It's the wording that usually bugs people
What is the etymology of the word "moke"? My husband asked why it is pronounced "moch" rather than "mo-keh" like Hawaiian words. I didn't have an answer so naturally I'm turning to Reddit. I also don't have a copy of Pidgin to da Max handy, otherwise I'd look it up. Mahalo! 🤙
The slavic word for a spider has in my opinion an interesting etymology . In modern languages/dialects the word is to my understanding completely unmotivated but in the common slavic period it looks like the word was largely motivated. So lets see:
Russian: пау́к (paúk)
Ukrainian: паву́к (pavúk)
Old russian:паукъ (paukъ)
Czech: pavouk
Polish: pająk
Slovak: pavúk
Slovenian: раjоk, раjek, раvоk
Neoshtokavian.: pȁūk
Kajkavian (Bednja): paumuk
Old Church Slavonic: paǫkъ
Based on this info we can reconstruct the common slavic word paǫkъ. This is a derivative made from the prefix pa- and ǫkъ.
Pa- is a prefix found in many words in the slavic speaking world and it's used to describe something secondary, false, different, bad, an imitation of sth., sth. which is not original etc.
The word ǫkъ on the other hand would mean "a hook" and comes from the same indoeuropean root (*h3enk-os) as the greek word ὄγκος (same meaning), latin uncus (meaning curved), old indian aŋkás (bend, hook).
Therefore it looks like the spider got its name because of the shape of its legs. The motivation is thus clear. The slavs were perhaps joking that the spider has false, fake hooks instead of legs and after some time it became the "prototypical" name for a spider (perhaps even replacing some pre-protoslavic word for a spider?). A somewhat similar example can be found in french. The word tête (a head) comes ultimately from the latin word testa (literally brick, pot, jug). So at first they must have been jokingly calling the head a brick and after a while it became the norm (after the motivation disappeared?).
As a source for the etymology and examples I used Vasmer's and Skok's etymological dictionaries and http://hjp.znanje.hr/index.php?show=search_by_id&id=eV9lXBc%3D
What are some similiar and funny etymologies you know?
One of the more widely accepted theories on the origins of ketchup is in a fermented fish sauce-like condiment from the southeastern coast of China. In the city of Amoy (Xiamen), Fujian Province, and the surrounding areas of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, where the Southern Min Chinese language of Hokkien is spoken, it was called 鮭汁 kûe-tsiap or kê-tsiap.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, large scale migration of Hokkien-speaking Chinese started to occur throughout various parts of Southeast Asia. Of note is that this also included large scale migration of (Hokkien-speaking) ethnic Chinese to Taiwan, where it is still widely spoken to this day. Most notably is the Hokkien-speaking communities in the Malay archipelago, which spread the sauce and incorporated the term into the Malay language as something like kecap or kicap (the 'c' sounding like an English 'ch').
Around this time the Dutch colonized the same area, picking up the idea and bringing it back to Europe. This later spread to the English, who called it either ketchup or catsup, and continued on to the US. During this time, the fermented fish had gradually fallen out of use and had been replaced by things like mushrooms, and finally tomatoes!
The English word/American sweetened-tomato form of ketchup was then spread to Japan, who rendered it kechappu. In the late 1800s until the 1940s, the island of Taiwan was a Japanese colony, with the majority of its inhabitants still speaking Hokkien. During this time the Japanese word kechappu was borrowed back into Taiwanese Hokkien and rendered as khe-tsiap-puh, completing a round-the-world trip of this condiment back to its original language.
In English, "horse" is slang for heroin, but I have no idea what the association is between the animal and the narcotic. What's more the Spanish word caballo, which means "horse" literally, also is slang for heroin in that language, and the correlation between the literal sense of the word and the slang sense is unclear. Any help in piecing together this puzzle would be great.
Hiya folks! So, I've been discussing with my dumb Italian Egyptologist friend the issue of the Latin and Greek forms of the word "Carthage", their route of transmission, the Punic/Phoenician form they were borrowed from, and the implications for the phonology of the languages in question.
