Interesting Etymologies

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby linguoboy » 2021-02-20, 16:51

Now that you’ve done all the research, you really should make the revisions!
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby schnaz » 2021-02-21, 13:01

Thanks Linguoboy and Linguaphile, for anyone who is wondering about Angolan languages here is what Wikipedia says:
"Portuguese is the only official language of Angola, but 46 other languages are spoken in the country, mostly Bantu languages. Ethnologue considers six languages to benefit of an institutional status in Angola: Portuguese, Chokwe, Kikongo, Kimbundu, Oshiwambo and Umbundu."
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby schnaz » 2021-02-26, 13:34

Linguoboy said:
Now that you’ve done all the research, you really should make the revisions!


You were referring to brother Linguaphile right?
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-03-05, 14:40

(pt-br) estanho - tin
(ga) stán - tin

Interestingly, rather than Irish getting it from Latin (which is what I usually assume when there are cognates between Irish and Portuguese), Latin got it from Proto-Celtic.
(pt-br)(ja) - Formerly Ciarán12

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby schnaz » 2021-03-10, 12:22

"" Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy."
https://youtu.be/4v8KEbQA8kw?si=3AnYFcwkGOzbsBqj

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-04-01, 6:24

Feisty goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root for 'fart', and partridge possibly comes from the other PIE root for 'fart'. Feist in English went from meaning 'fart' to 'stink' to 'small, aggressive dog'.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby linguoboy » 2021-04-09, 20:35

พิซซ่า, a Thai adaptation of the word "pizza", is slang for the crime of lèse majesté in Thailand. Section 112 is the part of the penal code which covers this crime and 1112 is the telephone number for a restaurant called The Pizza Company. (The Thai government has been known to apply this statute very draconianly so it doesn't surprise me that people would need a coded euphemism in order to avoid falling afoul of it.)
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby linguoboy » 2021-04-19, 21:13

I thought this was an interesting development: one of the common names of the bladder campion in Catalan seems to come from Latin cauliculum "little cabbage". However, instead of the expected development **colill, which you actually find in the standard language is colís and colitx.

These both have their roots in dialect forms. Catalan has a dialectal form of iotization affecting the Vulgar Latin medial clusters c'l, g'l, t'l, and ly (from prevocalic li and le). In Standard Catalan, these all yield /ʎ/, written ll. But in Balearic Catalan and an area of northeast Catalonia roughly coterminous with the Province of Girona, the outcome is /j/, which disappears next to /i/. So, for instance:

lentīcula > VL. lentīc'la > Standard lentilla, dial. llentia[*]

Similarly:

cauliculum > *colic'lu > /coˈlij/ > /cuˈli/.

The form colís is etymologically plural, but because it wasn't recognised as such (since is rare in native words but -ís is a relatively common suffix), it was reanalysed as a singular and a new analogical plural colissos was created. (The name of the plant most often occurs in the plural.)

A similar thing happened to colitx, which derives from a dialectal plural form found in the speech of Tarragona. Here /ʎs/ was affricated to [ʧ] and fell together with /ʧ/ from other sources (mostly borrowings from Spanish and Italian). Once again, it was taken for a singular form and the new plural colitxos derived from it.

In other varieties, yet another type of reanalysis happened: The medial /l/ was dissimilated to /n/ under the influence of existing conill "rabbit". (The flowers, though small, are white and fluffy, reminiscent of rabbit fur.) So now in contemporary Catalan, the forms colissos, colitxos, and conills are all current (alone with a couple dozen other variants).

[*] Note that there is a parallel development in Castilian whereby these same clusters yielded Old Spanish /ʒ/ in contrast to the /ʎ/ arising from ll. So lentīcula > VL. lentic'la > OSp. lenteja vs punctillum > puntillo.
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-06-21, 18:06

"From ខ្ចាត់ (khcat, “to separate, scatter”) with infixed -VN- (specializing)"

Khmer (km) កំចាត់ (kamcat) 'to force out, get rid of, exterminate, expel, shun'
Thai (th) กำจัด (gam-jàt) 'to eradicate, eliminate, exterminate, remove'
Thai (th) จำกัด (jam-gàt) 'to restrict, limit, be limited; (according to Teach Yourself Thai) Ltd.'

