Questions tagged [etymology]
The study of the history of words including their origins and the changes they've undergone through time.
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Is "alpha-" and "-bet", in the word "alphabet", related to the first two letters "A" (alpha) and "B" (beta)? [closed]
I was reading the book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick.
Towards the beginning (third paragraph) of chapter three, titled Two Wordbooks, the author writes -
The alphabet, ...
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Languages where the word for addict references submission
I noticed in Dutch the word for "addict" includes the word "slave". Namely "verslaafde" wherein "slaaf" is slave. One might say the word as a whole suggests ...
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How did خشاب become the Persian word for magazine?
In Iran magazine (in a gun) is called خشاب (kheshab). I tried to find a relation to another language but I failed.
The only thing I found is that خشب (khashb) means wood in Arabic.
In Arabic magazine ...
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What's the correct etymology of Benin?
From etymonline:
former West African kingdom, from the Bini people, whose name is perhaps related to Arabic bani "sons."
From Wikipedia article for Edo people:
The name "Benin" (...
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Why does old english niman from PGmc *nemaną, have "i"?
Why does old english niman from PGmc *nemaną, have "i" ?
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Is it a coincidence that both Italian and German use third person feminine pronouns for formal second-person address?
In both Italian and German, the third person feminine pronouns ("lei" and "Sie," respectively) also serve as the formal second person pronoun.
Etymologically, is it a coincidence ...
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What recent (since 2014) work is there on the origin of the Indo-European 1st person singular nominative ego (etc.)?
I have an article by Hamp from 2011 and one by Blažek from 2014, but need to know if there is anything more recent, so I can cite it in an article that needs to be finished yesterday.
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Is Etruscan zivas "to live" a borrowing from some IE language?
The Etruscan zivas looks similar to PIE *gʷih₃wós and its decendants, like Greek zōós, Latin vīvus, Proto-Italic and Proto-Hellenic *gʷīwos. Is it known to be a borrowing from an IE language?
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Why is "knife" in Ukrainian different from other Slavic languages?
I saw this image on reddit, and it made me wonder why the way Ukrainians say "knife" is different from all other Slavic languages?
Is this part of a more general trend ("i" ...
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Evolution of the sense of Logos
So this term has had a lot of impact religiously and philosophically, yet I still do not understand why logos as discourse or word was taken by Stoics and Platonists as some divine principle and by ...
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The Origin of the Word 'Mammoth' [closed]
As per the Wiktionary article the origin of the world is Russian:
From obsolete Russian ма́мант (mámant), modern ма́монт (mámont), probably from a Uralic language, such as Proto-Mansi *mē̮ŋ-ońt (“...
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How certain is the Latin origin of Albanian ”gënjej” (to lie) from Latin (ingannō<ganniō)?
Albanian word gënjej ("to lie") is considered to be of Latin origin — from Vulgar Latin ingannō, from Latin ganniō... These are the only details I could find. Wiktionary gives no scholarly ...
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Could the Romanian gând/gândi (thought/think) be ultimately of Latin and/or Albanian origin?
A gândi is in modern Romanian the common/main form of the verb "to think", based on the noun gând ("thought"). It is considered of Hungarian origin, from "gond".
I don't ...
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In PIE, what was the function of the suffix *-(ō)l?
For example, in the word:
*H₃nóbʰ-ōl / *H₃ómbʰ-l̥ "navel" (Wiktionary: Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₃nóbʰōl)
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Does the word "mi" mean anything by itself in finnish?
Starting to learn finnish, I have noticed lots of question words in finnish all start with the syllable "mi": mika, mista, missa, miten ...
Does "mi" mean anything by itself, or is ...
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What influenced the fact in almost all European languages the word human "man" means a male?
Why "werman" (OldEnglish man as male) became simply Man (human) and "wifman" (OldEnglish man as female) became woman?
Man in English (man, human)
Homme in French (man, human)
Mann ...
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Similar and cognate words between Swedish and Iranian are related to which historical era?
I have been studying languages and history for more than thirty years but I am still in surprise how some of Indo-European languages that has separated thousands years ago from each other still ...