So, to sum up what we've discussed:
The relevant attested forms are:
Phoenician: 𐤒𐤓𐤕𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 /qrtħdʃt/ (vocalism unclear, with a bazillion proposals scattered around the internet). One proposal that seems particularly popular is qart-ḥadašt, which as it turns out would have been pronounced (I think?) /qart ħadoːʃ(t)/ due to a stressed a -> ō shift that occurred.
Aramaic: ܩܪܬܐ ܚܕܬܐ /qarta ħdata/
Attic Greek: Καρχηδών /karkʰɛːdɔ̌ːn/
Hebrew: קרת חדשה /qeret ħadaʃah/ ?
Etruscan: *𐌂𐌀𐌓𐌈𐌀𐌆𐌀 (is this not actually attested? If so what is the reconstruction from?): /kɑrtʰɑt͡sɑ/
Latin: Carthāgō/Kartāgō /karˈt(ʰ)aːgɔː/, Carchēdōn (clearly a direct borrowing from Attic), Carthada /ˈkart(ʰ)ada/ (3rd century CE, possibly from the Aramaic?)
Now, here's the thing: we are confused about the situation with the Latin, Etruscan and Attic forms, especially when it comes to the consonants. According to Wiktionary, the borrowing went Phoenician -> Greek -> Etruscan -> Latin. However, this is problematic for a number of reasons, to the point that Egyptologist friend thinks that the Latin is directly borrowed from Phoenician.
The first issue is the notion that Latin borrowed from Etruscan - if the suggested Etruscan form is legit, the expected form in Latin should be carthassa. Why on earth is /t͡s/, which regularly becomes /ss/ in latin, becoming a g? Also, this doesn't explain the vowels at all - why is the penultimate syllable's ā long, and why is the word ending in -ō instead of -a?
The second issue is that of the consonants. Greek has done something weird by turning /tħa/ into /kʰɛː/, and yet this isn't reflected in the Latin or the Etruscan, which both have orthographic <TH> (and phonemic /tʰ/ in the case of the Etruscan). My friend suggests that Biblical Hebrew ħ was regularly rendered as χ in Koine, and so maybe it was borrowed as tkʰ with the /t/ later being lost. However I find this unconvincing, as Koine had lost /h/ as a phoneme and was in the process of turning χ into an affricate or fricative - it had no better way of representing ħ. Attic and preclassical greek on the other hand had an /h/ phoneme, so IMO they either should have borrowe
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Entomologist here. One of the orders of arachnids is commonly called “harvestmen” aka daddy-longlegs or Opiliones. Most dictionaries refer me to “HARVEST” +’”MAN” but it’s too much of a leap for me to look at a spindly-legged, nonvenomous arachnid and say gee, that reminds me of a man doing harvest things.
Bogus etymologies abound (ie, they emerge during harvest time, or they harvest dead bees from the hives) but I’d like to know what the real connection is.
I was shocked, while reading my historical linguistics manual, to learn that "Lord" comes from the ancient English word "Hlaford", which itself comes from "hlafweard", meaning "keeper of bread", while "Lady" comes from "hlafdige", meaning "kneader of bread". Language can really be awesome in unexpected ways, sometimes.
This word is used a lot when forming sentences in Dutch e.g. "Ik ben er klaar voor" which means I am ready. However, languages closely related to Dutch do not use 'er' or a word comparable to it (as far as I am aware) . This made me wonder what the origins of 'er' are and when it started being used the way it currently is.
After someone said "what the heck" today I suddenly realised that the expression doesn't actually make sense, grammatically or otherwise. If the word instead of heck was hell or f*ck, the phrase still didn't make sense...
So what is the etymology of the phrase?
This must happen at least a few times, right?
We recently had "wet" used in the context of a "wet" smell in a song. The etymology of "wet" is interesting, but I was wondering if any of you could provide an etymology of "wet". Thanks!
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5258/what-is-the-etymology-behind-sine-cosine-tangent-etc
The jist is that the term jya-ardha (chord-half) (Sanskrit) was abbreviated jiva which was mistranslated into Arabic as a made up word jiba. But since written Arabic doesn't have vowels later Arabic scholars interpreted Jiba as Jb or Jaib which means bosom or breast. Then Latin scholars just translated that as Sinus which mean bosom or breast pocket, which then became sine in English.
