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Welcome to the Etymology scriptorium. This is the place to cogitate on etymological aspects of the Wiktionary entries.

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The protist Cyclidium is the type genus of the family Cyclidiidae. A priori it comes from the latin cyclus (circle), but I don't see anything circular in that protist. Have you another idea ? Gerardgiraud (talk) 15:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cyclidium looks like the straightforward Latinization of an Ancient Greek word *κυκλίδιον (kuklídion), which could be a learned neologism formed from κύκλος (kúklos) +‎ -ίδιον (-ídion), which speakers of Ancient Greek would have understood to mean “little circle”, or, more generally, “little round thing”. I don't know what Müller saw, but in some preparations the appearance is rather round.^[2]  --Lambiam 19:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Gerardgiraud: Ancient Greek κύκλος (kúklos) can also refer to a wheel. Does it have anything like spokes or revolve like a wheel would? Chuck Entz (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Müller's original description here, says "Vermis inconspicuus simplicissimus pellucidus, complanatus orbicularis, vel ovatus (i.e. flattened circular, or ovate)." Gerardgiraud (talk) 13:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The use of vel suggests that Müller considered complanatus orbicularis and ovatus to be synonymous. He adds Danish names, for Cyclidium bulla BOBLE-RUNDEREN, which may mean something like “the bubble rounder” (Latin bulla means “bubble”). All other Cyclidia he describes are assigned a Danish name of the form XXX-RUNDEREN. I don’t find a singular noun Runder in any Danish dictionary, so I’m not quite sure how to explain these Danish names.  --Lambiam 11:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I guess that in Danish, the -er-ending might not necessarily indicate a doer, but can also just be a noun ending, like a "roundie". Then, I'm also a bit baffled by the coinage, anyway. Wakuran (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Why was the term for this concept borrowed from Portuguese rather than, say, Spanish (auto de fe, which the TLFi actually says is the etymon of French autodafé) or Italian (atto di fede)? PUC – 15:38, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Port wine became very popular in England in the 18th century, when, due to the Anglo-French wars, French wine could not be imported. England had much stronger ties with Portugal then than with Spain, even though Spain too sided with Great-Britain.

The Online Etymology Dictionary forwards the theory that the Portuguese form took hold in English through popular accounts of the executions following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Our article does not mention executions, but that on the Portuguese Wikipedia relates that the Inquisition burned an effigy of Francisco Xavier de Oliveira in an auto-da-fé. The Inquisition had condemned Oliveira in absentia (he lived in London) for publishing a pamphlet reportedly ascribing the earthquake to God's wrath for Portugal's Catholicism and its support for the Inquisition.  --Lambiam 11:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Anyone fancy cleaning up the etymology that was just added (judging correctness, adding Hebrew script, etc)? - -sche (discuss) 18:46, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This actually comes from the Hebrew scriptures. Here's an example from 1 Samuel 12 that I think shows what's really going on:

וּבְנֵ֥י עֵלִ֖י בְּנֵ֣י בְלִיָּ֑עַל לֹ֥א יָדְע֖וּ אֶת־יְהוָֽה׃ (Hebrew)

Καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ Ηλι τοῦ ἱερέως υἱοὶ λοιμοὶ οὐκ εἰδότες τὸν κύριον. (Septuagint Ancient Greek)

porro filii Heli filii Belial nescientes Dominum (Latin Vulgate)

Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD. (King James Version)

Now the sons of Eli were scoundrels; they had no regard for the LORD. (New Revised Standard Version)

The Hebrew בליעל (“b'liya'al”) בני (“b'ney”) seems to be analyzable as "sons(of)" ["without"-"use"]. The Septuagint translates the second word as Ancient Greek λοιμοὶ (loimoì), a word for pestilence or pest. The Vulgate interprets it as a name, and the KJV follows suit. I included the NRSV to show how a modern Protestant translation treats it. Hebrew doesn't have a lot of morphology for adjectives and adjectival nouns, so having a noun phrase followed by a noun in the construct case followed by a compound adjective with nothing in between doesn't surprise me. I would interpret the Hebrew as saying "The sons of Eli were sons of worthlessness [no-good men]".

We thus have a Hebrew figure of speech meaning "no good" (of men) (the female equivalent also occurs) being misinterpreted as "sons of Belial". That would be like interpreting "bitch" in "son of a bitch" as literally meaning "demon". Such is the nature of medieval biblical scholarship...

Anyway, that's my best guess. I'm not sure how to write this up in the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:37, 2 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fine, and thank you! My father was both a Greek and Hebrew scholar. Andrew H. Gray 17:16, 21 June 2024 (UTC) Andrew H. Gray 17:16, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

What Hebrew noun corresponds to use in this term, by itself, without בְּלִי? The entry mentions “ya-al”, which suggests יָעַל. There is יֹעַל (yo'al, “he is made efficient”), but this is a verb form.  --Lambiam 12:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is the Celtic kaletos ety added here correct? I can't find any works supporting or even mentioning a connection to kaletos, and the cited paper merely argues that derivation from Calidones is "a strong candidate", not that it definitely does come from kaletos. See Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/2024/May#Lisbon for background; many other etys by this user have had to be reverted as incorrect or spurious. - -sche (discuss) 16:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The same author (Andrew Jennings) has also published (according to his homepage) an article called "Hjaltland Revisited: The Place-name Shetland and its Celtic Origin", which implies that he believes the hypothesis (or did back in 2011). If there's no evidence of anyone else believing this, then we shouldn't put too much weight on what appears to be a fringe suggestion. I can't tell if the paper linked at the bottom of the entry has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal or if it's only been uploaded to academia.edu by the author. It doesn't seem to have any date of publication. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Searching for Shetland+Caledones is bringing up as little as searching for Shetland+kaletos did—only Jennings, AFAICT—so I've attributed his view to him; no objection if you or anyone else want(s) to reduce its prominence even further (say, move the whole suggestion to Further reading, or remove it). - -sche (discuss) 20:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I read the article. It is the author's preferred explanation and I find it a sound argument. The article was published in volume 87 of Norna-rapperter, which is peer-reviewed. The volume is titled Etymologiens plass i navneforskningen. Although I can't find it online, not even a table of contents, it must have appeared in it because there is what this review has to say about it:

Andrew Jennings bespricht die Möglichkeiten, das Erstglied des Namens Shetland auf eine Bezeichnung für die ursprünglichen keltischen Einwohner zurückzuführen.

Andrew Jennings discusses the possibilities to trace the first part of the name Shetland back to its original Celtic inhabitants.

I had already removed the mention of *kaletos because it is tentative and not important to the line of argument in the article. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Were the original inhabitants of Shetland even Celtic? I don't think Goidelic speakers ever settled there; are there traces of Pictish in the archipelago? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:20, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Jennings doesn't voice an opinion, but he discusses all the possibilities. He just calls them the pre-Norse inhabitants. That they were Celtic is an inferral of the reviewer. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 15:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

William Watson thought so in 1926, and he has a lot of academic standing. Watson argued for a *cat- origin rather than a *kalet- origin, but the Celtic origin of Shetland has been the mainstream view there for a century.

Watson, William J.; (1994), The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, Edinburgh, Birlinn, →ISBN, First published 1926. 24.108.18.81 02:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Just noting I have restricted the IP from editing content pages (they can still edit discussion pages) for reasons explained at Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#Special:Contributions/24.108.18.81. Other edits need to be checked. - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Specifically, where Latin forestis comes from. I'm not all that enamoured with the Latin-internal explanation, as far as the semantics are concerned, but at least it would explain the form forestis. Germanic seems more promising, though I don't understand @Leasnam's deriving the word specifically from Proto-West Germanic *furhiþi when that would not explain the /st/ in both Latin and Germanic forms like Forst. Coromines & Pascual (cited on the Latin entry) describe the origin as ‘perhaps from a Frankish *forhist, a collective of/from *forha "pine"’. I can't seem to find a Germanic collective suffix like -hist, so I don't know what to make of this. Whatever this source has in mind, if it does explain the form *forhist then that would strike me as the best proposed etymology. Also it'd be nice to account for the gender mismatch between Latin~Romance (feminine) and Germanic (masculine) if possible.

Paging @Sokkjo as well. Nicodene (talk) 20:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Old High German has both forst m and forsti f (> Middle High German vorste f, perhaps > German Förste (plural)). The Proto-(West) Germanic *forhist has been around for some time if I'm not mistaken, and yes supposes an ending of -ist (not -hist, the h being part of the stem), but where this -ist comes from is also a mystery. If Latin foresta comes from Proto-West Germanic *forhu, the how is really unknown. The nearest thing is Old English fyrhþ and fyrhþe from Proto-West Germanic *furhiþi. I'm not saying definitively that I stand on this as a theory, but it hypothetically might possibly be arrived at (with lots of luck and magic), IF *furhiþi goes into Latin as *forisi- then back into Old High German where an excrescent -t is added then BACK into Latin...it'd be a mess. But thoughts are welcome Leasnam (talk) 22:22, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Nicodene: I think a Germanic etymology is the only reasonable explanation. Germanic does insert *s before *þ/t in some environments, but I think most likely is that WG *furhiþi merged with *hursti to form Continental WG *fur(h)isti. -- Sokkjō 22:06, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

So a sort of blend. Interesting. Perhaps that deserves an entry of its own. What might explain the modern Germanic forms being masculine? Nicodene (talk) 22:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Blended *fur(h)isti is also possible, and may alternatively be a blend of *furhu + *hursti (literally “fir-thicket”). The fact that Old High German forsti is feminine also agrees with *hursti f, and Old High German hurst is both m and f, a-decl and i- Leasnam (talk) 22:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Interesting. I should’ve checked the gender of the descendants of *hursti.

It sounds like we all think *furhisti is the best (or least problematic) proposal? As for the *furhu + *hursti explanation, I don’t see how it is accounting for the first *i of *furhisti. Nicodene (talk) 22:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Good point. *furhiþi makes more sense. Leasnam (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Unless it derives from a consonant-stem Proto-West Germanic *furh (> Old English furh/fyrh), which I see we don't have (yet). Leasnam (talk) 23:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Shall we create an entry *fur(h)isti, then? The descendants seem to justify the form, and different possible explanations can always be mentioned in the etymology. Nicodene (talk) 23:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have no objection :) Leasnam (talk) 23:50, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, a Germanic origin is likely considering it was first used in Francia. Any explanation should also account for the fact that Latin forestis specifically meant “king's forest”. I can't find a reference for this, but I wonder if the Latin is instead based on Proto-Germanic *furistaz (“first, ruler”), perhaps a contamination of an adjective Proto-West Germanic *furistī (“royal, the king's”) and *furhiþi (“forest”).