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Is it reasonable to connect the Old Persian/Avestan word for "garden" with the Greek word?
The Old Persian/Avestan word for "garden/orchard" is bustan/bostan. On the surface, this word looks very similar to the Greek term botane, which means the same thing (and is clearly the ...
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Why does πεντάμορφη mean "beautiful"? [closed]
How does "five-formed / five-shaped", πεντάμορφη, mean "beautiful"?
Such that it's used as in translation of "Beauty and the Beast" movie titles, and accepted by Google ...
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Was the word 'vehicle' first used as a concrete noun or as an abstract noun?
So I recently learned that the word 'vehicle' was first used in the 1650s and that got me thinking about the way in which it was first used, and whether this use would've been literal or metaphorical. ...
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Etymological link between “govern” and “born”
So my question is two-fold. Specific and more general.
I was doing some genealogy research and I was trying to read some Yiddish (I don’t understand Yiddish), and I thought a line said a certain ...
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Are the Croatian word "radije" (rather) and English word "rather" related?
The Croatian word "radije" means "rather". Is it related to English "rather"? On one hand, it seems that they can't be, as the Croatian 'd' (in "radije") ...
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Is morphology of English mostly done by its etymology?
I have the following observations and not sure if they are correct.
Whenever I want to learn about the morphology of a word in English, e.g. the affixes and root of the word, my search on the ...
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What is the origin of the turkish word for cannibal, yamyam? [closed]
Someone posted a screenshot of a google translation of the word cannibal on a social network site. It seems to translate to yamyam in Turkish. I found that both funny and bizarre at first and am ...
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In the words "repress" "pressure" "oppression," etc, why is one of the root component "per"?
According to etymonline, definition (4) of "per", this root component formed words such as "repress," "express," etc. Except none of these words have "per" in ...
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How can a language-learner determine the root, prefix, and suffix of a word in English, if they know its language of origin?
Many English vocabulary-building books (for example, Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Builder, Word Power Made Easy) break the meaning of words down into three pieces: prefix + root + suffix.
On the website ...
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Do the English words “dear”, “darling” etc share a root with Russian дорогой?
The Russian has an unclear etymology. Is there a phonological reason why it can’t be from a Germanic root? Wiktionary says the Germanic root (‘diurijaz‘) is also uncertain and might come from Latin “...
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Are PIE *bal and *welH- related?
Has anyone compared eg. Bhumibol - title of Thailand's monarch, derived from Sanskrit - and oblast - a Slavic noun related to rule and governance, vb. *voldati "to rule, to reign, to govern"?...
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Can these similarities between PIE and Burushaski be explained?
We have:
English PIE Burushaski
brown bʰerH-om baard-um
tongue dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s juŋus
warm gʷʰer-om gar-um
pair kʷeth₂ kaat
fire péh₂wr̥ pʰu
...
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Origin of ratchasap/ราชาศัพท์ phenomenon in Thai and/or Tai-kadai languages
I am attempting to trace the origin of "rachasap" (Thai: ราชาศัพท์; Lao: ລາດຊະຊັບ).
What is "rachasap"?
Rachasap is an entire body of words that are used with deity, royalty, or ...
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Semantic drift between wood, fire-wood and fire
Following the discussion about question related, because comments aren't intended for extended discussion: Can you provide research to corroborate that It is known that in Australian languages the ...
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Besides Indo-Pacific and Australian languages does anywhere "firewood" semantically develop to "fire"?
It is known that in Australian languages the word for "tree" developed into "firewood" and then to "fire". I wonder if this development typical?
Particularly, could PIE *...
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What explains the relationship between the words "flower" and "world"?
In Serbian the words "svet" (world) and "cvet" (flower) are very similar.
In Hungarian the words are "vilag" (world) and "virag" (flower).
I found this an ...
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Greek root in Latin: Greek ekleiptikos became Latin eclīpticus
How come it's lip and not leip? The English word eclipsis is derived from the Latin eclīpticus, of an eclipse, which is in turn from Greek ekleiptikos, from ekleipein, to fail to appear; Ancient Greek ...
