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Etymology scriptorium

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

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November 2024

Ⱀ

Origin? 84.70.45.226 16:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Under the heading Origin proposals, Wikipedia's article Glagolitic script has "Possibly minuscule Greek nu ν^[60]".  --Lambiam 08:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Protocruzia

Protocruzia (protist) is the type genus of the family Protocruziidae. The prefix proto is clear but the suffix cruzia is mysterious. Any ideas? Gerardgiraud (talk) 19:40, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

It was dedicated to the memory of w:Oswaldo Cruz: "Genero dedicada á memoria de Oswaldo Cruz" (published in the journal "Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz"). Compare Cruzella. Urszag (talk) 21:07, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot @Urszag. Gerardgiraud (talk) 07:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Portuguese engendrar

This word is said to be inherited from Latin ingenerāre. However, wouldn’t the inherited form in Portuguese be something like *engerar (vide gerar). It seems to me that this word was borrowed or influenced by French engendrer. Is there any other word with the -enerare → -endrar development native to Portuguese? OweOwnAwe (talk) 16:09, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

bayhead

Why is this term applied to baygall swamps? I understand the other sense, where bay = body of water, gulf (speaking of the head of a bay makes as much sense as speaking of the head of a river)... Is the swamp sense of bayhead suggesting that baygall swamps are "bay-laurel-y headwaters" of the streams they're near? - -sche (discuss) 05:34, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

buy it + buy the farm

The Online Etym. Dictionary at "farm" says that the phrase "buy it" (1825) is significantly older than "buy the farm" (mid-20th c.). So the claim of an ellipsis at "buy it" is in all likelihood mistaken. I also think, though this may be wrong, that "buy it" is common in Britain while "buy the farm" is not.
There's also further information in the linked entry that might be used to improve the etymology at "buy the farm" (for example, it could be a blend of "buy it" and "fetch the farm" also mentioned there). Is the military-aircraft-crash thing really a "long-held hypothesis" or just a folk etymology? 2.207.102.112 04:15, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I've adapted the etymology at "buy it". 2.207.102.112 18:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

The link to Quinlon's site is well worth following. Online Ety. Dict. certainly uses it. DCDuring (talk) 18:35, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

冷たい

Why is its etymology "Compound of 爪 (tsume, “claw”) +‎ 痛い (itai, “painful”)"? I don't understand the connection between claw, painful and "cold". Duchuyfootball (talk) 13:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

A biting cold? Hokkaido can be fairly cold during winter time. Wakuran (talk) 23:25, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It's interesting. My language does not have the concept of relating coldness to physical injuries (biting, claw etc.) like that. Duchuyfootball (talk) 23:45, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

It's an understandable metaphor in English, but not a lexicalized one, I think. DCDuring (talk) 18:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Ⰰ

I doubt this letter looks like the sign of the cross, also by the time the Glagolitic script was invented the Phoenician alphabet had been absolete for over 500 years so it couldn't come from 'alep too. 84.70.45.226 21:30, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I changed the text back to a previous version (with Hebrew alef), which is also what the source gives. Exarchus (talk) 11:44, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, are you saying the source Diwodh₃rós provided didn't give the Phoenician etymology which Diwodh₃rós cited it as supporting (and instead, it supports the Hebrew etymology)? Misrepresenting sources would (as discussed recently in relation to another user, who I see has even criticized Diwodh₃rós for something similar) be a concerning issue. - -sche (discuss) 02:15, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

nauf

Origin? What is its normal German cognate? 84.70.45.226 21:06, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

It's from hinauf. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:46, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Strong disagree. nei can be derived from in or nieder, no need to go through hin. The rest is analogy.

Is there any evidence of contracted hn respectively hr for raus etc.? Is this a case of the front fell off (after Clarke and Dawe)? Howydo (talk) 10:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why you'd expect to see forms where the [h] is retained but the intervening vowel lost. I'd expect either both were lost at the same time, or the [h] first.--Urszag (talk) 02:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

German: Lah, Lage

Currently listed as descendants at Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/lauhaz and Reconstruction:Proto-West_Germanic/lauh, a lexeme that is supposed to be derived from Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/lewk-. I'm not familiar with sound changes that would turn "au" into "a" in this position, or "h" into "g", whereas the evolution of lauh > Loh is unproblematic. Do Loh, Lah and Lage really all belong to the same root? The etymology section of the latter says that it is instead a derivative of the unrelated root Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/legʰ-. Urszag (talk) 13:20, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

It might presumably be two different Lages. The standard Lage looks similar to the Swedish läge (position). Wakuran (talk) 14:10, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/ruskos

Absolutely zero descendants point to a short *u; the co-occurrence of Old Irish ú with Welsh i and Romance u all point to a long *ū, and the u in Breton/Cornish cannot reflect a short inherited *u (Brittonic vowels spelled u only reflects *ou and oi; old *u became o(u)). The entry name should be reverted to *rūskos to at least be compatible with most of the descendants (but we need an admin to do this). — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree for Irish and British. What do the Romance descendants tell us, if anything? Why does an admin need to do the moving? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 20:43, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

An admin needs to do the move because it involves deleting a redirect. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe the fact that the Romance descendants of Latin rusca all have u and not o indicates that the Latin was actually Latin rūsca. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:56, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

You have correctly captured my thought process with regards to the Romance terms. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:53, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I made the move, but I haven't added macrons to the Latin terms. Someone else can do that if they feel confident. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/cedr

Is there any particular reason to suppose this was borrowed into a stage of a language that can be called Proto-West-Germanic? I initially got here by looking into the distribution of palatalization in Old English words; in theory, we'd expect original [ˈt͡ʃe] to evolve by palatal diphthongization to [ˈt͡ʃiy] in Early West Saxon, which I think would give us (*?)ċieder rather than ceder as the normalized OE form if it had actually evolved regularly as a fully inherited term. The main thing that concerns me though is that this is one of those reconstructions that seems to have more than one questionable sound correspondence: aside from the not-a-typically-recognized phoneme *c (which I know has already been discussed in regard to krūci), the ending -dr doesn't show the same evolution in High German as in *dodr. The entry for Dutch ceder cites Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands: can anyone check what this says? Urszag (talk) 05:32, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to me either Leasnam (talk) 19:19, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

You can see the Dutch dictionary here: borrowing from French cedre, or directly from Latin. Exarchus (talk) 20:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Compare English pine ~ Dutch pijn, which were clearly borrowed from the same Latin root and likely at about the same time, but which we list as two separate Latin borrowings rather than reconstructing a common ancestor. —Soap— 18:10, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

i didnt see this: Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/pīnā. this doesnt rule out what i said above ... it could just be a very tangled etymology, such that it was borrowed into OE, died out, and was reborrowed again in ME, while the same thing happened in Dutch. i note, however, that the supposed OHG cognate does not have the expected pf-, so this may need looking at as well. —Soap— 21:01, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

For the other meaning of *pīnā (pain), German doesn't have pf- either. I now see that you actually discussed this a year earlier at the talk page. I'm not sure the reply is that relevant: if German relatinised many words, then you'd expect a pf- variant at least at some point. Kluge suggests Pein was transmitted through Irish.