So that's some 3,000 year old 3rd grade humor. I imagine the Latin scholars who were translating the Arabic works just going "I have no idea what this has to do with butts and boobs but then again I don't know trigonometry" and continued to scribe.
And the co in cosine meant complementary.
The link goes into more detail.
Hi, I recently learned the structure 所 + verb + 的 + noun...
ex. 中共 所 实施 的 措施 (the policies that are carried out by the CCP), or 我 所 关注 的 难题 (the problems that I'm concerned with), etc.
In my brain, this structure logically connected with the word 所有 (suo3you3), which I was taught for all intents and purposes means "all". However, with this new perspective (if my logic is correct), "所有的..." actually means "...that are had" or "...that exist".
For example, before I would have thought "所有的人" just translates to "all of the people". But now I guess it can literally and more accurately be translated as "the people that exist" or "the people that are", which in effect means the same thing as "all". This is not really a useful thing as much as it is just interesting. If I am not completely wrong, maybe you will find ti interesting too. It blew my mind.
Is this a correct interpretation of the grammar / etymology of the word (所有)?
Thanks!
I heard this on American tv shows... Im in the UK. But how it refers back to cowboys or people riding as shotgun to shoot while someone else held the reigns fascinated me.
Whether its true I dont care. It was fascinating.
Grookey- groove + monkey
>!Thwackey- thwack + monkey!<
>!Rillaboom- gorilla + boom!<
Scorbunny- scorch + bunny
>!Raboot- rabbit + boot!<
>!Cinderace- cinder + race!<
Sobble- sob + dribble
>!Drizzile- drizzle + reptile!<
>!Intelleon- intel + chameleon!<
>!Blipbug- blip + bug!<
>!Dottler- dot + doppler!<
>!Orbeetle- orbital + beetle!<
>!Rookidee- rookie + chikadee!<
>!Corvisquire- corvid + squire!<
Corviknight- corvid + knight
>!Skwovet- squirrel + covet!<
>!Greedunt- greed + rodent!<
>!Knickit- nick + kit + nick it!<
>!Thievil- thieve + evil + vulpine!<
Obstagoon- obstacle + raccoon
Wooloo- wool + uru
>!Dubwool- double + wool!<
>!Chewtle- chew + turtle!<
Drednaw- drednaught + gnaw
Yamper- yap+ scamper
>!Boltund- bolt + hound!<
Gossifleur- gossypium + fleur
Eldegoss- elder + gossypium
>!Sizzlipede- sizzle + centipede!<
>!Centiskroch- centipede + scorch!<
Rolycoly- rolypoly + coal
>!Carkoal- cart + charcoal!<
>!Coalossal- coal + colossal!<
>!Arrokuda- arrow + barracuda!<
>!Barraskewda- barracuda + skew!<
>!Purrserker- purr + berserker!<
>!Milcery- milk + sorcery!<
Alcremie- alchemy + cream
>!Applin- apple + in!<
>!Flapple- flap + apple!<
>!Appletun- apple + tun!<
Sirfetch'd- sir + far-fetched
>!Cursola- curse + solar!<
Impidimp- impede + imp
>!Morgrem- mortem + gremlin!<
>!Grimsnarl- grim + snarl!<
>!Hattena- hat + antenna!<
>!Hattrem- hat + brim!<
>!Hatterene- hatter + serene!<
>!Cufant- cuprum + elephant!<
>!Copperajah- copper + rajah!<
Cramorant- cram + cormorant
>!Toxel- toxic + electric!<
>!Toxtricity- toxic + electricity!<
>!Silicobra- silicon + cobra!<
>!Sandaconda- sand + anaconda!<
>!Runerigus- rune + egregious!<
>!Sinistea- sinister + tea!<
Polteageist- poltergeist + tea
>!Indeedee- indeedy!<
Morpeko- morumotto + harapeko
>!Falinks- phalanx + link!<
>!Snom- snow + worm!<
>!Frosmoth- frost + moth!<
>!Clobbopus- clobber + octopus!<
>!Grapploct- grapple + octopus!<
>!Pincurchin- pincushion + urchin!<
>!Mr. Rime- Mr. + rime!<
>!Stonjourner- stone + sojourner!<
>!Eiscue- icecube!<
Duraludon- duralumni
