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It's quite funny imo that someday english people were like "forget about latin or german, greek is lit! Let's use greek"
by yard2010 2y ago
It's quite funny imo that someday english people were like "forget about latin or german, greek is lit! Let's use greek"
- laurent_du 2y agoWhat makes you think it was the English? I am pretty sure it comes from continental Europe.
- cgio 2y agoLatin is lemniscus, so someday Latin people were like “let’s use Greek”
- dmurray 2y agoLatin writers have been like "let's use Greek" at least since Virgil, so modern writers can be excused for getting their roots mixed up.
- rsynnott 2y agoA healthy mixture was always preferred in maths and science. This is occasionally taken to extremes; the name reverse transcriptase, an enzyme used by retroviruses, is a combo of English, Latin and Greek! Arabic is also popular, particularly in maths.
- xanderlewis 2y agoIs it? I can only think of (the very frequently noted) ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithm’.
- nicwilson 2y agoazimuth is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head
- dredmorbius 2y agoYou'll find "zenith" at your feet.
- samatman 2y agoYou're thinking of nadir, also Arabic. The zenith is in the opposite direction.
- dredmorbius 2y agoGah! So much for my wit.
- rsynnott 2y agoAlso ‘zero’, and ‘cipher’ (which, oddly, derive from the same word). And ‘average’. There are a few of them.
- dizhn 2y agoNot math but I just learned alkali is the word for "ash" in Arabic.
- xanderlewis 2y agoInteresting. I'm not sure we can really call these arabic-derived, though. They do seem to ultimately trace back to fairly unrelated arabic words, but their first use in mathematics (much later) seems to have come in the form of a mixture of words from European languages. The two examples I gave seem to be more legitimately Arabic in origin.
- ajmurmann 2y agoDolphin, music (from muse), logic, ethics, physics, mathematics, pharmacy, angel, comedy, drama. The list of Greek loan words that are shared by many European languages goes on and on Edit: I think almost every word with "ph" in it is from Greek and "th" in languages other than English.
- dudeinjapan 2y agoAnd “alcohol”, frequently consumed at science and math conferences
- Sharlin 2y ago"Alcohol" has a very interesting etymology, too.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoAs others have said, there are a few celestial terms that come to mind: - azimuth - zenith - nadir Also some chemistry terms, again just from top of brain, might be wrong: - alchemy - elixir - arsenic - alkali
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xanderlewis 2y agoNadir always seemed very obviously Arabic to me. Weirdly, I first encountered it in a book on category theory, and only after that did I start to hear it used in everyday English to mean the opposite of 'apex'.
- samatman 2y agoIt's the opposite of zenith, another word ultimately derived from Arabic. The difference between an apex and a zenith is that an apex exists as a point in space, while a zenith is a direction, with no fixed point which may be said to be "the" zenith. There are other differences given that apex has a few related meanings, but this is the main one.
- xanderlewis 2y agoAh, yes. I knew it wasn’t quite the right word.
- pfdietz 2y agoSofa!
- flobosg 2y ago> Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device. ―C. P. Scott
- jjtheblunt 2y agoThe sheriff says "hold my beer".
- mikhailfranco 2y agoA funny false or convergent etymology - shire reeve not sharif. Here's another false trail from a real conversation: Q: What US state's name comes from the title of an Arabic ruler? A: Al Abama? Of course, the correct answer is California from Khalifa transliterated through a Spanish novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Las_Sergas_de_Esplandi%C3%A1n_origin_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California#Las_Se... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia
- ajmurmann 2y agoDon't most European languages use Landis loan words from both Latin and Greek? Both used to be taught in classical education.
- msravi 2y agoWhy stop at greek or arabic when you can go all the way to sanskrit? The words for sine and cosine derive from the sanskrit jiva (meaning bowstring, i.e., the chord of a circle)[1]. Sine and cosine were respectively jya and koti-jya, which got transcribed into arabic without the vowel (where it meant nothing). They then pronounced the vowel in the wrong place, calling it jeb (which meant pocket or fold in arabic)[2]. Then this wrong word got translated into latin as sinus (fold), and hence we have sine and cosine! 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jy%C4%81,_koti-jy%C4%81_and_utkrama-jy%C4%81 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jy%C4%81,_koti-jy%C4%81_and_... 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_and_cosine#Etymology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_and_cosine#Etymology
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThe wikipedia link has this occurring in the 12th century. But Hellenistic astronomers were already working with sine tables. What did they call the concept?