At Wikipedia's High German consonant shift I find: "Latin loanwords adopted into the language prior to the 6th century display the shift, whereas those adopted from the 8th century onward do not." So giving *pīnā as PWG seems very doubtful. Exarchus (talk) 21:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

@Exarchus, Leasnam, Victar: I just noticed the linked entry Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/cedrubaum does have one reference. I can't read German: can anyone tell me whether Köbler 2014 actually supports that term existing in Proto-West-Germanic? (I don't think the descendants by themselves convincingly prove a single common origin, since adding "tree" to the end of a tree name is an obvious type of collocation.) Should we have some kind of more general discussion about whether the practice mentioned at the "pīnā" talk page, of treating "Proto-West Germanic" as a catch-all for terms borrowed from Latin at some point that eventually had descendants in multiple West Germanic languages, makes sense? I'm not really convinced this is a good idea. I assume that primarily Christian terms would have been borrowed into Old English only after Old English speakers became Christianized, which is usually dated as starting around 600 CE or so.---Urszag (talk) 21:47, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Köbler doesn't say anything about Proto-(West-)Germanic. Exarchus (talk) 22:11, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Old High German pīna (as the tree) simply doesn't seem to exist (there's 'pīnboum', and related spellings). Exarchus (talk) 21:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

As pointed out, Latin borrowings into Germanic often underwent later readjustments, whether through Ecclesiastical Latin in Old Germanic, or French in Middle Germanic, making it difficult to determine their age. For what it's worth, Old English -bēam largely fell out of productive use in favor of -trēow.

Regarding the use of Proto-West Germanic as a catch-all, it might be equally speculative to assume that each branch borrowed from Latin independently. For later borrowings, it is more likely that a borrowing entered one branch and subsequently spread to the others, though identifying the exact source would be challenging.

--{{victar|talk}} 21:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I feel like the current entry implies that Proto-West-Germanic speakers borrowed a word for a tree that didn’t exist in their part of the world, starting with a phoneme that didn’t normally exist in their language. This word was then taken with West Germanic speakers when they crossed the sea to Britain, and kept for a century or two until Old English speakers converted from paganism to Christianity and found they conveniently already had a word to use to translate “cedrus” in the Latin Bible. That seems unlikely to me versus the alternative: that having no native word for the species, Old English speakers adapted the Latin word “cedrus” as “ċeder”. I don't follow the argument for why this kind of word is more likely to have been borrowed indirectly via another West Germanic language, and if it was, that still wouldn’t really be a case of this being a “Proto-West-Germanic” lexeme.--Urszag (talk) 06:52, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

A few points to consider: Borrowing between dialects of Proto-West-Germanic, such as Proto-Anglo-Frisian from Frankish, still qualifies as the word being borrowed into Proto-West-Germanic. Secondly, just because a tree wasn't native to the West-Germanic world doesn't preclude it from being borrowed, if not from the tree itself, then objects made from its wood. Lastly, Christianity was already familiar to West-Germanic speakers, even amongst pagans, and we have solid evidence of early loanwords, such as *diubul. @Mnemosientje--{{victar|talk}} 07:45, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

To address vowel breaking in Old English, ċeodorbēam is also attested. Seeing as OE ċeder is apparently an ō-stem, I'm thinking ō-stem *cedru might be a better reconstruction. --{{victar|talk}} 20:59, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I pulled the trigger and moved the entry to RC:Proto-West Germanic/cedru. I should have put it there to begin with. --{{victar|talk}} 00:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Got it. That seems consistent with the Old English form, with a similar evolution as in *feþru. I'm still a bit skeptical though whether all of the listed forms constitute a genuine cognate set that can be traced back to some common borrowing, given the seeming lack of any forms with -t- in High German. Also, it looks like there are only 2 other examples (*airu, *skuldru) of masculine ō-stem PWG nouns, vs. hundreds of feminine ones, so that seems a bit unusual.--Urszag (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I noticed *skuldru too. I changed it to feminine, which is supported by Orel. --{{victar|talk}} 03:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

tikor

Can someone check the etymology - I think तीखुर is right, as it transliterates OKish Whalespotcha (talk) 17:10, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

तीखुर looks correct, I gave the Sanskrit etymology based on McGregor. Exarchus (talk) 20:52, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Hoeka

Afrikaans "hoeka" means "exactly" in English Izakkie (talk) 19:51, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

𐌄𐌅𐌉𐌋𐌄

RFV of the etymology.

[Faliscan] calque of Faliscan 𐌄𐌅𐌉𐌔 (efis).

How can a language calque from itself? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:15, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I think they're trying to say it's a calque of Latin aedilis using Faliscan efis as a translation of Latin aedes, i.e. aedes + -ilis got calqued as efis + -ile. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:39, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/Amalarīks

I am not sure about this reconstruction. I cannot find *amalaz as a reconstructed word for "brave". At w:Amal dynasty, the derivation is suggested to be from the Gothic Amal people - and w:Amalric was indeed a Gothic royal. Fences and windows (talk) 18:52, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

When I edited English Amalia I only found this Proto-Germanic word mentioned in Max Gottschald (1932) Deutsche Namenkunde (in German), 6th edition, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, published 2006, →ISBN, page 87. It's a stem of unknown meaning, because it is only found in names. It could countain a Proto-Germanic root *am- (“work”) if this is the base of German emsig (“industrious”), but that's speculative. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Under Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ammōną#Related terms, we find that amalaz is a noun derived from Proto-Germanic *ammōną (“to bother”), hence connoting aggression. It occurs in other names, like w:Amalasuintha 24.108.0.44 05:32, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

As long as the evidence is limited to names it's very difficult to pin down its meaning. I don't know why @Burgundaz placed it in *ammōną. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:01, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Pokorny supports this, root 1416. 24.108.0.44 22:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Good find! That corresponds to LIV's *h₂emh₃- "to grasp, to swear". That could work. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 00:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I added Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/amalaz 24.108.0.44 04:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/ȷ́ágrastay

First thing to say: the 'Further reading' section is really impressive. But there are several issues:
- this is supposed to be a reduplicated present verb, but the descendants are perfect forms, shown by the accent on जग्रसान (jagrasāná) (and probably also by the meaning)
- the derived terms (basically the present verb ग्रसते (grásate)) have no reduplication
- it is suggested to be from an "s-enlarged e-reduplicated athematic present of *gʷerh₃-", but unless there would be cognates with this s-enlarged form, such a formation seems very speculative
- the proposed PIE reconstruction *gʷé-gʷorh₃-s-tor ~ *gʷe-gʷr̥h₃-s-n̥tór is impossible as there is no ablaut in middle forms, so the 3sg. should be *gʷé-gʷr̥h₃-s-tor, where I think the *r̥h₃ would have resulted in Sanksrit 'īr' Exarchus (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Completely agree. This is reminiscent of Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Reconstruction#Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/Háȷ́ʰāȷ́ʰaršt. A present doesn't randomly become a perfect, just like an aorist doesn't randomly become a perfect.

I can see how it's unsatisfactory to posit a root *gres- only for Greek and Sanskrit and how it's tempting to derive the forms from an established root with the same meaning. There are of course parallels for an extension of a root by *s via an s-aorist or a desiderative, but it's hard to see how this could have worked in this case. You need an o-grade to get rid of the laryngeal via Saussure's law, but there are no forms where an o-grade coincides with an s-suffix. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 00:07, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

गोष्ट

RFV of the etymology.