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Is there a Slavic equivalent of the Greek and Latin semantic transfer from "chest/vault" to "treasure", like θησαυρός/thesaurus?
I was looking at the etymology of the Romanian word comoară ("treasure", "hoard", "pile of precious things") and it seems based on the widespread Slavic form komora, ...
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Possible influence of Phoenician on local dialects in the British Isles during the Iron Age
I'm very interested in the possible influence of Phoenician, specifically, on local dialects in the British Isles during the Iron Age. I'm curious about any historical and linguistic evidence that may ...
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Is PIE weyh₁ (to hunt, persecute) somehow related to PIE weyk (to separate, to select for sacrifice)
I am amateurishly passionate about etymologies (especially of my native Romanian) but more seriously interested in the anthropological theories of René Girard and Walter Burkert, which both ...
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Etymology of Kalb/Canis
Dog is in :
*Indo European languages
Latin/Roman Languages
Latin: canis
Chien in French
Cane in Italian
cão in Portuguese
cane in corsican
câine in Romanian
Armenian
-շուն (shun) in Armenian
*...
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Are there many "lexical universals" like mama/papa - based on similar re-creation?
Reading the article "Where do mama/papa words come from?" by Larry Trask, linked in this answer (itself based on Roman Jakobson's 1959 article ‘Why “mama” and “papa”?’) we see that a ...
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Can it be that the etymology of the Balkan root for "tickle" stretches as far as Korean?
Some context first:
I am interested in the etymology of the Romanian word gâdila/gîdila ("to tickle; the â/î variation is only graphical: it's /ɨ/, the close central unrounded vowel which in ...
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What is the history of using the word "right" to describe something we deserve? [duplicate]
Some languages use a the same word to mean both "a fundamental right" and "the opposite of left". (English, German, French, Russian (as a calque from the German))
I am fascinated, ...
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Etymology of Persian city suffix +jand
City names in Iran and Central Asia, such as "Birjand" in Iran and "Khujand" in Tajikistan end with "jand" suffix.
The first idea that comes to my mind is that it might ...
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Connections between how unrelated words derived from the same root meaning
From re: constructions
The word "martyr" comes originally from the ancient Greek legal term
for "witness", for someone who gives testimony or evidence in a court
of law.
In ...
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Examples of languages that lost auxiliary verbs [duplicate]
I've been looking around and haven't found any examples of languages that at one point in the past had auxiliary verbs but then later lost them. I know that both the Germanic and Romance languages ...
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Where does the word 'Aranyam' (Sanskrit) derive from?
Aranyam basically means a forest / jungle.
Where does the word 'Aranyam' (Sanskrit) derive from?
Background
I searched online but couldn't find any references for the word except a Hungarian word ...
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Origin for specific letters used in Swahili for tenses
The photo above shows the conjugations for past,present,and future & positive vs. negative. To change tense/polarity, you add a specific set of letters(such as, for future positive, "ta")...
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What's the official term for when the verb inverts or flips its Thematic Roles?
Luke Sawczak referred to "the other way around", as switching places.
Interestingly, in English, like and please appear to have switched places at some point in the past.
"This ...
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Is it not plausible that English "wraith" could be connected to Proto-Germanic "*wraith-" or its derivatives?
For wraith, OED has:
1510s, "ghost," Scottish, of uncertain origin. Weekley and Century Dictionary suggest Old Norse vorðr "guardian" in the sense of "guardian angel." ...
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English toponymy of ‘Wardle’ in Lancashire (near Rochdale) and ‘Wardle’ in Cheshire (near Nantwich)
I found on internet that the name of these two places comes from Old English ‘weard’ (watch) and ‘hyll’ (hill).
‘Wardle’ is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ‘Warhelle’ and as ‘Wardhul’ in ...
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Origin of the family name affix "tom"
During my mathematics research, I've come across the mathematician Tammo tom Dieck. I have never come across the family name affix "tom", neither Wiktionary nor light googling give me ...