Also, important for the derivation from *furhiþi + *hursti, I can't find the spelling <forhist> in althochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Does a Germanic form with <h> really exist? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Caoimhin ceallach I've not been able to locate any forms showing a reflex of */x/, which does seem problematic for the aforementioned theories.

I've no objection to adding your *furistī theory to the entry *furhisti and perhaps even renaming the entry as such, depending on what the other resident Germanicists think. Nicodene (talk) 08:46, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Does anyone know the etymology of Hungarian törpe ("dwarfish, miniature; dwarf")? Seraphinanewt (talk) 13:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If my understanding is correct, per the entry in Kiss Gábor's Etimologiai Szótár, it seems this is derived from obsolete verb töpik meaning something like "to wither up", by the addition of a frequentative -r suffix. We see a reflection of the resulting töpör- stem in reflexive / intransitive verb töpörödik (“to shrivel, to shrink”, see also the entry in the A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára). The term törpe arose as the present participle of the töpör- stem, by means of reduction of the second vowel to töpr-; addition of the (now-obsolete / dialectal) present participle suffix -e to töpre; then metathesis of the "p" and "r" to current form törpe.

That said, I don't entirely trust my grasp of the Hungarian, so I'll leave it to others more knowledgeable than I am to double-check the above and update the törpe entry as appropriate. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It may be an easy one to solve, but I couldn't find any specific reliable data as for the 1st element of the brand name Nupedia. (This was the project Wikipedia grew out from.)

A project presentation probably written by co-founder Larry Sanger suggests (without explicitly stating it) a derivation from the yod-dropped pronunciation of new – /nu(ː?)/.

Joseph Janes from University of Washington derives it from GNU in a 2015 podcast, but I think chronology makes this unlikely, see e.g. w:GNE (encyclopedia).

Anyone has reliable information in sight? Javítgató (talk) 16:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

A quote from How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia: “The computing power and capital to take on new projects at Bomis made it the right time to fulfill a dream of Wales's: creating an online encyclopedia. He wanted to call it Nupedia, again sticking with a GNU-inspired name, but without wanting to step on Stallman’s toes.”^[3] The book has a foreword by Wales, and the introduction states that the book would not have been possible without extensive interviews with “the principal enablers of Wikipedia”, including Wales.  --Lambiam 11:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I dimly recall reading years ago something about German verb pairs centering around an umlauting mechanism, where the (usually transitive) one of the pair reflected some kind of ancient causal suffix or infix. Pairs like German fahren (“to go somewhere”, intransitive) and führen (“to lead”, transitive).

• Is my memory correct on this kind of mechanism in certain German verbs?
• Is this relevant for German fordern (“to demand, to require”) and fördern (“to support, to move something forward, to encourage”)?
• Even if not relevant, are fordern and fördern related? If so, how?

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

From what I can make out, both are related to words like fore and further. Wakuran (talk) 20:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We actually have entries for both verbs' Proto-West Germanic ancestors: *forþ(a)rōn for fordern and *furþrijan for fördern. They are related, because they both go back ultimately to Proto-Germanic *furþą (“forward”), but they're not an intransitive/causative transitive pair (not least because they're both transitive). —Mahāgaja · talk 20:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you both!

@Mahagaja, setting aside this particular verb pair, is my memory about umlaut and a causative element at all on the mark, as part of the derivation of certain German verbs? Or have I gotten my wires crossed? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Eirikr: fall and fell are one example. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:10, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

See also soak/suck, flay/fly, lay/lie, sit/set, sprint from Proto-Germanic *sprantijaną, lead from Proto-Germanic *laidijaną, twinge from Proto-Germanic *twangijaną, as well as Proto-Germanic *-janą. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, a lot of pairs like that in German. They're most apparent in the basic verbs used to describe placement and position: legen/liegen (equivalent to lay/lie), setzen/sitzen (set/sit), Quite often, subsequent linguistic evolution mean this isn't immediately clear - see the long etymology on hängen (where the umlauted forms have merged in the present tense, but not the past forms)

My favourite pair is schwimmen (to swim, to float) and schwemmen (to wash something away, derived as "to cause to swim"). Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

My favorite is drink/drench (= cause to drink), which corresponds to trinken/tränken. One pair that's still transparently intransitive/causative is ertrinken (“to drown”, intransitive)/ertränken (“to drown”, transitive). The PIE causative suffix *-éyeti took the o-grade of the root, which became a in Germanic, which was then umlauted, which is why so many of these causatives or former causatives still have /ɛ/-vocalism to this day: fell/fällen, set/setzen, legen (with secondary lengthening), hängen, schwemmen, drench/(er)tränken. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:54, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We give hawk ("try to cough up something from one's throat") as onomatopoeic, whereas we give hock ("cough heavily, especially causing uvular frication") as a variant of hack ultimately from PGmc. hakkōną ("chop, hoe"). I suspect hawk and hock are actually related to each other. Merriam-Webster gives hawk as "imitative", and hock as a variant of hawk (see their entries, but also this discussion of hawk-vs-hock). […] - -sche (discuss) 00:32, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

if MW is right then we should probably move hack (“cough”) out of the entry because it seems most likely to be imitative too. —Soap— 20:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

When you say we should ‘remove hack out of the entry’, are you suggesting that we should remove the ‘cough’ sense of the word hack from etymology 1 at the hack entry itself, perhaps creating a new etymology in the process, or are you referring to a different entry altogether? Overlordnat1 (talk) 05:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

yes, remove it and add a new etymology for it as a variant of hock or perhaps hawk, as i find it unlikely the semantics shifted from the physical motion to the sound effect independently. (But if even a single other dictionary DOES say it happened independently then we can go with that.) —Soap— 05:29, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Good point, I think it would be safest to move the "cough" sense to its own etymology section and then explain the possible origins there (that it could be from the "chop/cut" sense, or could be imitative); I'll do that. Etymonline says the "cough" sense of hack is attested since 1802, "perhaps from hack (v.1) on the notion of being done with difficulty, or else imitative"; v.1 is the "cut/chop" verb, which they say is attested "with a notion of 'get through by some effort,'" since 1955, from hack after "keep working away at" which is from the 14th century. We should also examine to what extent hawk, hock and hack have different definitions, vs should be harmonized. - -sche (discuss) 05:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That sounds like a sensible approach. We could also do with adding some pronunciations and maybe regional tags as to ‘hawk/hock a loogie’ sounds very American, unlike to ‘hack up phlegm’ (often a precursor to ‘flobbing’). Also the pronunciation can vary wildly - some people actually say the words as ‘hock’ or ‘hawk’ but others say both as ‘hahk’ or say ‘hock’ (and occasionally ‘hawk’) so that it sounds closer to ‘hack’ in any case. Could flob come from phlegm+gob instead of simply being imitative btw? Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Clearly the word Alatri is the regular Alatrese development for what would have given Italian Alatrio (Alatrese has ´-i where Italian has ´-io, ´-ia, ´-i(i) or ´-ie), so Alātrium, a variant of Alētrium, but where does the Latin name Alētrium, whence Ancient Greek Ἀλέτριον (Alétrion), come from?

Antonio Sciarretta proposes that "The name seems to be built with an IE suffix *-ter-, which denotes an agent. Thus, the stem could be derived from the IE root *al- 'to grow, nourish', or even from a parallel root with a meaning 'to grind', from which the Armenian word alauri 'mill', originally reconstructed as *alatrio-".

Is this true? LorenzoF06 (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

just hoping someone can help with what i gather is meant to be a silly word ... Allerwertester ... it means bum, bottom, ass, rear end, but i cant really figure out what speech register it belongs to other than that it's obviously not vulgar. Google Translate says it means "best regards" and that sort of looks right for a literal translation of aller + wertester but it won't back-translate English "best regards" into anything even close to Allerwertester, space or no space. so Im hoping a native speaker here or a well-acquainted learner can give us a better etymology than the redlink we have right now. Best regards, —Soap— 19:58, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not necessarily a native speaker, but the classifier "colloquial, humorous" looks about right. I'd say that it literally means something like "the most valuable", "the most worthy", but the exact connotations and semantic history eludes me. Wakuran (talk) 22:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Correct. The literal meaning is "most worthy one", which was originally a polite address. For the further development, I would say that in polite speech it can be a bit awkward to mention other persons' body parts, especially of course with women. So I suppose people would add "your most worthy" when they had to refer to a lady's body parts for some reason. I could easily imagine a polite 19th-century gentleman say something like "Meine Dame, seien Sie vorsichtig, dass Sie sich nicht Ihr allerwertestes Bein stoßen!" (My lady, please be careful lest you should bruise your most worthy leg!), because only mentioning the leg would touch on the indelicate. And then obviously the need for such euphemism was even stronger in case of the bottom. -- In terms of contemporary style I would call it "colloquial, euphemistic, humorous" along with DWDS (umgangssprachlich, verhüllend, scherzhaft). 84.63.31.91 07:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

so it's a nominalized adjective, not a re-singularized plural noun? OK. Even that much wasn't clear to me from my limited knowledge of German and Google Translate's attempt at figuring it out. If I decapitalize it on GTrans the meaning changes completely. Could we rewrite the etymology to say it's a nominalized adjective (even though we don't list that adjective yet), with a meaning like "most worthy"? Thanks, —Soap— 08:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The declension is exactly as one expects for a nominalized adjective, with strong/weak/mixed declensions. Without much effort I also find neuter nominalizations with apparently the same sense (Versorge Dein Allerwertestes mit Feuchtigkeit). For a literal translation, most precious seems better (to me) than most worthy, which would correspond to *Allerwürdigster, as in, Wer kann die Glorie Deiner Würde, o Allerwürdigster, erreichen?^[4] As always, take good care of your most precious.  --Lambiam 09:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, may be better :) As I said, I translated it quite literally. 84.63.31.91 11:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Although on second thought neither is perfect. "Wert" is not the same as "wertvoll". It kinda unites the meanings of "worthy" and "precious".84.63.31.91 12:01, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Some dictionaries make a clear distinction between worthy of and just worthy, e.g. Collins. Merriam-Webster even has separate entries: worthy of, worthy.  --Lambiam 19:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