Alternatively, {{sanskritism|mr|गोठी}}, from {{der|mr|pra|𑀕𑁄𑀝𑁆𑀞𑀺}}; see discussion.

I believe this is a misuse of the {{sanskritism}} template because it categorizes this as a Sanskrit term derived from Marathi, which doesn't make sense in the etymology of a Marathi entry. Was the new Sanskrit form then borrowed back into Marathi? Or is it saying that the Marathi form was changed to make it more like Sanskrit, which produced the current Marathi form. Either way, this isn't a Sanskrit entry- so at the very least the categorization of the {{sanskritism}} template should be turned off. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:41, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I would assume there is some Neo-Sanskrit vocabulary, just as there is Neo-Latin, used among certain religious Indian groups and such. But maybe that is not relevant, here. Wakuran (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

So the correct answer is Marathri'ism?

I am sure that Chuck understands the Latin situation. E.g. televisorium is hybrid Greek-Latin formed in an Average European Dialect continuum later extended to neo-Latin. telephonum is proper pseudo-Greek! I do not think that is the point. Rather, if I am bilingual and I slip in a couple Teutonisms, there are so many different rules of word formation involved it may be debatable what sort of mistake or error I comitted, if any, which is difficult to tease apart if both languages have shared heritage from different origins on which they disagree on a case by case basis. My contribution being that bilingual has positive connotations (which is why it's difficult to get credit for that). Howydo (talk) 16:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really sure on how to inflect borrowings from languages ending in -i, although I suspect there would be quite a few from Hindi or Farsi... Wakuran (talk) 17:56, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey! It's me who did that. I am new to wiktionary and did not know how to treat this right. There are a few words in Marathi that are written and spoken as if they supposed to be phonetically sanskrit. I believe the correct term is a "hypercorrection" (?) in terms of sanskritizing it? I'm not entirely sure (I am a native speaker). Another example could be स्वस्त, but conveniently, it isn't from a Sanskrit word with a similar form, thus it's spared the confusion. Varca mumbaikar (talk) 13:58, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

geophagism

RFV of the etymology.

• From geo- +‎ -phagism.

This was changed from:

• From geo- +‎ -phage +‎ -ism.

At the same time a useless stub entry was created at -phagism, which had just an etymology, a Wikipedia template (why would Wikipedia have an entry for a suffix?) and {{suffixsee}}, but no headword or definition. That's not to say that I'm totally happy with the original etymology: it could be from geophage or geophagy + -ism.

I would add that there is an entry for phagism, but that refers to where an organism lies in the continuum from monophagy to oligophagy and to polyphagy. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:16, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: It is the etymology in the OED. J3133 (talk) 04:00, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

sott

Estonian sott for 100 is probably not from Russian счёт, but rather from сто (or its Old Russian equivalent)? Tollef Salemann (talk) 00:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Through metathesis, then? Otherwise, there apparently are Slavic languages with a form like sŭto, which I guess could have been shortened. Wakuran (talk) 01:11, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Thats why i ask. Also, the Finno-Ugric Estonian name for 100 is sada, but it is also different from sott. Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd suspect the '100' sense to be contamination of 'business' with some earlier native slang term along the lines of *satt, though I don't know enough of Estonian slang formations to be highly confident. Regardless, pretty much no way to get sott by direct loaning from any stage of Slavic *sъto. --Tropylium (talk) 21:22, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

The genitive plural of Russian сто (sto) is сот. For example пятьсот (pjatʹsot, “500”). Or the usage example with несколько сот. Exarchus (talk) 17:56, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I changed the etymology as I think this is fairly obvious. Exarchus (talk) 20:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah right, thats why am asking! It may be obvious, but are you 100% sure??? Any concrete proofs? Tollef Salemann (talk) 00:08, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

No, but concrete proofs are fairly rare in etymology. It would be good to have a reference for it. Exarchus (talk) 08:56, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

There are probably some historical examples and etymological explantions, but am sure that they are in Estonian. Luckily, we have some people here who know Estonian better than me and maybe can help to solve this. Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:27, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

ع ل م

Wondering if the following proposed etymological relationship (proposed by me) seems plausible or otherwise runs into issues, or merely is too speculative:

Possibly related to Akkadian 𒂖𒆷𒈬𒌋𒀀 (/⁠ellamu, illamu⁠/, “front, before; both temporally and in location; coming before your time or being currently physically before you now”) via a sense development of "(in) front" <-> "in plain view, clearly discernable, prominent" <-> "known, recognizable" <-> "to know, recognize".

Alternatively, the Akkadian word may specifically be related to the Arabic noun عَلَم (ʕalam) "footstep, trace, impression, mark" via the notion of "before" <-> "what was or came before" <-> "remnants" <-> "traces, footprints", or perhaps "front" <-> "to be in front, to be preceding" <-> "to leave traces, footprints" <-> "trace, footprint" (somewhat akin to how the root خ ل ف (ḵ-l-f) in some Semitic languages means "to pass by/through", "to go forward" while in Arabic, it includes meanings of "to come after", "to leave behind", "remnants"). In that case, other meanings of the root would be denominative from this noun via a sense development such as "mark" <-> "prominent mark, sign, or location by which one recognizes or knows)" -> "to know, recognize, distinguish; to be familiar" as well as other various words within the root related to prominence or distinction. Isatuwarx (talk) 15:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

(Forgot to mention)

For additional context, from what I can see, the few clear cognates in Semitic seem to mainly revolve around the "sign" meaning: Sabaean 𐩲𐩡𐩣 (ʿlm) "to acknowledge", "sign, mark"; Qatabanian 𐩲𐩡𐩣 (ʿlm) "to sign". Ge'ez has a cognate too, but apparently some believe it to be borrowed from Arabic. Isatuwarx (talk) 16:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

@Isatuwarx: Yes, most of this should be added to Hebrew ע־ל־ם (ʕ-l-m), even more, with its meanings related to “disappearance, hiding”, as also Fox, Joshua (2003) Semitic Noun Patterns (Harvard Semitic Studies; 52), 1st edition, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, →ISBN, pages 289–290 notes, paralleling again خ ل ف (ḵ-l-f) in its senses of “to stay away; to be detained”. Of course, all depends on whether you can formulate the relations of the ideas without trouble to the reader.

The explanation of this frequent Arabic term for “to wit” is nice. Compare the reverse meaning development in قِيَافَة (qiyāfa, “inference from external signs, prognostication from the face → pursuit of a track → appearance, resemblance, imitation → apparel, garb”), قَيَّفَ (qayyafa, “to follow the tracks of; to investigate, to get to know”), قَافَ (qāfa, “to trace, to follow the spoors of, to track; to know the state or the relationships of by external signs”), in fact a development many language take for terms meaning “footprint” or “trace”, and here we see it can even occur through ideas of face-marks rather than more common ideas of foot-marks, both being in-your-face phenomenologically and hence cognition.

