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The study of the history of words including their origins and the changes they've undergone through time.
10
votes
Accepted
Why should etymology stop where it does?
You are essentially asking two questions:
Why aren't there etymologies for an English word going back to Ancient Egyptian?
This question is easily answered: Because such words are rare beasts and …
1
vote
Practical ways to verify etymology
Probably the closest match to your requirements is the following resource Proto-Indo-European Lexicon hosted by FIN-CLARIN. It provides a detailed chain of sound shifts for known cognates.
It does no …
10
votes
What is the Proto-Indo-European root word for electricity?
Its etymology is not really well-established. …
8
votes
Etymology of a word "Egg" in different languages
The entry has an etymology section, and the next stop by is Proto-Indogermanic root *h₂ōwyóm. … It has an internal possible etymology in the proto-language, and, most relevant to the question, a section of descendants. …
0
votes
Determining the Age of a Word
As you already sketched out, it is a difficult question. Usually (e.g., in the OED) the age of a word in a certain language is defined by its first attestation. This works well for the large part of v …
0
votes
Language origin of english words by usage
Once you have a satisfactory representative corpus, the rest is easy: pick a sample of enough (but not too many) words at random, determine their etymology, and count. …
7
votes
Accepted
Why do some (usually, first ones) ordinal numbers seem completely different from correspondi...
This question was indeed extensively studied in linguistic typology and a high level summary of results can be found in WALS chapter 53. It gives a good overview of possible systems of ordinal numbers …
3
votes
How come the Romanian verb for love iubi does not originate from the Latin iubeo
Besides the rather large semantic shift from "to command" to "to love", there is another argument against the derivation of Romanian iubi from Latin iubeo: Latin iubeo is an irregular verb having the …
4
votes
Accepted
Origin of the family name affix "tom"
Dutch tom is clearly cognate to High German zum which is a contraction of zu dem "to the". The German preposition zu can be used both in a static sense ("at") and in a directional sense ("to"). In Ger …
1
vote
Is there a link between the words red and bread?
The phenomenon you just rediscovered is termed "exceptionlessness of sound laws": Words that have some common sound structure in a proto-language (here Proto-Germanic) tend to keep that commonness whi …
1
vote
Are there clear exceptions to the alleged universality of "alphabet" as a term used in all l...
There exists the word "das Abece" (often written as Abc) as a Germanisation of alphabet in German, and it has some currency in elementary school teaching.
6
votes
Accepted
What is the the etymological origin of the name Calvin?
Calvin is indeed from the French, or further back from Latin calvus of the same meaning (cognate with calva skull as in "Calvary").
This epithet ended up becoming a family name. Family names in Europe …
2
votes
Einbilden vs. Imagine
No. The Latin prefix is in- and before a vowel, it remains unchanged, giving *in-ago > inigo. But this is a verb, and not a noun, and there is no way to derive the noun imago from that verb.
in- becom …
2
votes
Verner's Law and 'ge-'
Morphological levelling is the force working against Verner's law in this situation.
Note also that many forms with the ge- prefix may be created after Verner's law was active; there is a modern tren …
4
votes
Is there a term for the diminishment of intensity of meaning over time?
For the particular direction of semantic shift, I am aware of the term semantic bleaching. Semantic bleaching is part of the process of Grammaticalization.