RFV of the etymology. @Benwing2 in diff removed the references I added, and called them "garbage etymology." Now there are no sources. Please also update Wikipedia if the source was wrong. 184.146.170.127 00:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Clearly, Plutarch cannot be considered an authority on Latin etymology. The source that was removed, The principal roots of the Greek tongue, a text from 1859, is also not up to present-day etymological standards. The etymology given for ovation (“sheep   f. ὄϊς  ιος whence ovation”) seems to imply that Latin ovis comes from Ancient Greek ὄϊς (óïs). These two terms are cognates, but only by having a common PIE ancestor. Claiming a Greek root for ovation is about as absurd as claiming that English ewe has a Greek root. The book is full of bloopers, such as deriving bias from βία (bía, “bodily strength”). De Vaan, who is an authority, does not even mention the imagined connection to ovis, but only remarks that the similar Ancient Greek verb εὐάζω (euázō, “to cry in honour of Dionysus”) comes from words like εὐαί (euaí), thereby suggesting that the Latin verb may have a similar onomatopoeic origin. If true, we can only guess what the Latin jubilant cry was.  --Lambiam 08:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Walde-Hoffmann goes a bit further by deriving it and εὐάζω (euázō) from Proto-Indo-European *ew-eh₂-ye-ti (literally “to do "ew"”). It seems fine, so I don't know why De Vaan doesn't follow it. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Walde-Hoffman writes, “aus *eu̯āi̯ō”.  --Lambiam 08:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Same thing. *ā = *eh₂ pre-Laryngeal Theory. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh sorry. I mistook it for a reliable and authoritative source just because it was a published book. I didn't read more than that page and the cover when copying from Wikipedia. Removed from Wikipedia. 184.146.170.127 12:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The descendants list (of various descendants that look about like soutien, with no hint of gorge, and mean "bra") is currently divided between the two entries, some on one and some on the other, some on both. I suspect they should all be on one page, either all derived from soutien (which has the right form, but as our entry currently stands, not the right sense—maybe it's missing a sense for use as a clipping of soutien-gorge?), or all derived from soutien-gorge (which has the right sense, but the languages must've all clipped off the second part)... - -sche (discuss) 16:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

As soutien would basically just mean support in French, it'd appear as if the word was widely borrowed with the second part clipped. I can't find any evidence that soutien ever has been widely used with the sense bra in French. Wakuran (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

French soutien is also attested in that sense, but it's informal and not super common imo. PUC – 20:22, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I couldn't find a source for that. I didn't see any listing in any major dictionaries. Not sure if it would be due mostly to rarity or poor searching. Wakuran (talk) 22:14, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The most common word today is soutive which is derived from soutien but is inflected. I have never heard anyone say “soutien” alone for brassiere, but who knows. 2600:1700:36D8:8010:3C56:E988:12F3:8628 04:14, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

My bad, it’s spelt soutif which is a modern, short way to inflect the -ive suffix. 2600:1700:36D8:8010:3C56:E988:12F3:8628 04:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I believe -if is masculine, and -ive is feminine, if I'm not mistaken. Wakuran (talk) 10:57, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Still thinking about these. I mean, I've found 5 whole dictionaries with this root at this point, both European and American dictionaries. Am I missing something here? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 15:09, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, used by Sholem Aleykhem. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Even if we assume that po- is just a prefix, this word is still mysterious. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The only thing I can ascertain from this is that פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט (potefalnost) was probably derived from פּאָטעפֿאַלנע (potefalne), since East Slavic and Polish have a regular pattern of deriving such abstract nouns (-(н)ость (-(n)ostʹ)) from adjectives (-(н)ы (-(n)y)). In addition, the alternate forms suggest that this probably has non-negligibly unstressed vowels which is more typical of Russian or Belarusian than other Slavic languages. But that's all I got. I did find Тофалары, but that's a group of people in Irkutsk. What the hell would that have to do with Yiddish or even Jews?? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

-nost is surely Slavic and it is no problem to have both -nost and po- in a same word. Am sure it has nothing to do with Tofalars, but rather some Slavic or German word. F can sometimes interchange with KH in Russian and Ukrainian dialects, but "potekhalnost" is not a word neither in no language. @Vahagn Petrosyan it can not be related to Tefal (some people use it on their frypans), because Tefal was not existing in the times of Sholem Aleykhem, but honestly am was also thinking about it LOL. Can this word (ot its root) be from Hebrew? Like, תפל or טפל? Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Initially, I'd have guessed that it could have been a Slavic-Germanic merger with a variant of German Teufel, but looking it up, it appears as if the Yiddish variant is טײַוול (tayvl), so it's most likely just a shot in the dark. Besides, the Devil might be less significant in Jewish circles than in Christian, anyway. Wakuran (talk) 11:53, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am exploring Thule, from Θούλη (Thoúlē), and I wish to bring up the idea that Proto-Celtic *tullos (“perforated”) (referring to the ragged shorelines of islands in that area) might be a possibility. Celtic languages have been spoken in that area since ancient times, and Celtic initial-mutation could account for the alternation between Θ- and T-. 24.108.18.81 16:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, where exactly are you saying Celtic languages have been spoken since ancient times? —Mahāgaja · talk 16:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Celtic languages have been spoken in Britain since at leat 500 BCE, and probably before w:Insular_Celts#Linguistics. Thule is likely to have described a vague and extensive area - most of the northern North Atlantic has "perforated coasts". The name Ultima Thule would be given to the furthest known bit at any given time. 24.108.18.81 17:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The first account using the name, the travelogue On The Ocean by Pytheas, was written around 325 BCE. (Unfortunately, the work was lost; the earliest surviving text using the name is The Histories, written by Polybius c. 140 BCE, who is sceptical of Pytheas's account.) We don't know how Proto-Celtic was pronounced, but it was no longer spoken when Polybius was travelling. A Celtic language was then probably spoken in the southern part of Britain; it is not clear how far north it had spread. At that time, Ancient Greek Θούλη was still pronounced /tʰúː.lɛː/, with an aspirated /tʰ/ as in some pronunciations of tea, not with a /θ/ as in thin. Nothing suggests a leniting mutation.  --Lambiam 17:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We don't know where Thule even was. Nicodene (talk) 17:30, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If it comes to that, Pytheas and Polybius didn't know where it was either. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:54, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes. Nicodene (talk) 21:46, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It was not necessary to know precisely where it was to name a general area. 24.108.18.81 04:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

this is a companion post to the RFV i posted earlier today, but since this involves a separate word i figured it would be best to post here too. basically my question is, whether this word family is

1. a well-known children's language game (similar to Pig Latin and jeringonza) involving transformations like C₁VC₂C₃-INFL > pVC₂C₁-INFL, which also produces other words,
2. a once-off formation that does come from sömn ~ sömnig but isnt an active word formation process even among small children, or
3. a word in its own right, that has nothing to do with sömn.

The question of how it got to mean "sexually exhausted" will probably be answered if and only if we can find actual citable use with that meaning, which i hope others will help with at RFV. Best regards, —Soap— 12:38, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Likely #3. I don't know of any common Swedish language games that would produce pöms- from sömn-. The sound -Vms- is fairly common among imitative words in Swedish, though, such as mums (yum), plums (splash), bums (immediately), grums (dregs), gramse (angry, grumpy), vimsig (scatterbrained) and trams/ flams/ jams (silliness, nonsense). Wakuran (talk) 17:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

There apparently exists a similar language game, P-språket, (P-language) but there, 'sömn' would become 'söpömn', also, the Disney comic character Eega Beeva speaks similarly, but in that case, 'sömn' would become 'psömn'. From what I can find out, pömsig is dialectal and/ or baby talk. Wakuran (talk) 23:26, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to this site, the word was popularized through a 60s' comedy sketch, which sounds plausible, but might require a better source. [5] Wakuran (talk) 15:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pøms in Norwegian Glomdal dialect means a woman shoe of some kind. Also, should try to check out this word in Knoparmoj dictionaries and others jargons alike. Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I suspect that comes from German Pumps, from English pumps. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sounds likely, cf. køntri from country (music genre). Wakuran (talk) 14:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Oh yes of course! Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ideas? More specifically, where the palatalization may have come from w.r.t. (possible) cognates like Russian вон (von)? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 02:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

We currently say this was borrowed directly from Khitan 𘱿𘲫 (*qid ún) under influence from Chinese 契丹 (Qìdān), presumably as some kind of learned borrowing from the reconstruction, but the linked source doesn't really support that, as the reconstructed endonym would give something like Khitai. I can think of one instance where a reconstructed endonym has become the predominant term - Jurchen - and Khitai may be another instance, but it seems more likely to me that Khitan is simply a learned borrowing from Middle Chinese 契丹 (kʰɨt̚ tɑn). I appreciate the line is quite blurry, though, since we're dealing with a Middle Chinese transcription of a Khitan term. Theknightwho (talk) 12:40, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Such words are copied around by historians, journalists and other lesser-educated people, without investigating the linguistic points of departure, which is what we do as a first reflex to make sense of the world, and memorize the polyglot knowledge orderly. For them it contains -an from Latin -ānus as much as does Mayan, dovetailing with Cathayan in previous historic accounts. **Khitanan only exists not due to silliness. What the question then is, is indeed blurry. Fay Freak (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Paramodita roughly means 'happiness' or 'delighted' in Old Sundanese according to (Coolsma, 1913). And I am very sure that this comes from Sanskrit, considering how classic the word is (dated from Carita Waruga Guru in late 1600s) and how it sounds very Sanskrit-y. From what I've searched, this might came from Sanskrit प्र- (pra-) and Sanskrit मृडति (mṛḍati), based on the Pali pamudita and Javanese pramudita. What do you think? Udaradingin (talk) 15:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Fish bowl I did not find it in 奄美方言分類辞典 (Amami Yamatohama dialect [ryn]), or just about most Ryukyuan dictionaries I have. It only exists in Taketomi dictionary 竹富方言辞典 as ɕimautə and in the Hatoma dictionary 鳩間方言辞典 as ɕìmáʔùtà. Both refer to a folk song from Okinawa. I believe it is a recent local innovation, deriving from shima "community" and uta "song". Chuterix (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Most Ryukyuan dialects tend to use sima as meaning "community", not just "island". Chuterix (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Interesting, especially since the Japanese Wikipedia describes the term as originating from the Amami region, and since it seems to be one of the major cultural exports. Thanks for looking it up for me. —Fish bowl (talk) 02:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Layung means 'the reddish afterglow of sunset'. Perhaps this may be related to lembayung (“violet”). What do you think?