Beside the meanings of disappearence and hiding, the meanings of youngness and rebelling are also clearly from idea of someone confronting, corresponding to my explanation of ح ب ب (ḥ-b-b) which you partially deleted and فَتًى (fatan), all about something going in front. It is interesting that it ends up غُلَام (ḡulām) in Arabic; I now think I was wrong to believe غُلَام (ḡulām) from غَلِمَ (ḡalima, “to be in rut”), rather this verb is denominal from another noun secondary to غُلَام (ḡulām, “boy”), غُلْمَة (ḡulma, “lust”) apparently, compare غُنْج (ḡunj, “female copulatory vocalization”), and غُلُم (ḡulum, adjective plural form) also means “confined, restricted” acc. to Lane, maybe this idea of “hiding, confining” developed the meaning of being horny or randy in the same fashion that German Druck haben (literally “to have pressure”) is an equivocation, native English speakers know better examples.

ع (ʕ) is the original as opposed to غ (ḡ) if it is right to assume derivation from ع ل و (ʕ-l-w) (at the Proto-Semitic stage), as Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), “ع ل م”, in Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN, page 887 does. So غ (ḡ) could be one of the so-called pseudo-corrections in some Semitic languages (this sold-out 1970 book by the erudite Joshua Blau is put up scanned, I see). Fay Freak (talk) 17:59, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I, in effect, put up three variations of a connection to the Akkadian word. I take it that the "front" <-> "to be in front, to be preceding" <-> "to leave traces, footprints" <-> "trace, footprint" <-> "mark, sign" -> "prominent mark, sign, or location by which one recognizes or knows)" -> "to know, recognize, distinguish; to be familiar" is the one you feel is most likely, given the analagous examples you gave? Or should I include all three possibilities?

I confess, I do not immediately see how the “disappearance, hiding” would relate to the notion of “confronting”. I could potentially see a relation between “disappearance, hiding” and “front” via a sense chain of “front” <-> “to be in front of" ~ "to put in front of" <-> “to obscure, hide, conceal, disappear” though, if that seems plausible. If that's not it, can you explain your thinking on the connection?

Regarding غ ل م (ḡ-l-m), I agree that the verb seems more likely to be denominal from the noun غُلَام (ḡulām). But given how languages that distinguish غ (ḡ) from ع (ʕ) such as Arabic and Ugaritic seem to consistently use ġ - including most notably the existence of East Semitic Eblaite <ḫa-la-mi-im> "boy" (Fronzaroli 1984 – P. Fronzaroli. Materiali per il lessico eblaita. 1.), where the ḫ seems to be a reflex of ġ (and may still have even been pronounced that way) - it seems to point to غ (ḡ) as the etymological sound in Proto-Semitic. And if the noun meaning "boy, young man" is considered primary, from which the "youth", "rebelling", "physical aggression", "lust", etc senses secondarily derive (which to me is likely, since the "boy, young man" sense is the most widely attested meaning for this root, even existing in languages that don't use ġ-l-m as a verbal root), deriving it from another word, especially one at appears to have an ع (ʕ), seems more difficult in my eyes. To me, the ġ-l-m word meaning "boy, young man" seems to have already existed in Proto-Semitic already with a ġ. That's my thoughts on it anyways. Isatuwarx (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

@Isatuwarx: The ‘boy’ word having existed in Proto-Semitic with a ġ is sensible. We don’t actually need to know the relation to the ʕ root, I fear it to become speculative.

The idea which you rightly enquired about, insufficiently expressed as it was by me, is that the meaning “to leave behind” can come to mean something “disappearing, being absconded, becoming hidden” and even “detained”, with the double-entendre it has in English. Marks or traces can of course be in front as well as behind. The part of the “boy” word relating via the idea of confrontation is the speculative end, in spite of the ostensible evidence I provided. At least we have answered all concerned roots and words in the individual Semitic languages up to the Proto-Semitic level, this is grand enough. Fay Freak (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I am looking to add to the Hebrew ע־ל־ם (ʕ-l-m) entry as per your suggestion, but I wanted to check about something. In the عالم page, a connection between the "world; eternity" meanings and this Akkadian word for "front" is made. Assuming you find this feasible, what would the connection be, as it isn't immediately clear to me? The only thing I could conceive, which perhaps could have also created a connection with the “disappearance, hiding” meanings, was something like "front" <-> "to go forward" <-> "to proceed beyond one's sight" -> "eternity" (and also maybe "to vanish"). Was this the idea, or was something else in mind?

(Also, as a matter of formatting on the Hebrew page, do I just add everything under the Etymology section, or do I make "Etymology 1", "Etymology 2", "Etymology 3"? If the latter, heads up that there is a decent chance I might not initially position everything how it aught to be.) Isatuwarx (talk) 08:36, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Isatuwarx: The basic idea of the Aramaic term עָלְמָא / ܥܳܠܡܳܐ (ʿāləmā) seems to be “environment”. It is easy to see how this is “what is in front”. For temporal meanings compare how Proto-Germanic *weraldiz (“world”), according to its transparent derivation, also seems to have had the meaning of “lifetime”, then “what one experiences in life”. But you may also consider what Joshua Fox or anyone else said about those words, I don’t know how much you are into it. Fay Freak (talk) 15:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

If the origins of a root are twofold, or because they are in this Hebrew case, of course it is preferable to have two etymology headers, at least if you can assign all individual words. (Sometimes one can’t and there are multiple confounded origins, or it is at least easier to understand if you don’t create too many sections: examples ن ج ر (n-j-r), د م س (d-m-s), ع ر ب (ʕ-r-b)).) Fay Freak (talk) 15:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

louw and zeelt

Origin? 84.68.212.92 22:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Please link the words in the future. Louw has been connected to Proto-Germanic *līmaz (glue, lime), referring to its slimy skin, and zeelt has been connected with Old Norse sïld (herring), although considered uncertain. Wakuran (talk) 22:18, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Write a article about sïld. 84.68.212.92 22:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

We have Old Norse síld.  --Lambiam 23:19, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, the wrong accent. Wakuran (talk) 13:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

goiing

Origin? 84.68.212.92 22:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I wonder whether it could be related to the verb gooi (to throw), similar to the English weaving term warp. Wakuran (talk) 22:26, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

zorg

I notice that Dutch zorg (“care, worry”) is used in Guyana and Surinam place names, specifically of former plantations. It seems it is being used as an equivalent of English concern in the sense of "business, enterprise". Could some Dutch speaker or Surinamese clarify? Is so, this meaning should be added. 24.108.0.44 04:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

This is purely Dutch Dutch; these names were given to the plantations by the Dutch colonists. Compare also the Dutch colonial-era name Buitenzorg for what is now Bogor on Java.  --Lambiam 16:22, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Buitenzorg is simply a translation of w:Sanssouci, without a care, the name of a famous Prussian palace. Surinamese -zorg turns up independently in many different combinations eg w:Meerzorg, and I think the explanation is as I have stated. 24.108.0.44 22:46, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Here are further names that were given to plantations: Anna’s Zorg, Bitterzorg, Buckerszorg, Daphina’s Zorg, Huwelijkszorg, Mijnzorg, Nieuwe Zorg, Nieuwzorg, Nieuw Zorg, Ouderzorg, Pieterszorg, Spieringszorg, Vaderzorg, Vaderszorg-en-Carelsdeel, Visserszorg, Voorzorg, Vriendsbeleid & Ouderszorg, Wederzorg, Zorg en Hoop, Zorg en Rust, Zorg en Vrij, Zorgvliet.