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Yasna » 2021-09-15, 18:26

"[Cathode] was coined in 1834 from the Greek κάθοδος (kathodos), 'descent' or 'way down', by William Whewell, who had been consulted by Michael Faraday over some new names needed to complete a paper on the recently discovered process of electrolysis. In that paper Faraday explained that when an electrolytic cell is oriented so that electric current traverses the "decomposing body" (electrolyte) in a direction "from East to West, or, which will strengthen this help to the memory, that in which the sun appears to move", the cathode is where the current leaves the electrolyte, on the West side: "kata downwards, `odos a way ; the way which the sun sets".

The use of 'West' to mean the 'out' direction (actually 'out' → 'West' → 'sunset' → 'down', i.e. 'out of view') may appear unnecessarily contrived. Previously, as related in the first reference cited above, Faraday had used the more straightforward term "exode" (the doorway where the current exits). His motivation for changing it to something meaning 'the West electrode' (other candidates had been "westode", "occiode" and "dysiode") was to make it immune to a possible later change in the direction convention for current, whose exact nature was not known at the time. The reference he used to this effect was the Earth's magnetic field direction, which at that time was believed to be invariant. He fundamentally defined his arbitrary orientation for the cell as being that in which the internal current would run parallel to and in the same direction as a hypothetical magnetizing current loop around the local line of latitude which would induce a magnetic dipole field oriented like the Earth's. This made the internal current East to West as previously mentioned, but in the event of a later convention change it would have become West to East, so that the West electrode would not have been the 'way out' any more. Therefore, "exode" would have become inappropriate, whereas "cathode" meaning 'West electrode' would have remained correct with respect to the unchanged direction of the actual phenomenon underlying the current, then unknown but, he thought, unambiguously defined by the magnetic reference. In retrospect the name change was unfortunate, not only because the Greek roots alone do not reveal the cathode's function any more, but more importantly because, as we now know, the Earth's magnetic field direction on which the "cathode" term is based is subject to reversals whereas the current direction convention on which the "exode" term was based has no reason to change in the future.

Since the later discovery of the electron, an easier to remember, and more durably technically correct (although historically false), etymology has been suggested: cathode, from the Greek kathodos, 'way down', 'the way (down) into the cell (or other device) for electrons'."
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-22, 15:48

(en) vindaloo is from (pt) (carne de) vinha d'alhos, pork in wine-and-garlic marinade.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-09-22, 21:20

Linguaphile wrote:(en) vindaloo is from (pt) (carne de) vinha d'alhos, pork in wine-and-garlic marinade.

It looks like there are many forms for the name of the original Portuguese dish. I'm kind of surprised I haven't brought this up more often. I guess vindaloo comes up even less often on the forum itself than on the Discord (and formerly Skype) chats.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby linguoboy » 2022-02-16, 23:03

In my head, I've always associated the adjective "histrionic" with the noun "hysteria". Turns out they have nothing to do with each other. "Histrionic" derives from Latin histriō "actor" and actually has the root meaning "pertaining to actors or acting"; the meaning of "overly dramatic" is secondary. "Hysteria" is, of course, derived from Greek ὑστέρα hystera "womb" and originates in the mistaken belief that possessing a uterus made one more likely to be excitable and overwrought. So the association is useful as a mnemonic but ultimately misleading.
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-17, 16:54

The word for 'dictionary' in several languages comes from the Arabic word قاموس‎ qāmūs. Apparently, in Arabic, this word originally meant 'ocean' and was borrowed from Ancient Greek ωκεανός okeanós, but the most comprehensive Arabic dictionary for nearly five centuries was (has been?) القاموس المحيط Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ 'The Surrounding Ocean', and قاموس‎ came to mean 'dictionary' rather than 'ocean'.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby linguoboy » 2022-02-17, 17:07

vijayjohn wrote:The word for 'dictionary' in several languages comes from the Arabic word قاموس‎ qāmūs. Apparently, in Arabic, this word originally meant 'ocean' and was borrowed from Ancient Greek ωκεανός okeanós, but the most comprehensive Arabic dictionary for nearly five centuries was (has been?) القاموس المحيط Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ 'The Surrounding Ocean', and قاموس‎ came to mean 'dictionary' rather than 'ocean'.

Huh. One of the most comprehensive Chinese dictionaries produced in the 20th century is named 辞海 or "word-sea". I wonder if there's any chance of a semantic loan or if it's just an obvious enough metaphor that it was hit upon completely independently.
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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-17, 17:19

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:The word for 'dictionary' in several languages comes from the Arabic word قاموس‎ qāmūs. Apparently, in Arabic, this word originally meant 'ocean' and was borrowed from Ancient Greek ωκεανός okeanós, but the most comprehensive Arabic dictionary for nearly five centuries was (has been?) القاموس المحيط Al-Qāmus al-Muḥīṭ 'The Surrounding Ocean', and قاموس‎ came to mean 'dictionary' rather than 'ocean'.