Udaradingin (talk) 02:13, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I wonder what's the distinction that make most words borrowed from Arabic go to the derived Category:Turkish_terms_derived_from_Arabic and only very few go to the Category:Turkish_terms_borrowed_from_Arabic Munzirtaha (talk) 23:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Munzirtaha probably because they were either borrowed from some other language, which got them (directly or indirectly) from Arabic, or inherited from Ottoman Turkish, which got them them (directly or indirectly) from Arabic. We only use "borrowed" to refer to a language getting a term directly from the other language. If you think about it, there's a big difference between a word like Turkish gitar, which came from Spanish (probably by way of French), which borrowed it from Arabic maybe half a millenium ago, and Turkish Dübey, which was borrowed directly from modern Arabic by modern Turkish speakers. Both were borrowed from Arabic and ended up in Turkish, but only the second counts as being a Turkish borrowing from Arabic.

If you think about it, the Turkish people have been in contact with people speaking Arabic or using Arabic words in other languages for so long that it would be really surprising if they hadn't picked up most of their Arabic vocabulary long before the creation of modern Turkish. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I should add that all terms that come from other languages go into the "derived from" categories, including those that are also in the "borrowed from" categories. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the reply. In this entry e.g. sur Inherited from Ottoman Turkish سور, from Arabic سُور (sūr). I meant to say the Ottoman Turkish is borrowed from Arabic not that the modern Turkish is borrowed from Arabic. Is this syntax correct? Or the order doesn't imply such a thing. What if I want to say word1 is borrowed from word2 or word3 where the order is not relevant? Is there a documentation for this? Munzirtaha (talk) 12:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Turkish < Ottoman Turkish stage would be inheritance, but the borrowing template would only be used on the Ottoman Turkish entry, not the modern Turkish one. {{bor}} and the "borrowed" category are only for direct borrowings, with no intermediary, even an older stage of the same language (if we treat it as a separate language on en.wikt). I'm not sure about your given example of word1 < word2 or word3 - do you have an example? Is it a case where it's not known which source is the correct one? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 13:10, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. An example is the Ottoman Turkish word ابراش which has two different meanings and seems to be borrowed from two Arabic words أبرش and أبرص. The 1st. meaning is a color and the 2nd. is a disease. Don't quote me for this since I am not an authority by any mean. So, assuming I understand the references correctly, what's the correct way to write this? Munzirtaha (talk) 20:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Homonymous terms with different etymologies get two separate entries on the same page, with headings Etymology 1 and Etymology 2.

Do you have a source for Arabic أبرص meaning a disease (presumably scabies). At our page for Turkish abraş we only give the adjective, the colour sense (“dapple”), but in Ottoman Turkish the sense was more generally “speckled” and could also mean “leprous” (of a skin), so it is a small step from there to a disease characterized by a mottled skin.  --Lambiam 20:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Actually أبرص is one with leprous disease and the two words sounds similar. What kind of source do you need? If you understand Arabic, check any Arabic dictionary (Kamus) for it. Now for the abraş entry, it's me who added it. But my question here is because I felt I did something wrong when I wrote "Inherited from Ottoman Turkish ابراش, from Ottoman Turkish ابرش". I now feel like I should say "Inherited from Ottoman Turkish ابراش or from Ottoman Turkish ابرش" or may be I should says "from ابراش or ابرش". Being new here, I need to know the correct syntax Munzirtaha (talk) 21:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ottoman Turkish was hardly a spoken language, and inasmuch as it was spoken, it was mostly not by native speakers, who spoke a language closer to both Old Anatolian Turkish and present-day Turkish, grammatically and lexically. There is no corpus of written texts in this language. For example, izlemek survived from Old Anatolian Turkish to modern Turkish; the Ottoman Turkish verb was تعقیب ایتمك (tʿaḳib itmek), which became takip etmek. For non-religious terms coming from Arabic, it is a safe bet though that they entered the modern Turkish lexicon from Ottoman Turkish, often with Classical Persian as a stepping stone. Hardly any Turk would have known the meaning of Ottoman Turkish عكس‌عمل, via Persian from Arabic عَكْس (ʕaks) + ال (al-) + عَمَل (ʕamal), which became Turkish aksülamel but led a dictionary-only existence.  --Lambiam 20:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks all, but if I understand you correctly then all the entries at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Turkish_terms_borrowed_from_Arabic is wrongly categories as borrowed where they are actually derived. Because most if not all of them are not borrowed to the modern Turkish directly but through Ottoman Turkish at least, long ago. Am I right? Munzirtaha (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

If two terms are homonyms but have different etymologies, we consider them to be different terms, listing them under separate Etymology headings, like Old French aloer § Etymology 1 (from Latin allaudāre) and aloer § Etymology 2 (from Latin allocāre). Very rarely, a term has dual etymological ancestry, resulting from the melding of two borrowed or inherited different terms, like these two Old French terms merged in Anglo-Norman, inherited on English as English allow. Such rarities apart, a term that is not newly coined is either inherited from an ancestor language, or borrowed from third language. So in an etymological chain, the first step is then either {{inh}} or {{bor}}. If it is {{inh}}, this step can be followed by a possibly lengthy sequence of further {{inh}} steps. After that, it can only be {{der}}.

Conventionally, if a modern Turkish term is attested in Ottoman Turkish, we say it is inherited from Ottoman Turkish, even if this may not be the whole story. For example, Turks who did not know Ottoman Turkish would nevertheless greet people with selamünaleyküm. Since “kaba Türkçe” has not been deemed worthy of being recorded, we have no reasonable alternative. In any case, it was not borrowed into modern Turkish.

It becomes problematic if a modern Turkish term clearly derives from Arabic but is not attested in Ottoman Turkish. We cannot know if it was inherited from earlier Anatolian Turkish, bypassing the Ottoman transmogrification. Also in this case, the only option is {{der}}. An exception is formed by terms that were recently borrowed, such as intifada  --Lambiam 11:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the clear explanation. Based on my current understanding, I edited the selamünaleyküm entry to reflect that it's derived from ota as an one intermediary language, at least, with a reference. Hope it's correct like this "even if this may not be the whole story". Munzirtaha (talk) 23:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Munzirtaha Regarding selamünaleyküm, I was just wondering how one can know that it went through Classical Persian, as the Persian term is without -un (Steingass also gives "salām ʻalaikum"). By the way, how do we know how it was pronounced in Ottoman Turkish (given that the dammatan for -un isn't written in most texts)? Exarchus (talk) 18:45, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Exarchus I don't know whether it went through Classical Persian and it's not me who added the Persian part. If there is no reference, I would say it went directly from Arabic to Ottoman Turkish because of what you said. Regarding the pronunciation, I think it's safe to assume Turkish modern pronunciation is the same as the Ottoman Turkish except when there is an exception with a reference. The alphabet reform primarily addressed the writing system, replaced many Arabic and Persian origin words but did not directly change the pronunciation of words. Munzirtaha (talk) 12:59, 1 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

pinging @LibCae: are you sure it went through Persian? Exarchus (talk) 06:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I tried to add the Arabic root to aksülamel, though I understand it's not used nowadays. I don't understand why it's removed and whether I have done something wrong. I tried to contact the user who removed it but he doesn't respond till now. Can you please advice what's the problem? Munzirtaha (talk) 21:50, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is a term in Persian, fabricated by univerbation from Arabic components. Inasmuch as عكس العمل has a meaning in Arabic, it means something like “reverse work”, but it is not a term for a specific concept such as “reaction”.  --Lambiam 10:23, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

When was Antarctica discovered? Your first impression will be to say to me: "Google it my bro, it's like 1820 by some sailor." Yeah, I get that somebody saw something in 1820. I get that the Wilkes expedition discovered coastline in the 1840's. But couldn't those guys have been seeing a mere big island, as far as they knew? When was a solid concept of the modern scientific notion of the "Continent of Antarctica" in the works or actually established, such that citations we can find will be connected to the real actual concept of the real continent? I've got a book from 1891 by a respected geographer cited at Antarctica who was really doubting what Antarctica really was- was it a continent that had been bona fide established like the other continents? He writes: "The five largest islands or peninsulas in which the crests of the World Ridges break through the uniform covering of the hydrosphere are termed continents, and designated by the names Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. They are distinguished from other islands and peninsulas by size alone, Australia being ten times larger than New Guinea, and Africa ten times larger than Arabia, these being the greatest island and peninsula not called continents. The elevated region round the South Pole is crowned by the unexplored and scarcely discovered continent of Antarctica." after listing five continents two sentences earlier. You'd think he'd include Antarctica as a sixth continent if it had been scientifically established. I draw attention to the words "scarcely discovered". --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Geographyinitiative: this seems like something you should ask at "w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities", as it's not etymology-related. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Apologies for my poor phrasing. The origin of the scientific sense is an etymology question, right? Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:07, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Geographyinitiative: actually I don’t really see how this is an etymology issue. It seems more like just trying to establish when a particular sense of the word came into use. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Be cause in 1891 they still had no clue about 60% of the coastlines, so many English maps from before 1900 are not using the name Antarctica at all (sadly, i cant find so many non-English maps from this time). Many maps (until 1890-s!) have ocean instead of land in the South Pole area, even when it is known about land around it. So your question is very fair. Tollef Salemann (talk) 13:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is this an issue of the etymology of the term? The Spanish explorers who named the North-American peninsula California believed it was an island. But the indigenous people had known for ages that it is a peninsula. So when was California “discovered”? When Francisco de Ulloa found out it was not an island, did he “rediscover” California?  --Lambiam 19:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Good point! Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to Dubrovin (Территориальное деление Антарктиды), the Antarctic peninsula was thought as an island archpelago until some expedition in 1937, but still was shown on maps as an island in early 1940-s. Also, see Buache who divided the main land of Antarctica into two parts (the one of them is shown as part of Australia pr New Zealand). Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The term "Antarctica" as referring to the southernmost continent originates, as per the OED, in 1594. The earliest quote that establishes Antarctica as a sort-of-real-continent would be around or later than the 1850s, when ships when circling the new area. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Geographyinitiative: Perhaps of interest: [6] [7]. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I think those by Ioaxxere are a separate sense: a mythological southern continent. So maybe this is a tea riom discussion??? Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems like the same kinda story as with Anian strait, but if Anian strait has changed its name after its real discovering, the Antarctica is still named the same. Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Etymology? PUC – 18:10, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

One is on the page, short for bull and/or bullsh*t session - a session where people sit around and (talk) bullsh*t...(?) Leasnam (talk) 01:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Are you perhaps alluding to the origin of bull (“frivolous talk”) (perhaps from Middle English boule) ? — This unsigned comment was added by Leasnam (talk • contribs) at 01:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC).Reply

One could say that bull is {{combining form of}} of bullshit. Fay Freak (talk) 02:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is Arabic بُور (būr, “port, harbor”) a loanword from French port? —Mahāgaja · talk 13:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I see it's written "Synonym of مَرْفَأ (marfaʔ, “port, harbor”)".