 

In Zorg en Hoop, Zorg en Rust, Zorg en Vrij and Zorgvliet, the meaning is obviously not that of “enterprise”. Used as the last component of a name, there are often further indications that this is a use of the usual Dutch term zorg. For example, next to Daphina’s Zorg, there was also a plantation by the name of Daphina’s Hoop. And next to Anna’s Zorg, so named by Anna Maria Thomas, there were also Anna’s Burg, Anna’s Lust, Anna’s Rust and even Anna’s Rust en Haast u langzaam (!).

 

Next to names using zorg, another even more common last component is hoop: Abigaëlshoop, Aitnoch en Groot Elizabethshoop, Bentshoop, Bergershoop, Bleyenhoop, Blijenhoop en Blijenrust, Braamshoop, Broedershoop, Cabo de goede Hoop, Daphina's Hoop, De Goede Hoop, De Hoop, De Nieuwe Hoop, De Oude Hoop, Dinas Mariashoop, Dirkshoop, Eikenhoop, Elisabethshoop, Elizabetshoop, Fakkershoop, Fredrikshoop, Goede Hoop, Gratia's Hoop, Hoop, IJvershoop, Isaäcs-hoop, Johannes-Hoop, Johanneshoop, Klein Westphalenshoop, Kleine Hoop, Kleinhoop, Labadieshoop, Langenhoop, Lemmershoop, Leyenhoop, Liefdeshoop, Limeshoop, Lydenshoop, Marrashoop, Meyershoop, Meyndershoop, Mijn Hoop, Mijnhoop, Molhoop, Myn Hoop, Nieuw Goedenshoop, Nieuw-Wederhoop, Nieuwe Hoop, Rachelshoop, Sylershoop, Vrieshoop, Weeder Hoop, Willemshoop, Zonhoop, Zorg en Hoop. This is IMO not an indication that the Dutch colonists used hoop in the sense of “business”, and all considered I maintain there is insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis of a new sense of zorg.  --Lambiam 12:53, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Russian and Ukrainian член

I wonder to what extent the sense of "penis" might be a semantic loan from English member. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 21:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

More likely a semantic loan from Latin membrum, perhaps via French membre and/or German Glied, which (like English member) are themselves semantic loans from Latin. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Doubtlessly not from English. It came about during the translation of anatomic terminology, so we have му́жескій членъ (múžeskij člen, literally “male member”) in a 1827 practical anatomy book, though this is a translation from German. Fay Freak (talk) 23:49, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

The current German word for "member of an organization" appears to be Mitglied, which was calqued into Scandinavian as medlem. Wakuran (talk) 00:24, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

So what? männliches Glied (“male member”) is also current as well as historical German. Fay Freak (talk) 00:57, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

You also say e.g. ein nützliches Glied der Gesellschaft ("a productive member of society"), so the simplex Glied does have this meaning. (Not that it has anything to do with this discussion, which is about a whole other sense.) 2.207.102.112 18:23, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

piika

I do not think this word came from Finnic as there are very little Norse loans that came from Finnish AFAIK. I also couldn't find anything on Chuvash пике too, if it is a real Chuvash word then, what is it's proto Turkic root? I also do not buy the Uralo-Altaic family making this even more inplausible. 84.68.212.92 22:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Words with initial p- are very rare in Norse and older Germanic languages, though. SAOB think it has come via Finnish or Estonian from an Eastern language. Elof Hellquist mentions a few possibilities, but finds the Finnish origin the most probable. Bokmålsordboka and Den Danske Ordbog mentions the Finnish origin, as well, although just about all of them find it somewhat uncertain. Still seems to be the most mainstream hypothesis, though. Wakuran (talk) 00:33, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

If it is of Finnish origin then, what is its Hungarian cognate? And what is the Turkish cognate of Chuvash пике (pik̬e)? 84.68.212.92 16:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, for a North Germanic word, it lacks likely West Germanic cognates, and is only attested comparably late. SAOB thinks it might have come from the East via Finnish, ultimately related to Turkish bey. [1] Wakuran (talk) 17:50, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

And since pojke is generally assumed to be a borrowing from Finnish, I guess piga could be, as well. Wakuran (talk) 20:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I found indeed пике in some Chuvash dictionary, but what has it to do with Finnish? LOL Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:36, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

PIE cognate of PU pojka? 84.68.212.92 20:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

PU is a bit far to take. Where are the cognates in Erzya or Zyrian or Udmurtian? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:04, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I mean, how the PU term *pojka is related to pike? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:05, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I meant the proto indo european cognate of proto uralic pojka 84.68.212.92 21:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

What is the PIE cognate then? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

ur meant to answer 84.68.212.92 21:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello? 84.68.212.92 13:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Like, Erzya term is there, but how exactly it is related? By which sound correspondances? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:07, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I might be lost here, but I meant that if such a basic term as "pojke" could be borrowed from Finnish, despite there being very few borrowings from Finnish or Finnic, overall, "piga" could also have been borrowed. Wakuran (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

No one thinks piika is native Uralic (it has no cognates outside Finnic; Erzya пийо (pijo) is rather a cognate of poika). The Chuvash word is most probably just an unrelated red herring, even though e.g. {{R:LÄGLOS}} still mentions a proposal by Räsänen for a Volga Bulgar Wanderwort into Finnic; which seems to me quite implausible if it hasn't made it to any Volga region Uralic languages. Regardless it is well possible it's older in (North) Finnic than in North Germanic, where it first appears only in medieval Old Swedish, while in Finnish it even comes with native-looking derivatives like piikuus (“girlhood, maidhood”), piikoa (“serve as a maid”). Estonian piiga I however think might be instead still from Swedish, as natively this should have been **piig. So my best guess is that we can track this maybe back to Proto-Finnish-Karelian at best, but have still no idea of ultimate origin. --Tropylium (talk) 21:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

anda

Is there any sources or readings that have *handa in their reconstruction of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian words? Riswija (talk) 09:02, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @DDG9912, after looking at the page history, you are the one who added the PMP word in the etymology with your old account. Is there any reading you found that reconstructs *handa as a PMP word? Alfarizi Mokoginta (talk) 04:21, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

愛大華

愛大華 is phono-semantic matching of Ayer Tawar or not? Or is it just a purely phonetic? Cchww1384 (talk) 10:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Malay meaning "Fresh water", Chinese meaning "Lovingly big flourishing", seems to be only phonetic to me. Wakuran (talk) 13:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

δίδυμος - the word for twin in Greek, didymos, on the etymology page for epididymis

Didymos means twin, it does not mean testicle in Greek. 89ermis (talk) 15:54, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, it does, though it's certainly not the main meaning. Look at the references linked to at the bottom of the δίδυμος page. They occur in identical pairs, so the metaphor is quite understandable. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:05, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

можлїви and Polish

Essentially, I already described the timing issue of the word in the etymology section vis-a-vis Polish możliwy. I've emailed an actual Rusyn professor at the University of Novi Sad asking about this (and other personal enquiries about Rusyn), but in the meantime, any thoughts? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 05:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say it was borrowed, considered all the other languages that borrowed it, which are listed on możliwy#Descendants. Vininn126 (talk) 09:30, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Herxeimer

I came across the page for herx, a shortening of the Jarish-Herxheimer reaction. What puzzled me was how herx seems to have no etymology. I could assume that the final -heimer is "residence of..." (as in Oppenheimer), but perhaps the Herx- is from the hamlet of Herxen in the Netherlands?

