4 ms·

I saw a video claiming that Germanic words beginning with sn- all have to do with the nose. For example “snoop”, “snob”, “sniff”, “snarl”.

heikkilevanto 3y ago
Snow? Snap?
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  You went to too much effort; "snob" is unrelated to noses and so is "snoop". Snake, snare, and snack also come to mind.
  - kian 3y ago
    does a snob not turn up their nose? and a snoop is someone who sticks their nose in other people's business. a snake literally sees with its nose... a snare entraps anything that dares to stick its nose in it, and a snack is definitely something you'd smell with your nose (and flavor is mostly scent-based)
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      A snob is someone who makes shoes, otherwise known as a cobbler. You can't make the argument that words starting with sn- must have something to do with noses by reference to developments in the sense of a word that occurred many decades after the word was already current -- or by reference to developments in other parts of the language! By your standard, every word in every language "has to do with the nose".
      - kian 3y ago
        I never said they must have to do with noses. My argument would be more like sn- words are more likely than a random word-start to eventually take on a connotation to do with noses. In this sense, the development of word-senses after word-origination and with respect to developments in other parts of the language would be a fine argument. I think, sometimes, people are so focused on etymology that they lose sense of why words evolve in meanings over time. Tracing, for example, the genetics of various finches in the Galapagos, one might find a tree of ancestry and say that "this finch species came from this other, which in turn are derived from this common ancestor" (etymology for birds) -- and that this is why their beak is shaped in such and such a way (because of their ancestral tree). To do so, however, would be to lose sight of the larger picture -- there are a variety of ecological niches in the galapagos suitable to different beak shapes, and these shapes (like crab body form) have evolved again and again. The local ecology and niche structure determines a possibility space of beak shapes -- the specifics of which species was capable of competing within those niches as competition waxed and waned in each determines which species were most likely to evolve in which directions (or split and radiate into multiple beak shapes). We have no problem understanding this for birds -- why is it so hard to conceive of something similar for words? I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but if etymology and ancestry are paired concepts, what is the name of the word that means "why this word took on this sense", or "why this word stayed in the lexicon and evolved while this other word died out in usage"? The corollary to "evolutionary pressures" on words (and their semantics)?
        thaumasiotes 3y ago
        > My argument would be more like sn- words are more likely than a random word-start to eventually take on a connotation to do with noses. > In this sense, the development of word-senses after word-origination and with respect to developments in other parts of the language would be a fine argument. That is true, but your arguments above don't speak to this point. Those are just random flights of fancy dedicated to defending a false idea. For example, snake is older than the phenomenon in question, always started with sn-, and hasn't changed relevantly in meaning. By contrast, snack is generally believed to be an example of the sn-/nose correspondence. It's not because the concept was ever, or is now, related to noses, smells, or flavor. Rather, the connection is supposed to be that the mouth was viewed as part of the nose. (This makes a bit more sense as applied to animals than to humans.) A basic prerequisite to arguing that snob developed the sense it did because of the supporting parallel existence of the expressions "turn up your nose" or "look down your nose" would be to show that those expressions predated the development in snob. That part of the argument works fine; "turning up your nose" is a very old concept. You'd also hope that the developments in snob didn't make sense on their own terms, because in that case there would be nothing left to explain by reference to noses, and in the case of snob that hope would be disappointed. > I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but if etymology and ancestry are paired concepts, what is the name of the word that means "why this word took on this sense", or "why this word stayed in the lexicon and evolved while this other word died out in usage"? My sense is that there is not a general word for your first question, but it is viewed as an important phenomenon and there are words for particular types of sense development, whereas there is not a general word for your second question, there is also no related specific terminology, and the usual feeling is that the answer to questions of that form is essentially always "chance", or in evolutionary terms "drift". In fact, more 'study' has gone into your question than I think would have been wise. You might have heard about the theory of the "bear taboo", how the Indo-Europeans replaced the word for bear with euphemistic references to the features of bears. You can find people arguing for this theory with a straight face today, but in my view there are two major problems: (1) The word for bear was replaced in Germanic, Slavic, and Sanskrit. It was not replaced in Latin, Greek, or Persian; speakers of Spanish, French, and Farsi today are still going around referring to bears by their ancient proto-Indo-European root. (2) In medieval France, the native word for fox was replaced by the Germanic word renard. In this case, we know there wasn't a taboo, and we know the source of the new word; we still have the body of literature - the Reynard the Fox stories - that supplied the modern French noun. Do we know why common usage shifted? No; that's just a thing that sometimes happens. In English, the native word hound was replaced by dog, and we have no idea where the new word came from. But most native words for common objects did not change. But this means that the only evidence we have for the bear taboo - the shift in usage - doesn't actually support the theory. > Tracing, for example, the genetics of various finches in the Galapagos, one might find a tree of ancestry and say that "this finch species came from this other, which in turn are derived from this common ancestor" (etymology for birds) -- and that this is why their beak is shaped in such and such a way (because of their ancestral tree). > To do so, however, would be to lose sight of the larger picture -- there are a variety of ecological niches in the galapagos suitable to different beak shapes, and these shapes (like crab body form) have evolved again and again. One of Darwin's more important but less famous results from studying in the Americas was that tropical American plants more closely resembled temperate American plants than they did tropical old-world plants. This speaks directly to your point here, and labels it minor in comparison to the effect of common descent. That is not to say that the effect isn't there (we know it is), or that the relative importance is equal between biology and language development (we don't know, but we can be pretty confident that they're not literally the same). But languages, like biology, are characterized by quite a lot of stability, and this tends to limit the potential significance of any systematic force for change.

