago

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.

carlob 5y ago

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 5y ago
Unfortunately, this isn't correct according to my sources -- Italian anno < Latin annus < PIE h₂t-nó-s from a root h₂t- "to go", while ano < Latin anus < PIE *h₁eh₂no- "ring".
- carlob 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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/annual https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anus https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anus https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/anus https://www.etymonline.com/word/anus
- stevula 5y ago
  The existence of Gothic aþnam (athnam) “years (dative)” and Oscan “akno-“ [1] strongly suggests the presence of a consonant in there, which supports the separate root theory. 1. https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual https://www.etymonline.com/word/annual

JW_00000 5y ago

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 5y ago
Also the mathematical term "surjection", a mapping that is "over" its codomain, so covers all of it.

stakkur 5y ago

https://www.etymonline.com/ https://www.etymonline.com/

causality0 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Ah, so they did indeed use the same letter for two distinct sounds. Makes sense, thanks!
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      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.)

gfaure 5y ago

"suture" and "sutra" are cognates in Latin and Sanskrit respectively. A sutra सूत्र is literally a thread or fibre. This also explains why it was calqued into Chinese as 經 (among other meanings, "weave"). Similarly, "joust" and "juxtapose" are cognates via French and neo-Latinate French respectively (ultimately from iūxtā, 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 5y ago
Beyond the etymologies, I learned what a calque is from your comment, so thanks for that.

dnautics 5y ago

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.

jolmg 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  thanks, edited.
xiaq 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#East_Asian_tradition 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 (范寧), 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.

Sharlin 5y ago

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.

dang 5y ago

Ikura in sushi restaurants always makes me think of ikra (икра), 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=ikura&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=икра&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=икра&tbm=isch

junar 5y ago
Japanese borrowed it from Russian. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9-30248 https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9-30248
- dang 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    It maybe makes a bit more sense when you consider 'икра' doesn't just mean caviar but alsо fish roe in general and is also applied even more broadly in entirely fishless things like 'икра балкажанная'
dnh44 5y ago
It's also ikra in Romanian.

kortex 5y ago

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 pH₂tér 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_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dhghem-?ref=etymonline_cros... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamah

stevula 5y ago
Why would one of baby’s first/simplest words be something so abstract as “person” (=man) instead of “food” or “milk”?

dustractor 5y ago

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.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> 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.

dhosek 5y ago

On the flip side, miniature and minimum are etymologically unrelated.

jlos 5y ago

My favourite is idiot and idiomatic, both coming from the word ἴδιος - literally meaning one's own. While idiot usually implies someone lacking intelligence, an ῐ̓δῐώτης (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 5y ago
This might be more of a modern reanalysis based on etymology. The sense development in Greek was apparently more like “private (non-political) person” > ”layperson” > “ignorant” > “stupid”.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

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/ https://www.wordsense.eu/norsu/

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
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.!
- StavrosK 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    He means "indigenous" words that evolved along with the rest of the language rather than being adopted from another language.
    - StavrosK 5y ago
      Right, but Greek fits that description. Three languages in Europe have a native word for elephant.
      - 5y ago

namenotrequired 5y ago

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).

shever73 5y ago

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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/shit#etymonline_v_45328

meristohm 5y ago

I listened to The Blindboy Podcast episode “Manchán 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/id1300577518?i=1000496303922 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blindboy-podcast/i... [1] Library link: https://www.worldcat.org/title/thirty-two-words-for-field-lost-words-of-the-irish-landscape/oclc/1227875558&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/thirty-two-words-for-field-lo...

int_19h 5y ago

Etymologies of various profanities and swearwords can be fun to look up. Not so much in English, but it's kinda amazing how many Slavic swearwords still have recognizable proto-Indo-European roots in them.