Any help would be appreciated. Seraphinanewt (talk) 15:13, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

x probably represents k's ie a possessive. w:nl:Herxen says the place is probably named after "Haarke", possibly a diminutive of Henrik. There is also a w:de:Herkheim named after "Herich", probably the same explanation. 24.108.0.44 17:49, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Herxheim is a place in Germany: "The Franks often named their new home after their leader so it is assumed a Franconian leader name Hari or Heri who settled here with his clan" Exarchus (talk) 18:56, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Would the name be related to PWG *hari (army) / *harjōn (ravage)? Wakuran (talk) 13:14, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

I see several derived given names at Proto-Germanic *harjaz, so presumably yes. Exarchus (talk) 17:33, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

tíska

Origin? 84.68.212.92 15:26, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Seems to be from tíð (time) and -sk- (-ish), referring to the flux of fashion. [2] Edit: Maybe rather "habit, habitual behavior", when I scrutinize it further. Wakuran (talk) 21:35, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Θάσος/Thasos

The island is said to be named after a Phoenician prince, but there does not seem to be a Phoenician (or similar) word to explain the name. A more likely cognate is Ancient Greek θέσῐς (thésis, “a setting, placement”), ie the island is set within the sea. Any thoughts? Any Phoenician scholars have anything to suggest? 24.108.0.44 04:30, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know any Phoenician, but a connection with θέσῐς (thésis) is impossible. Maybe someone who knows more about Semitic languages than I do will find something plausible in Phoenician or a near relative of it. Otherwise we can always rely on the classicist's favorite way of saying "I dunno", namely "Pre-Greek". —Mahāgaja · talk 19:07, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

The same PIE *dʰeh₁- root also yields Greek θωμός, so a variation in vowels is possible in divergent dialects. 24.108.0.44 20:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

No amount of playing with the vowels of *dʰeh₁- will yield a. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:14, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Zero grade *dʰeh₁- wouldn't do much to condition a vowel. The ethnikon attests to ε anyhow. The Phoenician hypothesis can be traced to Herodotus, see Lópes-Ruiz in the Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion for example, Lipiński, Dictionnaire de la civilisation phénicienne et punique, too. However, none of the references I checked corroborate an eponymous founder. 185.238.219.102 16:26, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

דרור

The current article says that this word (I assume in the sense of "freedom", and I imagine by extension the bird meanings) is a loan from Akkadian. I assume the same cannot be said for the same word in its adjectival use meaning "(freely/abundantly) flowing" like in the phrase מָר־דְּרוֹר "free-flowing myrrh". Isatuwarx (talk) 13:40, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Τῆνος / Tinos

τείνω (teínō, “to stretch”), future optative τενοῖς, offers possibilities. The island is long enough to be considered "stretched out". Thoughts? 24.108.0.44 03:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

There are no variations/derivations of τείνω (teínō) that have η. I'd think the likelihood of these names being pre-Greek is fairly high. Exarchus (talk) 09:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Ժ

Origin of glyph? 84.68.212.92 20:54, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Please respond. 84.68.212.92 16:20, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

It symbolizes the noose used for hanging people who asked stupid questions in Ancient Armenia. Vahag (talk) 16:38, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's a serious answer. 84.68.212.92 18:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

will you respond? 84.68.212.92 19:42, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

No. Vahag (talk) 20:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

IP, no one here is obligated to respond to your questions, especially since you keep posting them constantly and don't seem to make the slightest effort when doing so. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it descended from Greek Zeta? 84.68.212.92 21:35, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

leynd

Origin? No clear relative in other Nordic languages 84.68.212.92 21:06, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

See Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/laugnijaną. Wakuran (talk) 02:03, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Faroese loynd (“concealment, secret”) is a cognate. I've added an etymology at leynd. Leasnam (talk) 14:19, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

حراج

The Dehkhoda dictionary offers a confusing etymology involving Egyptian Arabic, but I am unable to otherwise find the source of this word. It is unrelated to the obvious Arabic root and is likely a backwards loan(?). Any suggestions? Isochrone (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

peaked cap

The "peak" in peaked cap is supposedly synonymous with visor, the part attached to the bottom front of the rim that provides shade to the eyes. See the illustration here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/peak. But why is this called a "peak"? It doesn't resemble any other familiar kind of peak, like a mountain peak. The OED notes an obsolete meaning beak or bill (of a bird). But in addition, w:peaked cap has lots of pictures of caps which not only have said visors, but also have what I might naively have called a "peak", i.e. a pointy summit, sticking up, usually more to the front of the cap.

In "peaked cap", can/could "peak" also refer to this sticky-uppy feature of a cap? Wildly speculating here, but did the meaning perhaps shift according as which feature of the cap was the more prominent one? The OED defines "Originally: the projecting front of a headdress, esp. of a widow's hood. Later more generally: any more or less pointed projecting part of a garment or costume." But I find it hard to tell what the headdresses in the quotations looked like. At any rate, our entry peaked has an example that clearly describes a pointy hat. I find this a super-confusing term and I have no idea how to further research this. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Does the OED say that ‘peak=beak/bill’ comes from a corruption of ‘beak’ or to the fact that the peak of something (a mountain, say) is pointy like a beak is? The Wikipedia article lists various formal military and police hats as ‘peaked caps’ but I suspect that any cap with a peak could be referred to as a ‘peaked cap’ and has been at some point, such as flat caps worn by the Peaky Blinders. It also amazes me that we consider ‘peak’ in this sense to be a UK-only term, with ‘visor’ as the more general term. I would never in a million years say ‘visor’ to mean anything other than the thing a knight wears or the plastic face protection worn by some during Covid (but then I am English). Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:14, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

baqəʀuh

Cognate with Reconstruction:Proto-Basque/beRi? 84.68.212.92 21:40, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah. Reconstruction:Proto-Austronesian/baqəʀuh. Generally, genealogical connections between proto-languages is a niche hypothesis. Even some of the more remarkable similarities, such as the pronouns in Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic, have never really been considered as established evidence. Wakuran (talk) 22:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

will u respond? 84.68.212.92 20:20, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I'll respond: maybe it's time for a block as I think you have been "overdoing it" for quite some time, as mentioned here (clearly about the same person). Exarchus (talk) 17:34, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Editing the comment afterwards to say something completely different is also poor Wikipedia procedure. Wakuran (talk) 22:57, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

善

Because this is a common hanja, it's Middle Korean pronunciation is ubiquitous in ancient literatures and not hard to find at all, which should be :션. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to add this into the etymology with RFE. Maraschino Cherry (talk) 05:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

猢猻

RFV of the etymology. From 胡孫／胡孙 (húsūn, “descendants of Hu barbarians”), because macaque faces were said to resemble those of people from the Hu regions. --Kethyga (talk) 08:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