heikkilevanto 3y ago

Snow? Snap?

thaumasiotes 3y ago
You went to too much effort; "snob" is unrelated to noses and so is "snoop". Snake, snare, and snack also come to mind.
- kian 3y ago
  does a snob not turn up their nose? and a snoop is someone who sticks their nose in other people's business. a snake literally sees with its nose... a snare entraps anything that dares to stick its nose in it, and a snack is definitely something you'd smell with your nose (and flavor is mostly scent-based)
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    A snob is someone who makes shoes, otherwise known as a cobbler. You can't make the argument that words starting with sn- must have something to do with noses by reference to developments in the sense of a word that occurred many decades after the word was already current -- or by reference to developments in other parts of the language! By your standard, every word in every language "has to do with the nose".
    - kian 3y ago
      I never said they must have to do with noses. My argument would be more like sn- words are more likely than a random word-start to eventually take on a connotation to do with noses. In this sense, the development of word-senses after word-origination and with respect to developments in other parts of the language would be a fine argument. I think, sometimes, people are so focused on etymology that they lose sense of why words evolve in meanings over time. Tracing, for example, the genetics of various finches in the Galapagos, one might find a tree of ancestry and say that "this finch species came from this other, which in turn are derived from this common ancestor" (etymology for birds) -- and that this is why their beak is shaped in such and such a way (because of their ancestral tree). To do so, however, would be to lose sight of the larger picture -- there are a variety of ecological niches in the galapagos suitable to different beak shapes, and these shapes (like crab body form) have evolved again and again. The local ecology and niche structure determines a possibility space of beak shapes -- the specifics of which species was capable of competing within those niches as competition waxed and waned in each determines which species were most likely to evolve in which directions (or split and radiate into multiple beak shapes). We have no problem understanding this for birds -- why is it so hard to conceive of something similar for words? I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but if etymology and ancestry are paired concepts, what is the name of the word that means "why this word took on this sense", or "why this word stayed in the lexicon and evolved while this other word died out in usage"? The corollary to "evolutionary pressures" on words (and their semantics)?
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        > My argument would be more like sn- words are more likely than a random word-start to eventually take on a connotation to do with noses. > In this sense, the development of word-senses after word-origination and with respect to developments in other parts of the language would be a fine argument. That is true, but your arguments above don't speak to this point. Those are just random flights of fancy dedicated to defending a false idea. For example, snake is older than the phenomenon in question, always started with sn-, and hasn't changed relevantly in meaning. By contrast, snack is generally believed to be an example of the sn-/nose correspondence. It's not because the concept was ever, or is now, related to noses, smells, or flavor. Rather, the connection is supposed to be that the mouth was viewed as part of the nose. (This makes a bit more sense as applied to animals than to humans.) A basic prerequisite to arguing that snob developed the sense it did because of the supporting parallel existence of the expressions "turn up your nose" or "look down your nose" would be to show that those expressions predated the development in snob. That part of the argument works fine; "turning up your nose" is a very old concept. You'd also hope that the developments in snob didn't make sense on their own terms, because in that case there would be nothing left to explain by reference to noses, and in the case of snob that hope would be disappointed. > I'm probably showing my ignorance here, but if etymology and ancestry are paired concepts, what is the name of the word that means "why this word took on this sense", or "why this word stayed in the lexicon and evolved while this other word died out in usage"? My sense is that there is not a general word for your first question, but it is viewed as an important phenomenon and there are words for particular types of sense development, whereas there is not a general word for your second question, there is also no related specific terminology, and the usual feeling is that the answer to questions of that form is essentially always "chance", or in evolutionary terms "drift". In fact, more 'study' has gone into your question than I think would have been wise. You might have heard about the theory of the "bear taboo", how the Indo-Europeans replaced the word for bear with euphemistic references to the features of bears. You can find people arguing for this theory with a straight face today, but in my view there are two major problems: (1) The word for bear was replaced in Germanic, Slavic, and Sanskrit. It was not replaced in Latin, Greek, or Persian; speakers of Spanish, French, and Farsi today are still going around referring to bears by their ancient proto-Indo-European root. (2) In medieval France, the native word for fox was replaced by the Germanic word renard. In this case, we know there wasn't a taboo, and we know the source of the new word; we still have the body of literature - the Reynard the Fox stories - that supplied the modern French noun. Do we know why common usage shifted? No; that's just a thing that sometimes happens. In English, the native word hound was replaced by dog, and we have no idea where the new word came from. But most native words for common objects did not change. But this means that the only evidence we have for the bear taboo - the shift in usage - doesn't actually support the theory. > Tracing, for example, the genetics of various finches in the Galapagos, one might find a tree of ancestry and say that "this finch species came from this other, which in turn are derived from this common ancestor" (etymology for birds) -- and that this is why their beak is shaped in such and such a way (because of their ancestral tree). > To do so, however, would be to lose sight of the larger picture -- there are a variety of ecological niches in the galapagos suitable to different beak shapes, and these shapes (like crab body form) have evolved again and again. One of Darwin's more important but less famous results from studying in the Americas was that tropical American plants more closely resembled temperate American plants than they did tropical old-world plants. This speaks directly to your point here, and labels it minor in comparison to the effect of common descent. That is not to say that the effect isn't there (we know it is), or that the relative importance is equal between biology and language development (we don't know, but we can be pretty confident that they're not literally the same). But languages, like biology, are characterized by quite a lot of stability, and this tends to limit the potential significance of any systematic force for change.