5 ms·

Etymological Wordnet

73 points by polm23 5y ago

cesis 5y ago
I often have trouble with claimed cognate words without any references or analysis. This very often applies also to Wiktionary. E.g. even the given example - I would find it believable that "muscle" cognates with Latvian "miesa", Russian "мяса" and English "meat", but "mouse" seems sketchy.
- kian 5y ago
  I had a teacher in high school, specializing in ancient latin and greek, who told me about the musculus --> little mice connection. He was also a very strong Austrian -- to demonstrate the reason, he pulled up his shirt sleeve, made a classic bicep curl motion, and rotated his fist rapidly from inside to outside facing. It was pretty shocking to see the 'little mice' running under the 'covers' of the skin of his arm -- since then, I've never had trouble believing this particular hypothesis.
  - arnsholt 5y ago
    To add on this, musculus is not only an entirely regular diminutive derivation of mouse (mus + -culus) it's even the same pattern as is used for testicle: it's a small witness (testis, see also latinate English words like testify) of manhood.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      TIL: testis (n.) (plural testes), 1704, from Latin testis "testicle," usually regarded as a special application of testis "witness" (see testament), presumably because it "bears witness to male virility" [Barnhart]. Stories that trace the use of the Latin word to some supposed swearing-in ceremony are modern and groundless. https://www.etymonline.com/word/testis https://www.etymonline.com/word/testis
- johtso 5y ago
  This is my go to site for etymology https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle Has a good description of this derivation.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Yeah I usually cross-reference etymonline and wiktionary, and I can't recall anything too suspicious.
jamespwilliams 5y ago
I played with this data a while ago and made a little project which could plot graphs of the etymologies of words: https://github.com/jamespwilliams/etymology https://github.com/jamespwilliams/etymology. I was thinking of deploying it somewhere but never got around to it.
captaindiego 5y ago
Not really involved in the field, but this makes me wonder, would training deep neural nets first on root languages such as Latin and ancient Greece improve speed of learning subsequent languages that arose after? Essentially, make the steps that need to be learned between languages smaller, helping to bridge larger translation tasks between modern languages more quickly.
kevinpet 5y ago
I can't help getting annoyed at anything showing "unexpected etymology" that ignores key elements of the structure of words. Fledermaus isn't a cognate with mouse, it's that the German word for bat is "flying mouse" (compare English flying fox for a type of big fruit bat).
mzs 5y ago
This reminded me, there is more recent discussion than I was previously aware for the etymology of kobieta (Polish word for woman), an outlier in Slavic for a word that naively seems would be ancient. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/all-slavic-kobieta-woman-archaic-variants.3412301/#post-17433136 https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/all-slavic-kobieta-w...
wolverine876 5y ago
> The information is for the most part mined from Wiktionary. It's not a popular opinion here to criticize a star of the open Internet, but Wiktionary is not a reliable source of information (unless I misunderstand its provenance - it is crowd-sourced?). I love crowd-sourcing, but not for factual research. And this is how misinformation spreads - now someone builds another thing on top of Wiktionary. The core of the problem, however, is that the reliable sources of etymology, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, are not open and free. You can't just build a visualization of the relationships. Shame on the scholars for hiding the most precious, valuable treasures of civilization behind walls, when the miraculous opportunity finally came to share them with the world globally and freely (i.e., the Internet).
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago
  In my experience wiktionary is a pretty great+reliable source for word etymology. I've corrected a few things, but generally it gets it right faar more often than wrong, is good about citing sources, and it has an active + helpful community. It is pretty reliable in my experience for English/German/Latin/Chinese (in order of quantity of experience). Growing up in my dictionaries etymology always stopped at Greek/Latin/Old English, which is a shame in some ways. Having easy access to wiktionary to plumb the depths further back to older reconstructed languages is a treat :) Also many etymological resources are open/free - http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/ http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/ for instance. [disclaimer: I can't compare it to closed resources, and I don't work professionally with this data.]
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > In my experience wiktionary is a pretty great+reliable source for word etymology. I've corrected a few things, but generally it gets it right faar more often than wrong ... Serious question: How do you know if it's right or wrong? How do I know the Oxford English Dictionary is accurate? I trust it because experts trust it, because experts write it, and because it's had over a century to mature and it has retained its reputation for that long. Also, they show and cite actual quotes. > good about citing sources Ever check cites on Wikipedia? Many of them do not at all support what is written in the article.
danans 5y ago
I love deeply traced etymologies, but sometimes shallow etymologies are pretty interesting too, especially in very common words, for example: dog: http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/dog http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/dog bird: http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/bird http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/bird which can only be traced backed to Anglo-Saxon and have no deeper relatives in any known language.
bobcostas55 5y ago
I wanted to use this for a project but quickly discovered that it's quite limited. Just trying out a bunch of easy words often failed.