It's definitely not standard Arabic so you are not going to find it in a proper dictionary (kamus). But if you mean it's used in city names or nonstandard Arabic, then yes, it's either French or English, depending on the country. e.g. In Sudan, the city and famous port Port Sudan is named in the days of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Arabic countries still transliterate foreign names and use them. Port is just like that. I am a native Arabic speaker and don't understand why would they consider it Arabic in the first place. Munzirtaha (talk) 00:32, 28 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I came across this recently and initially assumed it was a printing error for commodious (as it means exactly the same thing), but it turned out to be really easy to cite. No other dictionary has an entry for it, and I suspect it probably originated as a misconstruction, but I don't know. Theknightwho (talk) 06:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think you're right that it's a misconstruction. Probably commodious blended with harmonious or something like that. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:48, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I think you're right. It looks like melonious (“melodious”) has been used in the same way ([8] [9] [10]), though that one's also developed a humorous "melon-like" sense as well. Along with commonious, it looks like the misconstructed form starts appearing in print during the second half of the 19th century, though I've not checked in any detail; it could just be that the mass-proliferation of printed matter made it more visible, which is supported by the fact that a disproportionate number of hits for both are in newspaper classifieds (i.e. they've been sent in by ordinary people). Theknightwho (talk) 22:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The possibility of assimilation also comes to mind.

• Phonological: both commodius and melodious have a preceding /m/, and the nasal counterpart to /d/ is /n/.
• Lexical: words ending in -onious occur more frequently than words ending in -odious.

Nicodene (talk) 23:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please leave the etymology as it was last edited, which is far better than my improvement. Reverting it to either of the past two edits in that section shall be pure vandalism; I can state that as being an etymology analyst. I would even suggest that it be locked as it is of this time. Andrew H. Gray 15:50, 21 June 2024 (UTC) Andrew H. Gray 15:50, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

An obsolete(?) term for watermelon, clearly related to Spanish sandía (“watermelon”). Is this borrowed from an old Spanish spelling, or is something else going on here?

On a separate note, should the label "US" be changed to "California" (or even "Southern California")? Of the four cites, the two which don't provide a gloss after using are both from SoCal, and - in the 1909 case - it's used in a pun in the LA Times, suggesting many people had everyday familiarity with the term.

I can't find much from after that point, though I haven't looked all that hard. @Chuck Entz might be able to assist? Theknightwho (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

As the -ll- is just pronounced similarly to the English "y sound", I guess it could have been either an English hypercorrection or a Spanish dialectal diminutive. Wakuran (talk) 18:05, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Adding to this, this kind of misspelling is not uncommon amongst Spanish speakers in general but is especially common amongst Spanish speakers in the United States, as they often lack any sort of Spanish-medium schooling; because Spanish orthographical transparency is high, they are often literate "by default" in Spanish so long as they have learned the Latin alphabet for another language (English, in this case), but there are a few common sorts of errors that almost act as shibboleths for this kind of "accidental" literacy (initial h-deletion or insertion is another). If you search for #sandilla on TikTok you'll find quite a few examples of this misspelling (on other socials too, probably, but I haven't checked). Brusquedandelion (talk) 13:11, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Brusquedandelion Are you sure it's obsolete in Southern California, and not just a colloquial term? Most of the modern references I can find online refer to drinks (cocktails, smoothies etc), so it might have fossilised in that one specific context, but the results skew pretty heavily towards SoCal. Theknightwho (talk) 19:42, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Theknightwho: I can see a good bit of code-switching in those results: recipe titles in Spanish, followed by translations in English, with the English parts mentioning the Spanish terms in the process of translating them. Most of the dialects present in SoCal are characterized by Yeísmo, so a non-native speaker would have no way to tell whether the correct spelling was "-ílla" or "-ía". That makes the likelihood of a cross-linguistic misspelling fairly high- it's hard to be sure whether the term really exists as English, or is just a series of one-off bad guesses at the Spanish. There's also the matter of whether sandilla exists as a Spanish term, but I'll leave that for others. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:46, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Chuck Entz I'm confident that it definitely did exist in SoCal English at the turn of the 20th century, as the LA Times quote from 1909 is Besides the regular dividends the neat and interesting job of occasionally carving a surplus sandilla is performed, and the metallic chink of the resulting proceeds in the stockholder’s pocket gives forth a highly melonious sound. I initially mistook this as an instance of "melonious" being used to mean "melodious", but it's evidently a pun that relies on the reader knowing that a sandilla is a watermelon. Looking at the 1881 cite, the phrase bade Hercules Melendez go home and be a good boy, cultivate sandillas and have an ever open eye for jerked beef suggests that "sandilla" was being used in a slightly derogatory manner to evoke stereotypical ideas of Mexico; you could imagine the same sentence being written as "go home and be a good boy, put on his sombrero and eat some tacos" or something equally crass. In both cases, the meaning and subtext of the sentence can only be understood if you know what a sandilla is (or, in the second case, if you've heard the word in passing a few times). Theknightwho (talk) 23:07, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Currently the "Donkey" page has several senses for the word, but to me, number 5 and number 7 seem much too similar to each other:

- (naval slang, dated) A box or chest, especially a toolbox.

- British sea term for a sailor's storage chest.

I don't know either sense, but I suggest that more information be added to show clearly why they are not the same thing, or that they be merged. TooManyFingers (talk) 14:40, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have some issues with "equivalent to theo +‎ -log.", as "theo" does not mean "god" in English, so this surface analysis would be invalid. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 17:32, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It LOOKS to me as if, instead of "theo" plus "log", it should be "theology" minus "y". But I have no proper evidence. TooManyFingers (talk) 17:42, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I added a hyphen to theo, so it links to theo-. Wakuran (talk) 18:08, 22 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is missing. Thank you. Duchuyfootball (talk) 06:01, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi! Is Turkish fıskiye of Arabic or Turkish origin? The ending suffix -iye is definitely of Arabic origin but the rest is confusing. Nişanyan suggests that it is derived from the word fış or fıs, both from onomatopoeic origin as in "fışır fışır"/"fısır fısır" or "fışkırmak", and adds that "Modern Arapça fisḳiyya (aynı anlamda) Türkçeden alıntı olmalıdır" which translates to: "Modern Arabic 'fisḳiyya (of the same meaning) should be a borrowing from Turkish" . However TDK suggests that its borrowed from Arabic فسقية (fisqiyya), which is derived from فسق meaning "to come out of one's shell (for a ripe date)". Both origins are pretty solid I believe so I have to ask. In support of the Turkic origin, fış is directly related to a violent gushing out of water (as in fışkırmak) while Arabic origin is about coming out of shell (I don't know Arabic nor am I a linguist so take that with a grain of salt). Also there's a widespread variant of the word which is fışkiye which resembles fışkır- (this might also be caused by the confusion with fışkırmak) . The word may be confused with an Arabic origin which effected the Turkish pronunciation, or it may be derived from fıs instead of fış, both meaning the same thing. However Arabic origin also makes a lot of sense. For starters it's rare for Turkish to use an Arabic suffix on a word of Turkish origin. Moreover I heard that Arabic is a highly poetic language so "coming out of shell" might be used in a figurative way. I can't make any more claims on Arabic since I know nothing about it. Thanks in advance! Kakaeater (talk) 01:53, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Kakaeater: While it superficially could be right that the Arabic word is from Ottoman Turkish where it would have been artificially formed, particularly in view of the variant fışkiye, there are other like-suffixed Arabic examples for implements like قَمَرِيَّة (qamariyya, “vitrail”), شَمْسِيَّة (šamsiyya, “parasol”), حَنَفِيَّة (ḥanafiyya, “faucet, spigot”), and there are Middle Arabic attestations of it in Al-Andalus, Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN, page 967 says somewhere in Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII—not knowing about the “lath” sense—, and derives from Aramaic; I derive the “lath” sense from another Aramaic word. So the only reason why we don’t read it often from Classical Arabic sources is that it was a vulgar word. It was in Turkish then secondarily connected to Turkic stems, for ideophony also, like the Arabic itself appears a phono-semantic matching according to an Arabic root. Fay Freak (talk) 22:15, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Here it says the ultimate root is Proto-Indo-European *smel- (“to burn, smoke, smoulder; tar, pitch”). However, in its etymon of Proto-West Germanic *smallijan (“to glow, burn, smoulder”), the ultimate root is Proto-Indo-European *(s)meld- (“to burn, smoulder, smoke; tar, pitch”). Which one is correct, or both are (*smel- is linked to *(s)meld- anyway)? Additionally, the only sense given in the root *(s)meld- is "to soften, to melt", which seems hardly related to any of the senses above. Duchuyfootball (talk) 05:50, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems to be more or less the same etymology given at Etymonline (with a caveat that it is uncertain). Proto-Germanic *reukaną shows a similar semantic shift from smoke to smell. Wakuran (talk) 11:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's beside the point. I'm confused that ultimate PIE root seems different. Also, while PWG *smallijan says that it's from PIE *(s)meld-, the PIE root itself does not include PWG *smallijan as a descendant. Duchuyfootball (talk) 04:26, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Wakuran Etymonline does not mention *(s)meld- in the entries for smell (n. and v.) or smolder, but it does mention it in the entry for smelt.

Furthermore, the etymology for the Proto-West Germanic entry *smallijan currently defines *(s)meld- as meaning "to burn, smoulder, smoke; tar, pitch". This is, however, at odds both with the Etymonline entry and with the page for *(s)meld- itself, both of which define the word as meaning "to soften, to melt" (well, technically, the OED entry defines it as the adjective "soft" but close enough).