जघन​ and जङ्घा

Could not find a source for ǵʰongʰ-. Is this the same root as ǵʰengʰ-? The second root gives जङ्घा in Sanskrit, and there is considerable semantic overlap too. Varca mumbaikar (talk) 14:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Middle English gaseyn, Old French gascel, wassel

"Slough, bog, puddle" per the MED, citing a 14th century 2 Peter ("þe gaseyn of fen" = "wallow in the mire") and 1440 Palladius ("watir out of gaseyn or of myre" = "Aquae... ad lacunis aut ad palude"). What's its origin?
The MED compares Old French gascel "swamp", apparently the same word the Anglo-Norman Dictionary lemmatizes as wassel "bog, marsh, muddy ground"; other spellings include gacel, gaçuel, gasçueil, gacheuil, gassel, wassel, wassal, wacel, vacel, and (still the same word?) gaisse, gaice, gace, vasse. But then what is the origin of gascel / wassel? (Related to Wasser?) And where does the English ending (-eyn) come from? (Diminutive -ine?)
(The Early English Text Society instead compares French gazon from Old French gason, wason "piece of ground covered with grass, turf", but the semantics are then less-well explained.)
- -sche (discuss) 17:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Offhand it looks possibly from Frankish *waskan (?) Leasnam (talk) 19:28, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Apparently diminutive of aforementioned Old French gace, gaisse, gasse (“puddle, muddy ground; marsh[?]”). Comparable to Old French gaschié, waschié (“muck, filth”), Old French gassouil (“puddle of water; pile of garbage”), Old French gaschier, guaschier, waschier (“to stain, soil, sully, spoil”) and gaschier, gacher, gasser (“to wash, soak”) (cf. French gâcher). Perhaps the suffix -eyn is due to influence from similar words like wasteyn (?) Leasnam (talk) 20:06, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

kunnigr and skyn

Are these old norse terms related? They are both knowledge related terms. I'm going based off of the syllable "Kvn". It might be a stretch. Jacob.dodd7 (talk) 16:54, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

A relationship seems unlikely. The first term derives from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to recognise, know”), the latter is unknown, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kew- (“to perceive”). Leasnam (talk) 19:42, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

✠

RFV of the etymology. "Unicode decided not to formally correct the glyph, as it had become established by the time the error was brought to their attention." no source for this statement Svenurban (talk) 19:11, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

What part do you want a source for? That Unicode doesn't change the names (property Name) of code points afterwards is a well-known fact (so-called "Name Stability", part of the "Unicode® Character Encoding Stability Policies"). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:26, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, the wording of "decided" made me think they actively made a decision to not change the name of the glyph, was not familiar with the policy, but thank you for the source. Svenurban (talk) 21:07, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Ojibwe/Odawa boozhoo & Potawatomi bozho

Firstly, I'd like to address the edits:

@Theknightwho: In one edit, you state that "Boozhoo" and "Nanaboozhoo" have different vowels. This is not true at all. The Ojibwe DVO is perfectly phonetic. The vowel /oː/ is commonly realized as the allophone [uː], although this depends on the community as to which is more common.

@Gomeschian: As TKW stated in his edits, both of your sources are not sufficient to rule out the possibility of being from the French. When a word has an obvious origin it is not going to be noted until after the fact, and so such explanations would've been first stated long after the word was first coined, even if they mentioned in older oral or written history.

Anyways there are two possible etymologies for boozhoo: Either from French Bonjour or a shortening of "Nanaboozhoo"/"Wanaboozhoo". I'm not aware of any conclusive research, however both are plausible:

For the theory that it's a clipping of Nanaboozhoo, it would have originated as a way of asking "Are you Nanaboozhoo?", done so because Nanaboozhoo is a shapeshifter. We might expect the response to be no/gaawiin, but there are two possible reasons it is no longer common to respond with no/gaawiin: It could be that it became common to respond with "Boozhoo?" as a way of saying "No, I'm not. Are you Nanaboozhoo?", or the usage could've been modified by the similarity of bonjour.

For the derivation from "bonjour" the expected result would be *boonzhoo/*bǫǫzhoo or *bonzhoo/*bǫzhoo, not boozhoo, as Ojibwe has nasal vowels, which in the modern DVO are written with just an n when they come before fricatives or with nh in other positions and in some old DVO spellings were written by adding ogoneks to the nasalized vowels. This is a phonologically significant change, but it's entirely possible it was modified by association with Nanaboozhoo.

Potawatomi and Odawa are necessarily cognates of the Ojibwe term, and the same points apply to them so they do not lend further information.

So in summary, if we are to go purely off the modern usage and form of the word it is impossible to determine which is correct as the association with the other is enough to modify both the usage and the pronunciation. However, historical and comparative evidence may be able to determine the real etymology.

Waagosh Anton Treuer, a professor of the Ojibwe language at the U of Bemidji, mentions both etymologies being common in a video on the Ojibwe Greeting Protocol but does not discuss the plausibility of either. The explanations on plausibility are my own.

For now I've added a basic mention of both and made {{rfe|oj}} link to this explanation. It's probably best to mention both in detail in more detail, unless proof of one is found, in which case the existence of the other theory and the the reason that it is not plausible should be stated.

JGHFunRun (talk) 22:06, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@JGHFunRun This all seems very reasonable. Thanks for looking into it. Theknightwho (talk) 22:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

チョコパイ

RFV of the etymology. Currently it says that Japanese チョコパイ (chokopai) is from English choco pie. I suspect that the borrowing may be in the opposite direction, or possibly either or both languages borrowed the name from Korean 초코파이 (chokopai). Of course, my suspicions and $4 will get you a cup of coffee, but it's worth checking. FWIW, Wikipedia confidently asserts, "The term originated in the United States", but offers no external evidence of that. I heard moon pie growing up, but only remember hearing choco pie in Asian or Asian-American settings (again, for what my vague recollections are worth). Cnilep (talk) 09:41, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Adding 초코파이, which also says it is from English.

FWIW (again) Korean Wikipedia 초코파이 talks about court battles over the name in Korea during the 1970s, and suggests that the confection came from Japan in 1958. Japanese Wikipedia チョコパイ says the confection came from the US with the first Japanese version called エンゼルパイ (Angel Pie) in 1958. English Wikipedia Choco pie says that versions of the confection "go back to as far as 1917", and gives the earliest US name as Moon Pie in 1929. In the UK Wagon Wheels have been sold since 1948.

The earliest use of choco in OED seems to be shortening of Australian slang chocolate soldier (enlisted soldier) from 1940, though I would bet chocolate was shortened earlier than that. Cnilep (talk) 01:20, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is a US court case from 1926 holding that the trade name Choc-O-Milk does not infringe the trademark of Chocolishus. That probably narrows the timeline to c. 1926-1973 (the ROK court case). Cnilep (talk) 01:33, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

See Citations:choco pie. The earliest English uses I found don't refer to marshmallow-filled cakes, while the earliest examples referring to that confection are transliterations of Korean. Cnilep (talk) 02:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

This seems to me to be the state of things:

1. Japanese チョコパイ is from Korean 초코파이
2. Korean is from English choco pie, from chocolate
3. English is more complex: originally choco(late) + pie referring to ice cream (c. 1922), with the marshmallow-filled confection later re-borrowed from Korean (c. 1980). There is also the literal (pastry) pie with chocolate-flavored filling, which I would say is not idiomatic.