73 points by polm23 5y ago

I often have trouble with claimed cognate words without any references or analysis. This very often applies also to Wiktionary. E.g. even the given example - I would find it believable that "muscle" cognates with Latvian "miesa", Russian "мяса" and English "meat", but "mouse" seems sketchy.

kian 5y ago
I had a teacher in high school, specializing in ancient latin and greek, who told me about the musculus --> little mice connection. He was also a very strong Austrian -- to demonstrate the reason, he pulled up his shirt sleeve, made a classic bicep curl motion, and rotated his fist rapidly from inside to outside facing. It was pretty shocking to see the 'little mice' running under the 'covers' of the skin of his arm -- since then, I've never had trouble believing this particular hypothesis.
- arnsholt 5y ago
  To add on this, musculus is not only an entirely regular diminutive derivation of mouse (mus + -culus) it's even the same pattern as is used for testicle: it's a small witness (testis, see also latinate English words like testify) of manhood.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    TIL: testis (n.) (plural testes), 1704, from Latin testis "testicle," usually regarded as a special application of testis "witness" (see testament), presumably because it "bears witness to male virility" [Barnhart]. Stories that trace the use of the Latin word to some supposed swearing-in ceremony are modern and groundless. https://www.etymonline.com/word/testis https://www.etymonline.com/word/testis
johtso 5y ago
This is my go to site for etymology https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle https://www.etymonline.com/word/muscle Has a good description of this derivation.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Yeah I usually cross-reference etymonline and wiktionary, and I can't recall anything too suspicious.

jamespwilliams 5y ago

I played with this data a while ago and made a little project which could plot graphs of the etymologies of words: https://github.com/jamespwilliams/etymology https://github.com/jamespwilliams/etymology. I was thinking of deploying it somewhere but never got around to it.

captaindiego 5y ago

Not really involved in the field, but this makes me wonder, would training deep neural nets first on root languages such as Latin and ancient Greece improve speed of learning subsequent languages that arose after? Essentially, make the steps that need to be learned between languages smaller, helping to bridge larger translation tasks between modern languages more quickly.

kevinpet 5y ago

I can't help getting annoyed at anything showing "unexpected etymology" that ignores key elements of the structure of words. Fledermaus isn't a cognate with mouse, it's that the German word for bat is "flying mouse" (compare English flying fox for a type of big fruit bat).

mzs 5y ago

This reminded me, there is more recent discussion than I was previously aware for the etymology of kobieta (Polish word for woman), an outlier in Slavic for a word that naively seems would be ancient. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/all-slavic-kobieta-woman-archaic-variants.3412301/#post-17433136 https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/all-slavic-kobieta-w...

wolverine876 5y ago

> The information is for the most part mined from Wiktionary. It's not a popular opinion here to criticize a star of the open Internet, but Wiktionary is not a reliable source of information (unless I misunderstand its provenance - it is crowd-sourced?). I love crowd-sourcing, but not for factual research. And this is how misinformation spreads - now someone builds another thing on top of Wiktionary. The core of the problem, however, is that the reliable sources of etymology, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, are not open and free. You can't just build a visualization of the relationships. Shame on the scholars for hiding the most precious, valuable treasures of civilization behind walls, when the miraculous opportunity finally came to share them with the world globally and freely (i.e., the Internet).

jan_Inkepa 5y ago
In my experience wiktionary is a pretty great+reliable source for word etymology. I've corrected a few things, but generally it gets it right faar more often than wrong, is good about citing sources, and it has an active + helpful community. It is pretty reliable in my experience for English/German/Latin/Chinese (in order of quantity of experience). Growing up in my dictionaries etymology always stopped at Greek/Latin/Old English, which is a shame in some ways. Having easy access to wiktionary to plumb the depths further back to older reconstructed languages is a treat :) Also many etymological resources are open/free - http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/ http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/ for instance. [disclaimer: I can't compare it to closed resources, and I don't work professionally with this data.]
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > In my experience wiktionary is a pretty great+reliable source for word etymology. I've corrected a few things, but generally it gets it right faar more often than wrong ... Serious question: How do you know if it's right or wrong? How do I know the Oxford English Dictionary is accurate? I trust it because experts trust it, because experts write it, and because it's had over a century to mature and it has retained its reputation for that long. Also, they show and cite actual quotes. > good about citing sources Ever check cites on Wikipedia? Many of them do not at all support what is written in the article.

danans 5y ago

I love deeply traced etymologies, but sometimes shallow etymologies are pretty interesting too, especially in very common words, for example: dog: http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/dog http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/dog bird: http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/bird http://www.lexvo.com/info/eng/bird which can only be traced backed to Anglo-Saxon and have no deeper relatives in any known language.

bobcostas55 5y ago

I wanted to use this for a project but quickly discovered that it's quite limited. Just trying out a bunch of easy words often failed.