To make things even more confusing, the entry for smell derives the word ultimately from the PIE root *smel- (redirect to *(s)meld-), defined here as "to burn, smoke, smoulder; tar, pitch". Now this definition concurs with its definition given, for *(s)meld-, in the etymology for the Proto-West Germanic entry *smallijan, as mentioned above. But, once again, this is at odds with the actual definition given in the actual entry of *(s)meld- itself: "to soften, to melt", with no mention of burning or smoking.

Finally, as if all this was not enough, *smel- redirects to *(s)meld-, and not to *(s)mel-, which has its own entry. (Not sure if you noticed this @Duchuyfootball.) Brusquedandelion (talk) 13:42, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I noticed that when I said *smel- is linked to *(s)meld- anyway, but I don't know why it happens nor how to fix it. Plus, I wonder why should *smel- be linked to *(s)mel- when their definitions also differ. Duchuyfootball (talk) 05:11, 28 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I stumbled across the etymology for Polish Antarktyda: "Internationalism; compare English Antarctica." This is also the exact same explanation offered at Polish Antarktyka. The few analogous entries in other languages which attempt any further explanation just derive it vaguely from Latin or Greek and leave it at that, without any mention of the change (or constancy) in form. Whilst none of these statements are exactly wrong, I find it quite unsatisfying since I am interested to know how and when the 'd' got there and why it doesn't appear to just be an alternation since many languages appear to have both forms with a distinction in meaning). This 'd' is obversvable in a wide variety of languages globally, admittedly a large chunk of which likely borrowed it directly from a regional/colonial lingua franca such as Russian, Spanish or Portuguese, just as the spread of the 'c/k/que' form was surely helped by English and French in the modern period. According to Antarctica#Translations, approximately 50 languages have the 'd' form, whereas approximately 120 have a variant of the 'c/k' form. Around 10 languages in that list have both terms (and this number may be actually much higher since I already several missing during my digging around the site), with around two thirds of those containing qualifiers indicating that the 'd' form signifies the continent (i.e. Antarctica) and 'c/k' form the region (i.e. the Antarctic).

Since it is technically a prefixed term, perhaps one could look at words for the Arctic using a 'd' form. The only ones I could find are: Italian Artide m (alongside Artico m), Catalan Àrtida f (alongside Àrtic m), Czech Arktida f, Slovak Arktída f. This may have already been touched on here at WT.

I think it would be interesting to attempt to narrow down: a) approximately when the term in -d first appeared b) whether the continent/region distinction always existed or arose later, and c) its likely source, i.e. if it's (New) Latin, what is the relevant suffix which could account for the -d (or -is, see below), or if it is an early modern Romance formation/dialectal alternation, which varieties could be likely candidates for a form *antarctida and which at the same time could have spawned a far flung global borrowing spree? The only modern Romance lects I could find which still preserve the word internal -ct- are Romanian and Aragonese, both admittedly unlikely candidates as the ultimate source. That said, I'm not familiar enough with historical sound changes here to be able to make any judgement.

As for the actual data, it is notable that Slavic languages appear to be approximately divisible into thirds: one third with 'd' form (mainly West Slavic), one third with 'k' form (Sorbian + most of South Slavic), one third with both (bit of everything, but especially East Slavic). For the Romance languages the situation is more interesting. Whilst I presume that our coverage is far form complete, going off the information we do have, it appears that despite 'c/k' form being in the clear majority worldwide, and also the only form we have listed for the Latin ancestor, the 'd' form appears to be dominant within the Romance family. I note that many languages also have related words in 'c' (such as Spanish antártico (adj)), and it is quite possible that many languages may have/have had both and we just don't have a record of this yet.

We also have the two forms in German, where, at least in strict usage, 's' is for the region and 'k' is for the continent (an apparent reversal of case in Slavic):

• German: Antarktis f (region), Antarktika f (continent)

Hungarian has the same two forms Antarktisz vs. Antarktika but it's unclear whether or not there is any difference in meaning. Pfeifer claims that the Arktis / Antarktis first appeared in 19th c. German. One can speculate that they probably spread from there into neighbouring languages in northern European (Scandinavian, Finnish, Estonian, Võro and Northern Sami) as well as Hungarian in central Europe, however the etymology at Swedish Antarktis derives it straight from New Latin without any explanation for the ending or why it appears in so many languages in exactly the same derivation (which exception of Hungarian, which however reflects the s pronunciation). Are we simply missing a New Latin form here?

Depending on what arises from this discussion, it may be worth consolidating the translations at Antarctic and Antarctica on the relevant page and perhaps also linking to each translation section (for translations referring to the region, see here) since it appears most entries are merely ending up at Antarctica. Helrasincke (talk) 12:10, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

How are we distinguishing between the ’region/ecozone’ of Antarctica and the ‘continent’ of Antarctica? We make no such distinction at Antarctica itself, despite doing so for the German, Russian and Polish translations. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:31, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Neo-Latin has had both Antarctis and Antarctida as variants of the name. Compare Atlantis and Atlantida, from the Greek nominative and accusative respectively. Nicodene (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The various -ica tails ultimately come from the Ancient Greek suffix -ικός (-ikós), used to form the adjective ἀρκτικός (arktikós), used in πόλος ἀρκτικός (pólos arktikós) (North Pole), with the counterpart πόλος ἀνταρκτικός (pólos antarktikós) (South Pole – the pole opposite the μεγάλη ἄρκτος (megálē árktos) and μικρά ἄρκτος (mikrá árktos), the Great Bear and the Little Bear). Of course, the Ancient Greeks had no notion of a continent there. Likewise, the -ida tails ultimately come from the Ancient Greek suffix -ις (-is), with stem -ιδ- (-id-), which can be used to form nouns for regions, as in Ἀτλαντίς (Atlantís) from Ἄτλας (Átlas) +‎ -ις (-is). For an earlier discussion, see Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2017/April § Антарктика/Антарктида.  --Lambiam 17:05, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Etymology aside, it looks like Antarctica is an entry in need of improvement, as the translations saying ‘region/ecozone of Antarctica’ are actually referring to the Antarctic, which I’ve only just learnt is technically slightly different to Antarctica the continent. The looser layman’s definition of Antarctica, equating it to the Antarctic, could be listed as a separate definition and perhaps labelled as ‘proscribed’ or ‘sometimes proscribed’. In fact both entries could be improved so that the translation tables in both of them agree with each other. It looks like only French, Manx and Welsh make no official distinction between the two places judging by the tables as they currently are. The distinction is made clearer in Wikipedia (Antarctic) Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Helrasincke Spanish should be both, with both Antártida and Antártica referring to the continent Antarctica (though the former with the -d- is more popular) and antártico/antártica meaning Antarctic (the adjective). At least, this is the normative prescription, per the RAE in their Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts; however, the very existence of such a prescription implies at least some natives likely do mix up those two usages.

More importantly, for the purposes of your investigation, on that same page the RAE claims the form "Antártida" arose "by analogy with other toponyms like Holanda (Holland), Nueva Zelanda (New Zealand), Atlántida (Atlantis), etc." ("por analogía con la terminación en -da de otros topónimos como Holanda, Nueva Zelanda, Atlántida, etc."). Not sure how likely that is given this same -d- appears in many other languages, but it's a data point, for whatever it's worth. Although, most of those languages did get the term from a colonizer Romance language, so perhaps this is not altogether farfetched; perhaps the -d- arose by analogy to the above toponyms in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and then spread. French is a crucial link here since, unlike any other Romance language, it is a plausible source of loanwords for Slavic languages, as it was the prestige language of many Eastern European courts till the 20th century. It doesn't seem like a form with -d- is used in modern French, anyways, but it does appear in various other Gallo-Romance tongues (e.g. Occitan); does anyone know if, perhaps, such a form was once current in Standard French as well? Brusquedandelion (talk) 16:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

- First thing to note: I corrected the Vedic accent of यम (yama) in the senses of 'twin' and 'Yama' to "yamá". Because of this long-standing error, the accents on the reconstructed terms might be wrong, but I'm not really familiar with these proto-languages.

- Second question: are PII *yamHas and *Yamas (with whatever accent) really two different terms or simply the same? Exarchus (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

pinging @Kwékwlos Exarchus (talk) 08:22, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indo-Iranian appears to not distinguish intervocalic *m and *mH, so PII *Yamas is preferred. Kwékwlos (talk) 15:59, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Kwékwlos So would it be fine to change PII *yámHas to *yamás and PIE *yémHos to *yemHós? Exarchus (talk) 14:18, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Obviously. Kwékwlos (talk) 15:20, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is there any possible relation regarding Vulgar Latin *murrum, Proto-Turkic *burun, and Proto-Slavic *mъrda? All of them meaning muzzle, snout, or nose. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 21:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

None. The phonemes are common. Fay Freak (talk) 23:48, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That doesn't make any sense. Polorzanca (talk) 12:57, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The homelands of the speakers of Proto-Turkic and of Proto-Slavic were separated by some 2000 to 3000 km, so borrowing is unlikely. If these languages have a common ancestor (Proto-Eurasiatic), nothing is known about it. Across long distances in time, superficial sound similarities are not a significant indication of a relationship.  --Lambiam 11:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The etymology of sakki in the meaning "group of people" doesn't seem to be supported by the pages linked to in the etymology section. Could someone else confirm this is the case? Jonsku99 (talk) 22:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I deny that this is the case. Where do you think groups of men in the mining or underground engineering industries worked? The German term metonymically refers to anyone working in an excavation. Fay Freak (talk) 23:52, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

the German article for Schacht gives: "veraltet: Vereinigung von Handwerkern, die auf Wanderschaft sind oder waren" Exarchus (talk) 12:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It would be helpful if more information from the native articles was included in the English language ones. Jonsku99 (talk) 14:42, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is the derivation from Latin jocus legitimate? Accordant to Etymonline and the iPhone dictionary, joke originated as a slang term, and borrowings in the colloquial lexis are rare, especially those from extinct languages. Of course, there are exceptions, such as c(h)rony from A. Greek, but neologisms prevail. I do not propose an alternate etymology for joke, but to ponder on a part, I assume, as the letter J is rare in English, it was used to draw attention (vide jive).