Does anyone disagree, or have other suggestions? Cnilep (talk) 23:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

𡩠

someone please add the etymology for this character i beg ye MiaoTuLu (talk) 13:34, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Variant of 索, it seems. Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

fleinsopp

The supposed etymology is from flein (bald), compare kaalkopje (where the kaalkopje came from? is it an old word?). In the same time it can be related to Swedish flen. From another look, it can be from Old Norse fleinn. Is it any good way to find out which etymology is correct, or we must just assume the first one? Tollef Salemann (talk) 13:43, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Nerada (Protist)

The protist Nerada is the type genus of the Neradaceae family, with an unique species Nerada mexicana Cavalier-Smith & E.E.Chao, 2006. I couldn't find the etymology of Nerada. Any ideas? Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

As it seems connected to Mexico, I'd initially assume it's a Spanish name, or so. Wakuran (talk) 00:03, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Per the original description, page 405: "Named after T[homas A]. Nerad in recognition of his bringing so many zooflagellates into culture while at ATCC." Chuck Entz (talk) 06:26, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

And it turns out we have an entry for the surname Nerad, which is from Czech. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:51, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to all. Gerardgiraud (talk) 13:50, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/slověninъ

The etymology here has been tagged with {{rfv-etym}} since July, but no RFV in the scriptorium has been made as yet as far as I can tell, and there remains no source for it. The one reference on the page (Franciszek Sławski's Proto-Slavic Dictionary) does say that it could be derived from a hydronym "Slova, Slovje", but Sławski makes no mention of *Slovǫta in particular (and in any case, wouldn't that give **Slovǫtěninъ?), and he does only say "może", not a definite conclusion - hardly sufficient, in my opinion, to have it shown as a definitive etymology with all others only shown in an "Obsolete and other etymologies" collapsible box. The notion that "The suffix *-ěninъ/*-janinъ is added only to geographical/territorial terms and place names" also strikes me as odd - Category:Proto-Slavic terms suffixed with *-ěninъ only contains three terms, one of which is the one under discussion, and one (*mъlvěninъ) is not suffixed to a place name. While *slověninъ's the edit history contains a dispute as to whether *mъlvěninъ really existed in Proto-Slavic or is a later East Slavic coinage, *mъlvěninъ's entry at least has a reference to a specific source (in this case, Oleg Trubachyov's Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Languages) for its claim. Klisz (talk) 03:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The origin of the word Brazilië in Dutch

So, the etymology here is missing, I would like to edit it because I know the etymology. If anyone can add it by me, here it is:

Poissibly from Portuguese Brasil -> Portuguese brasa + il 2804:14C:4A:81F4:8100:B038:E4B3:6CA7 11:03, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

You are free to add etymologies without asking. You just have to be prepared they might be questioned later. Wakuran (talk) 15:56, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Finding attestations of a word

Hi! Saw an interesting map about the etymology of a word in an aboriginal language, "jaabu" (soap), and how it is derived from proto-germanic. I would like to add it, but can't find any sources linked and am unsure how best to go about finding attestations. Does anyone have any recommendations? Not alexand (talk) 11:19, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

"An aboriginal language" is very unspecific, but we have an entry for Dhuwal "jaabu". Wakuran (talk) 15:57, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Fair, but i was more interested in common procedure when trying to find attestations or verifying etymologies in general. The language on the map was "Yolngu", but i now know that that is a group of languages which includes Dhuwal, so it seems like i don't need to add anything. Still, if you have tips for verifying etymologies, i would love to hear them! Not alexand (talk) 19:11, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Bulgarian requests for etymologies

@Chernorizets @Kiril kovachev @IYI681

Hi, are there any editors of Bulgarian entries with the time, motivation and expertise to have a look at these requests?: Category:Requests_for_etymologies_in_Bulgarian_entries and Category:Requests_for_expansion_of_etymologies_in_Bulgarian_entries

Thanks SimonWikt (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

@SimonWikt I believe I have the motivation, but perhaps at the moment not the time ;) but I have to say that I recognize many of the entries in these categories: a lot of them are entries I put there, classified like that because there simply is no existing resource (at least, not usually) that directly comments on the etymology of specific words or phrases. Sure, a lot of them can be figured out or researched more thoroughly, but for others, it's highly unlikely that any existing authority has done the research for us to be able to reference it. I don't know what to do about cases like that.

Example, take ябълка на раздора (jabǎlka na razdora) — the explanation you see there is the best I could come up with, since BER for example (which is our primary etymological resource) has nothing in particular to say about this phrase: it's just listed as a collocation of ябълка (jabǎlka). There are other cases, like приятелски (prijatelski), where, without further investigation, it's not possible to tell whether (formally) this word was formed in "modern Bulgarian", in the way that the entry already analyzes, or whether it should have been inherited from an earlier stage of the language (take Middle or Old Bulgarian). Take this particular word as just an example, but I feel like there are lots like it where the vague etymology is quite straightforward, but deciding which of the above interpretations to use, like we do for other languages on Wiktionary, is apparently pretty hard in my opinion.

Besides these cases, I'll be glad to work on these. I didn't realize there were this many things in the backlog... but also, I don't know exactly when I can get back to it, since I've been rather busy these days and for the next week or so that's projected to look even more dire! But, please remind me again soon and I'll make an effort on the ones I can. Also, please let me know if you have any suggestions what to do about these "indeterminate" etymologies; should we try to research the exact origins ourselves? (To start with, how would an etymologist even know that a Bulgarian use like ябълка на раздора (jabǎlka na razdora) came "from French" (e.g.)? How could we do that if it were down to us?) Thanks for your message Simon, Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

December 2024

Reconstruction:Proto-South Dravidian/cinkiwēr

The redirect doesn't make sense at all, and is clearly vandalism by a currently blocked user. However, even though I'm not a Dravidianist, I question the reconstruction itself: Neither Reconstruction:Proto-Dravidian/cinkiwēr nor Reconstruction:Proto-South Dravidian/cinkiwēr seems to be a plausible reconstruction, given that Old Tamil 𑀇𑀜𑁆𑀘𑀺𑀯𑁂𑀭𑁆 (iñcivēr) seems to be a compound inside Old Tamil, and 𑀇𑀜𑁆𑀘𑀺 (iñci) a loanword (even if Old Tamil is apparently not the direct source of Sauraseni Prakrit 𑀲𑀺𑀁𑀕𑀺𑀯𑁂𑀭 (siṃgivera)). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:03, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

egel

According to the Proto-Germanic pages these are not related. tbf the derivation of *egalaz is phonologically uncertain. Suryaratha03 (talk) 23:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Here is a source, but the page for 'egel' has a more recent source which doesn't seem so sure about the connection. Kluge says the origin of Egel is unclear. Exarchus (talk) 12:02, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰis says: "Related to *h₂éngʷʰis and *h₁ógʷʰis." Seems debatable/dubious... Exarchus (talk) 12:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)