Huh. One of the most comprehensive Chinese dictionaries produced in the 20th century is named 辞海 or "word-sea". I wonder if there's any chance of a semantic loan or if it's just an obvious enough metaphor that it was hit upon completely independently.

I think there's some chance of a semantic loan, but the metaphor was not limited to these two dictionaries; rather, this was a common metaphor for dictionaries and encyclopedias in both the Islamic World and China. Since these parts of a world have a long history of being in direct contact with each other, it probably makes sense that they both share this metaphor.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Linguaphile » 2022-03-28, 17:59

I've been trying to trace the etymology of the Northern Saami word noavki, "vacuum cleaner," which most sources list as "unknown etymology". I therefore can't know for sure what the true etymology is, but I've found this:

noavki vacuum cleaner
noavkkuhit to vacuum
(no cognates with the same meaning in any language, not even other Saami languages)

are related to this word family in Northern Saami:
noavkut to eat slowly, to taste, to sip
noavkkastit to eat a little, to taste
noavkalit to eat quickly, to eat a large amount
noavkkádit to devour, to eat up completely

The Álgu Saami etymological database indicates that this word family is related to this word in Finnish:
noukkia to pick up something small

which is believed to be related to this word in Finnish:
nokkia to peck

which comes from Proto-Finnic:
*nokka beak, bill

So there you have it - a Northern Saami word for "vacuum cleaner" originating from a Proto-Finnic word meaning "beak".

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Naava » 2022-03-28, 18:47

Those words reminded me also of näykkiä and näykätä ("to nibble", the former describing a repeated action and the latter an action that happened only once). I couldn't find any etymology for either word in Wiktionary. Would you be able to find anything about them online, Linguaphile?

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby Linguaphile » 2022-03-28, 19:40

Naava wrote:Those words reminded me also of näykkiä and näykätä ("to nibble", the former describing a repeated action and the latter an action that happened only once). I couldn't find any etymology for either word in Wiktionary. Would you be able to find anything about them online, Linguaphile?

Not exactly, but in Estonian there's this, probably related to the Finnish words:

näkkama/näkkima/näkitsema to nibble
näksama/näksima to graze

And in Võro:
nähkitsämmä/nikitsemä to nibble
näksämä/näkśmä/näpśmä/nipśmä to graze

The Estonian etymological dictionary says they are sound-driven stems (häälikuliselt ajendatud tüvid) or in other words of onomatopoeic origin, and suggests that they may be related to other onomatopoeic stems such as those in naksama (to snap), nõksuma (to jerk), and täkkima (to make cuts or marks, to score).
The high number and type of vowel and consonant variations in the stem (näyk-/näkk-/nähk-/nik-/näks-/näps-/nips-) tend to suggest an onomatopoeic origin, too.

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Re: Interesting Etymologies

Postby mōdgethanc » 2022-03-30, 6:02

linguoboy wrote:พิซซ่า, a Thai adaptation of the word "pizza", is slang for the crime of lèse majesté in Thailand. Section 112 is the part of the penal code which covers this crime and 1112 is the telephone number for a restaurant called The Pizza Company. (The Thai government has been known to apply this statute very draconianly so it doesn't surprise me that people would need a coded euphemism in order to avoid falling afoul of it.)
It took me a minute to figure out how this word said /ts/ in the middle and not /ss/ until I remembered that written /s/ is /t/ at the end of a syllable in Thai. I wonder if it's spelled with the same letter twice to mimic the <zz> in the middle. If so that's a neat trick.

Another word this reminded me of is how the Thai name for English is อังกฤษ, which is /ʔaŋ˧.krit̚˨˩/ but written with the last letter being meant for historical /ɕ/. This sound doesn't exist in Thai anymore (or maybe it never did) and this letter is normally read /s/. This letter also doesn't normally come at the end of a syllable and as far as I know this word has never been pronounced with /ɕ/, but it's spelled as if it did because of the English pronunciation. Thai does this with other modern borrowings, I think. Kind of neat IMO. It's like how English and other languages have <ph>, <ch> and <rh> etc. in words from Greek for no reason other than etymology.

(I tried to learn Thai script last summer. I wouldn't say I was successful, but it sure was interesting.)
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