In conclusion, I posit the similarity to Latin jocus may be coincidental. Is alteration of jest a possible source? Wiktionairy (talk) 02:09, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Maybe it originated as student slang at about the same time as 'c(h)rony'. Oxford English dictionary gives: "OED's earliest evidence for joke is from 1670, in the writing of John Eachard, college head." Exarchus (talk) 09:00, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Why not, compare German Jux from about the same time. Fay Freak (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Any ideas? This probably isn't a copyright trap, since I saw this word on JNW the Dutch-Yiddish dictionary as well (albeit I think marked with the wrong gender), and even the Belarusian-Yiddish dictionary under "xrondje". The Belarusian dictionary speculates it to be of Slavic origin, but didn't provide much else beyond that. Could it be some dialectal Polish/Kashubian word that starts with chrzą-? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:52, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Could the -dye-ending be a diminutive ending similar to Dutch -tje, or doesn't Yiddish work that way? Wakuran (talk) 13:57, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yiddish doesn't work that way. I'm pretty sure its only Germanic-derived diminutive suffixes are -l and -ele; otherwise it has some borrowed from Slavic. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:58, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Echoing what Mahagaja has said there - it's not a diminutive suffix. ־דיע (-dye) in particular hints at either Polish -dia (in foreign words) or -dzie (in native words), Russian -дье (-dʹje) or maybe even Belarusian -дзе (-dzje). But I couldn't find any Polish *chrządzie, and as far as Slavic borrowings go, ־אָנ־ (-on-) is hard to explain as anything other than Polish ą (cf. בלאָנדזשען (blondzhen) from Polish błądzić). Found one result for chrzędzie (there have been cases where Yiddish borrowed an -ę- form rather than an -ą- form), but even then from the context of the sentence, it was in the locative rather than nominative, and Yiddish typically doesn't borrow Slavic words from individual inflections. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:02, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looking up Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/slihtaz, the tree links English slaught as the descendant, rather than slight. I don't know the technical reason behind it, but it seems as if the bot prefers to link the first incorrect meaning on Old English sliht, rather than the second, correct. Wakuran (talk) 14:10, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fixed. The entry for sliht#Old English needed {{etymid}} tags to differentiate the two etymologies. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:56, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

according to some persian sources, its from turkic, if so the source would be *doghuly which doesnt have counterparts in turkic languages as i know, so maybe the native persian compound form is more possible. Ryungja (talk) 09:03, 1 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Probably borrowed from some derivative of doğulmaq. Vahag (talk) 10:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi, do you think the combination of Persian (do "two") and Azeri (oğulu" "son"), forming "two sons" and since there is no gender in Persian the word coming to mean twin? Or is that stretching it too far? CaesarVafadar (talk) 08:09, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

μόνος currently says "From Proto-Hellenic *mónwos, from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“small”)." Semantically, I guess "small" > "only" is possible, but how is the form *mónwos supposed to be derived from *mey-? Nothing matches but the initial consonant. At Reconstruction_talk:Proto-Indo-European/mey-, I see the following comments: "Most sources that I have consulted consider *mey- and *men- separate, unrelated roots. This list mixes the reflexes of the two. --Vahag (talk) 11:04, 27 December 2015 (UTC) True. Words in men-, man-, mon- or mun- (such as *muniwō) cannot possibly belong here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2016 (UTC)" Urszag (talk) 06:41, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree. Our entry RC:Proto-Indo-European/men- lists three distinct roots, but there is probably a fourth that means 'small, isolated' and is the source of both Ancient Greek μόνος (mónos) and Old Armenian մանր (manr, “small”), not to mention several other words currently listed at *mey- (“small”). —Mahāgaja · talk 06:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I see that Pokorny 1959 and Beekes 2010 both assign this word to a root *men- 'small'. I've updated μόνος, Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/men-, and Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/mey- accordingly, but will hold off on fixing all of the mislabeled derived words until there's been a bit more time for anyone to make a case for why *mey- might be correct or *men- wrong.--Urszag (talk) 07:57, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

This Eastern Mari word appears to be a borrowing from a Turkic language, from Proto-Turkic *kičüg. The etymology is empty however, and I can't seem to find anything on the Internet to confirm it. Akhaeron (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The protist Thigmocoma is the type genus of the family Thigmocomidae. But apart from the prefix thigma-, "to touch", I don't understand the suffix -coma. What is your opinion? Gerardgiraud (talk) 11:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Could it be κόμη (kómē, “hair”)? Do thigmocomas have little hairlike feelers on them? —Mahāgaja · talk 12:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's not obvious si here : Thigmocoma Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

No, but I notice there's a related genus called Thigmotricha, which looks like it uses the other Ancient Greek word for 'hair', θρίξ (thríx) (genitive τριχός (trikhós)). —Mahāgaja · talk 19:21, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

You're right. I will manage with that. Thanks for help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 09:17, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the Etymology of margr, it states <<Either an independent word from Proto-Germanic *margaz related to mor and merja, […] >> - what do mor and merja refer to ? Leasnam (talk) 14:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Maybe a sloppy typo for more and meira ... (?) Wakuran (talk) 20:11, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Alas, User:Myndfrea has not made any edits since 2015, and would likely not respond to queries. Wakuran (talk) 21:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is an old hypothesis by Folk & Torp (1910, Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 695) to link margr to mor (“dust”) and merja (“to crush”), which isn't very likely. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Origin of French word? 90.241.192.210 15:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The origin of a word is stated under the heading 'Etymology'. Exarchus (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

what was its latin ancestor? 90.241.192.210 17:04, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not every word in Old French comes from Latin. In this case, the similarity to Ancient Greek ἁρπάζω (harpázō) is suggestive, but there are also similar Germanic words and "ap" as a representation of jaws snapping shut is also quite plausible. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:47, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Old French happer is tied to Old French happe (“crampon, hook”). Though happe is often explained as being derived from the verb, it bears a striking resemblance to Old High German happa (“bill-hook, scythe”). Leasnam (talk) 23:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to Ernest Weekley (1921) An etymological dictionary of modern English many of the senses of trammel are a completely different word with separate etymology (from germanic tram meaning "beam" or similar, nothing to do with nets). Weekley elaborated on this at some length in the Transactions of the Philological Society, 1907, pp. 385–388, citing several other sources (there he also disputes the "three mesh" etymology of the drag-net sense). Cf. also the 1926 OED. Would it be worth modifying the entry to split the word in two, add more etymological details, linking sources, etc.? I'm a Wikipedian largely unfamiliar with Wiktionary formatting, conventions, sourcing, etc. Jacobolus (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The explanation at meli might be perfectly correct, but there's also this from Witzel's "Early Loan Words in Western Central Asia":

(hinting at a distant link with Proto-Indo-European *mélit:) "Note even beyond this area, in Polynesia, Samoan meli, Hawaiian mele, meli; mele, melemele 'yellow', Maori miere; Tongan melie 'sweetness, sweet, delicious', Rarotongan meli 'honey', Mangareva mere 'honey'. This must be old and cannot just be an introduction from French miel (in New Zealand, Hawaii?) as we have Haw. mele-mele 'a star name': Melemele and Polapola, 'the twin stars', the former male, the latter female; at any rate, this is already Proto-Nuclear Polynesian (Samoan, Futunan etc.) *melemele; cf. also Haw. Melemele 'a mythical land'. -- For the spread of the word, note the role of cire perdue with its inherent use of bee's wax, see Andrew Sherratt, elsewhere in this volume: Patterns of Growth: Nodes and Networks in the Ancient World."^[1]

How credible is this analysis? Exarchus (talk) 10:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

---

Not all that much. The time depth involved makes the likelihood of modern reflexes that similar via inheritance unlikely. Note that there are terms related to sweetness going back all the way to Proto-Austronesian that contain "m" followed by a front vowel, but reflexes like Malay manis show easily such patterns get lost over time. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

For what it's worth, the Polynesian Lexicon Project reconstructs a term *malie ("sweet-tasting, delicious"), of which Tongan melie would be a descendant. Another term *mele is reconstructed as a star name.

Anyway, I guess Hawaiian mele(mele) "yellow" is then a development from the borrowed meli "honey"? Exarchus (talk) 20:35, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

If it's a wanderwort, I'd expect reflexes in other Asian language families. Indo-European and Polynesian languages are very distant from each other. Wakuran (talk) 12:10, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Chuck's right. It's bad etymologizing that doesn't take into account how sound change operates in Polynesian languages. I didn't know that Witzel is capable of producing such BS. Meli, *malie and *mele can't be related—vowels don't just "disappear" or change at random in Polynesian languages, especially in the penult and final syllables. Nor should we assume that meli wasn't anything else but a learned borrowing at a time when most probably the first Bible translators didn't bring honey with them in order to show them what this obscure thing mentioned in the Bible actually is.

Want more linguistic fantasies about honey and bees? In the Enna' dialect of Buginese, 'bee' is hani! Maybe they got it from English-speaking sailors? Or is it just from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *wani, with the perfectly regular sound change *w > h... :) –Austronesier (talk) 18:08, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Austronesier "I didn't know that Witzel is capable of producing such BS." It was all in a footnote, I suspect it was an excursus outside his expertise.

I gave a tentative etymology at mele, feel free to improve. Exarchus (talk) 18:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the published version of the paper[11], Witzel is more careful in his wording about these wild speculations after having consulted Ross Clark, an actual expert in Oceanic languages.

As for melemele 'yellow', I'll do a little more digging. As of now, I think the connection to the Nuclear Polynesian name for Antares with its M-class color is the most likely solution. –Austronesier (talk) 19:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

So Mele Kalikimaka actually means "yellow Christmas"? —Mahāgaja · talk 06:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

mele also happens to mean "to be merry" (and now I'm wondering whether this might be influenced by English instead of just coming from the sense "chant, song") Exarchus (talk) 07:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

A little topical— I can’t really scrounge up anything convincing about where it comes from. There’s one well-circulated, quite questionable source that claims it originates from German, but that seems pretty unsubstantial. It certainly rose in popularity during the mid-ish 20th century, but there’s still no obvious etymon. To me, it seems kind of reminiscent of the pooka but the term doesn’t seem particularly, or even originally, British. CanadianRosbif (talk) 16:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Are you talking about the pet name, or something else? For pets, English already has the similar pooch/ poochie. Wakuran (talk) 17:26, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Where does the supposed -vė suffix come from? Could it be linked to the ending of erdvė? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 20:37, 4 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Unsourced and derivationally problematic. -saph 🍏 13:30, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Back in December, I posted about the group of insects called Epiprocta. Much to my amusement, you all discovered its etymology came from "on top of the anus". So when I was learning about groups of rodents and saw Dasyprocta (the Agoutis), I was interested if this might also be using the same proct = anus etymology.

After searching for the prefix dasy-, I learn that means hairy! Is the etymology of this group really hairy anus or is this just a coincidence? Why would they choose this name for the agoutis? Thanks again Pithon314 (talk) 02:39, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Pithon314: The original description spells it out in Ancient Greek and Latin. Confirmed. Further down it says "Corpus pilis duriusculis versus anum longioribus tectum", which provides further explanation. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Chuck Entz That's so funny! Thank you for confirming that! This fact now lives in my mind rent-free :D --Pithon314 (talk) 17:01, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have another rodent group question: Aconaemys (Andean rock rats). In this one, I believe the "mys" is Ancient Greek μῦς (mûs, "mouse") like other groups of rodents such as Dipodomys. Does anyone have insight into the "Aconae" part? Thanks again, Pithon314 (talk) 20:57, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

ἀκόνη is vaguely related to rocks, although dictionaries say it means specifically "whetstone", which seems an odd fit. Lewis and Short simply defines Latin aconae as "pointed stones".--Urszag (talk) 22:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Origin of German word? I don't think that so+wie makes a lot of sense to the meaning of this word. 90.241.192.210 19:17, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Of course it does. "Sowie" literally means "so as", or perhaps if this is clearer in English: "as much as". Accordingly you can say Er liest Bücher sowie Zeitungen (literally, "He reads books as much as newspapers"). It's actually quite the same as English "as well as" or French "autant que". 84.63.31.91 19:38, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The etymology section claims that this is a "malapropism of philosophers' stone", which is in turn a direct translation of the Latin phrase. This was added in this diff. Could we verify this claim? Even if this were true, IMO it's not so much a "malapropism" rather than a simple misspelling. Wyverald (talk) 21:27, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's definitely not a malapropism as that requires some kind of inappropriate or even absurd use of words. This is obviously not the case here. It makes absolutely no different whether we attribute the stone to "the philosophers" (as a group) or "the philosopher" (as such), in same way that it's "miller's knot" or "shoemaker's end". I would simply call it a "variant" or at most an "alteration" (for the latter, strictly, we must first prove that "philosophers' stone" is in fact the older form in English). 84.63.31.91 22:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

As philosophōrum is in the genitive plural case, a direct translation would correctly be "philosophers' stone", so yes, it is most likely the older form. Wakuran (talk) 01:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The correct term is "misconstruction". Theknightwho (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm obviously aware of that; otherwise I wouldn't have suggested calling it an "alteration" in the first place. But such reasoning is meaningless. The only way to prove that "philosophers' stone" is the older form is by looking at the oldest English attestations. In fact, to my own surprise, Ngrams shows a strong dominance of "philosopher's stone", which grows ever stronger the further back one goes! (Of course, I can't be sure whether Ngrams is able to distinguish these properly.) 84.63.31.91 15:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

When adding my English entry (aburahaye), I couldn't find the Japanese term for"haye" to complete the etymology. I know for a fact that "abura" of the word meant "oil," but I couldn't seem to find out what the "haye" meant. Any suggestions? Couscousous (talk) 22:54, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

There are only a handful of Google hits for the word, so it's unclear exactly which species the word refers to. I am also not sure on whether the ending should be read as [heɪ] or [hɑjɛ] (which have implications for which Japanese word that was borrowed). An initial guess is that it could be a mangling of goi, the compound form of koi. Wakuran (talk) 01:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Managed to find the species now. According to this dictionary, it seems to be'Sarcocheilichthys variegatus variegatus'. The Japanese article mentions Japanese article サクラバエ (sakurabae) and ヤナギバエ (yangibae), bae could be a compound form of hae, which apparently in zoological matters could refer to a carp or small fish. There are entries on the Japanese Wiktionary for hae and haya. Wakuran (talk) 01:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Google Translate implied the words could refer to sharks, so perhaps they ultimately have been borrowed from German Hai or Dutch haai (?...) Wakuran (talk) 01:42, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Found a kanji, so the last guess might be inaccurate. 鮠 Wakuran (talk) 01:56, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

For future reference, most Japanese plants and animals are referred to in katakana, so you would search on Google for "アブラハヤ". The first hit I checked gives the name in kanji as 油鮠, which confirms Japanese 鮠 as the correct second part. Ignore the part about "carp" in our entry, since a dace is a type of minnow. Of course, carp, goldfish and minnows are all in the same family, so it's not that far off. The English name at the same site is "downstream fatminnow", with fat=Japanese 油 (abura) and minnow=Japanese 鮠 (haya). They may have just calqued the Japanese name. Judging by Google Translate, "由来・語源 表面がぬめぬめして油がついたような感触だから。長崎県東彼杵郡での呼び名の「アブラハエ」の「ハエ」を「ハヤ」に転訛して田中茂穂が命名したものではないか？　本種はタカハヤとの混称が多く、比較的よく使われた呼び名を元にしたのだと思う。" from the same website discusses the etymology- something about the skin feeling oily, and changing another, older name with "hae" meaning "fly" to "haya" and possibly influenced by the name of another fish. It also gives the name of the person who coined it, 田中茂穂 (Shigeho Tanaka). Chuck Entz (talk) 05:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Whilst trying to make some worth in this gigantic discussion, I realized that maybe Iit should be checked for verification as the only results on Google Books were dictionaries. Couscousous (talk) 09:08, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

So, it would likely be pronounced as [hɑjɛ]? Could it have been a confusion from 'haya' or an attempt of indicating the separate pronunciation of a and e in 'hae'? Wakuran (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Japanese Wikipedia page on ハヤ (haya) states these fish are also called ハエ (hae) or ハヨ (hayo). The katakana character エ historically represented the syllable ye and takes the place for that syllable in the traditional katakana table, so I can imagine someone mechanically transcribing it as ye. There are Google hits for "aburahae", while "aburahaye" is only found in a supplement of the Century Dictionary.^[12]  --Lambiam 00:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am exploring the possiblity that Elymi derives from Proto-Indo-European *h₁élem (“mountain elm”), thus "Elm People". The Elymi spoke some kind of Indo-European language, and the Mountain Elm grows in Sicily. 24.108.18.81 01:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The earliest given citation is in a novelization of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie; the book was released in September 2004 and the movie in November 2004. However, another book is given as a citation that dates to October 2004; it seems unlikely to me that the second citation, which was not written by someone involved with SpongeBob or the movie, was referencing a book made for children about a film connected to a children's TV show. It is possible that later citations may have been influenced by SpongeBob, but this one citation casts doubt on SpongeBob coining it. I suppose this could just be an alliterative SOP, unless WT:LIGHTBULB or WT:IDIOM#Empty space test ("goofy" and "goober" both refer to silliness) apply. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 04:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

German Krampf, Old High German kramph don't belong here at all, but are from a strong variant *krampaz. But even for the rest I have trouble with the feminine gender. Old High German krampho, Old Saxon krampo are both clearly from a weak masculine *krampô. Middle Dutch crampe is given with both genders, but the fact that it became feminine in Middle Dutch and MLG means nothing because that's what commonly happened to inanimate weak masculines in these languages. Accordingly, there is absolutely no evidence for a feminine in West Germanic. The only remaining support would be Gothic 𐌺𐍂𐌰𐌼𐍀𐌰 (krampa). But is that even attested? I can't find it any sources. 84.63.31.91 06:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

"From Middle Persian [script needed] (ʾnʾl /⁠anār⁠/). Probably ultimately related to the pomegranate terms under Arabic رُمَّان (rummān)."

Is there any source or an explanation on how rummān and anār⁠ related ? "Probably" is not adequate enough without any source/explanation in my opinion.

I would delete that they are related if there is source/explanation but since it was added some years ago I'm a bit hesitant. If there is a source/explanation I would like to know it and to also to add it. Appreciate any help possible, Cheers. CaesarVafadar (talk) 07:52, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@CaesarVafadar: Have you seen the other potential cognates in the table of the Arabic section? The remark is more about them. After all it literally says “the pomegranate terms under rummān”. The two terms themselves are separated by several millennia.

Other than that, liquid metathesis is common in languages across the world.

You don’t have anything more helpful to write in the etymology, do you? Fay Freak (talk) 08:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I did look at the Arabic section. I just wanted something more academic in suggestion that source of انار is from the same place as رُمَّان or an explanation how they could be related.

From what I know of sound changes of Proto-Iranian to Old Persian/Old Iranian to Middle Persian/Middle Iranian, there is no sound change that explain this and there is no cognate of انار in Avestan. But I can only read English so my sources are kinda limited. I know there are some good sources in German, French and possible Russian. I guess multiple metathesis' could explain it, I know "R" likes to change position in Iranic languages.

Since we don't know origin of رُمَّان and origin of انار, I personally think, it's too much of a stretch to say they are related. We have to establish some sort of commonality, and like I said there are no sound change that could get us near a common word. I guess they Could be related. I'm not apposed to it.

If I could reword, I would change it to "From Middle Persian [script needed] (ʾnʾl /⁠anār⁠/), of uncertain origin. Perhaps ultimately related to the pomegranate terms of the same origin of Arabic رُمَّان (rummān)."

But when I'm not certain I don't like to add/delete/change etymologies.

Thanks for your response by the way, I didn't consider metathesis. CaesarVafadar (talk) 08:44, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@CaesarVafadar: Your proposed wording is totally okay. Myself I just changed “probably” to “arguably” since you voice your concerns so nicely.

Is there really nothing to add on the Iranian end? Something more in Middle Iranian or Old Iranian could lead us farther later. Even adding the exotic languages at the Arabic page took a while. Fay Freak (talk) 08:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Can anyone help me find a plausible etymology for Irish scraiste (“loafer, sluggard”)? DIL doesn't suggest one. Irish /ʃtʲ/ often reflects /tʃ/ or /dʒ/ in loanwords from (Middle) English or French/Anglo-Norman (e.g. paiste from patch or páiste from Old French page (“pageboy”)), so scraiste could come from something like scratch or "scradge", but I'm not finding anything with feasible semantics. Our entry for scratch doesn't give anything, nor can I find anything likely-looking at the University of Michigan Middle English Dictionary. Does anyone happen to know of a word in older or dialectal English that means "lazy person" or the like and looks like it could be the ancestor of scraiste? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

RFV of the etymology. {{R:EDPC}} doesn't actually suggest any Indo-European origin of the word. Is the suggested connection with the Baltic words listed published anywhere? A new editor also keeps trying to push an utterly ridiculous connection with Phoenician and Proto-Semitic, which doesn't bear thinking about. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply