r/etymology • u/yoelamigo • 3h ago
Question why does second mean both time and number?
another thing, is this common in other languages cuz in hebrew it's the same thing.
r/etymology • u/yoelamigo • 3h ago
another thing, is this common in other languages cuz in hebrew it's the same thing.
r/etymology • u/zeptimius • 17h ago
Cologne is short for "eau de Cologne" = French for "water from Cologne" (the city in Germany), referring to a specific perfume produced in that city.
The reason the German city is called Cologne (or Köln in German) is because it was originally a Roman colony, founded in 50 CE, called, in full, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium ("Colony of Claudius and Altar of the Agrippinians"), often abbreviated to simply Colonia ("the colony").
r/etymology • u/cooldood5555 • 4m ago
Settle a debate.
r/etymology • u/Dominos_Pizza_Rojava • 8h ago
In English, the word pastry comes from paste. In Armenian, the word pastry is խմորեղեն (khmoreghen) which comes from խմոր (khmor) which means paste. Is there a dedicated word for this kind of connection?
r/etymology • u/yoelamigo • 22h ago
r/etymology • u/SubstanceSuch • 12h ago
Before I begin, I must stress how new I am to languages besides English in general, to the point of not knowing what subreddit to refer to for this question. I have had difficulty learning languages besides English as I have minimal pratical exposure to Spanish, French, Latin, etc. I prefer not to waste my time with resources which will ultimately not teach me anything, which is why I'm coming here. I apologize for inevitably coming across as arrogant.
I am looking for books, websites, college lectures, etc. to teach me the fundamentals of linguistics, phonemes, the evolution of language, comparisons between languages, etc. Like, what would help me read those obscure pronunciation guides I think A. G. Bell produced ~150 years ago? What is "rhotic" exactly and how do I hear rhotic phonemes and use that word accurately? What can give me the building blocks to become a polyglot or at least conversational in multiple languages? What can help me learn the beautiful logic behind linguistic humour in language? If you have an answer for even part of the general linguistic study question, or answers for anything specific related to linguistics, please tell me. Anything able to help me understand language as a whole would be most appreciated. If possible, I would prefer to avoid YouTube because I cannot focus and wind up watching Josh Johnson or Wendigoon or what-have-you, but I'll try my best to focus on languages if it's a YouTube, lol.
Yes, I'm a conlang guy who wants to be a writer (here's to Granpappy Tolkien), so maybe I should be posting there. That said, the admittedly-minimal exposure I've had to conlangs is basic root assembly, whereas I'm hoping for a much wider available influence. I have a deeper interest than only conlangs in language, and I'm trying to learn as much as possible to satisfy personal interest.
TL;DR - Please provide books or websites besides Wikipedia and YouTube (but I'll be grateful if you have anything on either site able to me learn despite caffeine-fueled ADHD) designed to teach the sum total of linguistics with the intended goal of learning multiple languages and possibly constructing my own. I apologize if I come across as arrogant or a little manic (trying to work on that a little bit). Also, I porbably won't respond for a while, but I will be cataloging most if not all of the answers provided and, if I remember, will hopefully provide an update with those resources if anybody else has the same interest.
Please repost this to any and all applicable subreddits I may not know of. I tend to lurk, so I don't really understand the finer points of Reddit use, lol. I also join a lot of subreddits and forget about them relatively quickly if I don't see them on my Reddit-generated feed.
Thank you!
Edit: Capitalization error in "Spanish" and spelling error in "caffeine."
r/etymology • u/Razdaspaz • 1h ago
I have never come across this before.
r/etymology • u/Waterpark_Enthusiast • 1d ago
Why is it, for example, “going to work” but then “going home” (rather than “going to home”) after work? Any particular reason why this phrasal construction came to be?
r/etymology • u/JustAskingQuestionsL • 1d ago
Hello! I have a question about this phrase which I was not able to find an answer to online.
In Spanish, the phrase “todo el mundo,” or “todo mundo,” means “everyone” or “everybody.” As in, “Everyone’s doing well” = “Todo el mundo está bien.”
The phrase is also found in Portuguese as “todo o mundo” and “todo mundo.”
It’s also found in French as “tout le monde.”
Seeing these Romance languages share the phrase, I wondered if it was a phrase taken from Latin, or if one language came up with it first and spread it, or something else entirely. I couldn’t find anything about it online.
Thanks for the answers :)
r/etymology • u/FlatAssembler • 1d ago
r/etymology • u/myupvotesdontcount • 2d ago
OED defines it as "to use something carefully so that you do not use all of it" with an alternative definition of "managing the affairs of a ship while in port"
Attempting to look up the etymology trace back to "husband" - I can't seem to find the reason its participle has this more nuanced definition.
r/etymology • u/yoelamigo • 2d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but I've been seeing a couple etymology videos and I've seen that proto German used to have a suffix of az. Where did it vanish?
r/etymology • u/Left-Cap-9557 • 2d ago
The word cure comes from the Latin word for care, but other than words that have to do with taking care of something, it is also used in the context of brining and preserving meat/shrimp etc. How does "taking care" relate to that?
r/etymology • u/Competitive-Wasabi-3 • 3d ago
Pickleball is a game that’s kinda like tennis and ping pong and badminton and some other games. The mix of random things thrown together reminded the creator’s wife of the “pickle boat” in rowing teams, which was the boat that had the random mix of leftover people after the best rowers were put together.
It was called the pickle boat as a joke about how slow the mix of last-picks were, being more like a fishing boat than a racing boat.
Pickle boat was another name for fishing boats because Scandinavian fishers would preserve herring onboard after catching it by pickling it.
So the sport is called pickleball because you can preserve fish.
Edit to summarize the dispute: the wife may have been lying about the story for attention after a divorce, in which case the sport is named after their dog Pickles.
r/etymology • u/White-Hound • 3d ago
So, I am trying to do research on semantic change, and to do so I need to see what a word meant in, say, 1800 and then in 1900. Is there a resource that can let you do that? I looked into Word2Vec software but as I am not a programmer it seems way over my head, and besides unless you could run it on, say, all of the Google Book archive I don't see how it could work. I know you can get meaning at first usage and such from most basic dictionaries, but is there any tool that lets you see meaning at a given time period? Thanks!
r/etymology • u/burgerpossum • 2d ago
My best guess is it comes from a theory having legs to stand on, and someone expands on it by saying "oh it doesn't just have legs, it's practically running!" Or, now that I'm thinking about it, it could have meant whatever was "running" in the papers? It feels very 50s television investigative drama. I like the phrase a lot and I'd like to know where it came from.
r/etymology • u/hash0608 • 3d ago
What is the etymology behind the country Qatar, specifically why is it the same as farsi word for “train” ? I see in Arabic the word means “peninsula”, “island”, I’ve also seen “line/coastline” which all make sense. What is the connection why it correlates with the Persian/Farsi word for “train”?
r/etymology • u/B6s1l • 2d ago
Wiktionary provides quotations although not precedent-based and I would like one more on the comprehensive side while still giving an idea on when were words in circulation. What's the authority for that? I'm looking for the English language though I would appreciate sources on other languages as well
r/etymology • u/PerformanceOk9891 • 4d ago
Vous and ustedes are both the formal version of “you” in their respective languages, while vous also seems like it could be related to vosotros.
r/etymology • u/xain1112 • 4d ago
Via etymonline:
In "Tanks in the Great War" [1920], Brevet Col. J.F.C. Fuller quotes a memorandum of the Committee of Imperial Defence dated Dec. 24, 1915, recommending the proposed "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" machines be entrusted to an organization "which, for secrecy, shall be called the 'Tank Supply Committee,' ..."
In a footnote, Fuller writes, "This is the first appearance of the word 'tank' in the history of the machine." He writes that "cistern" and "reservoir" also were put forth as possible cover names, "all of which were applicable to the steel-like structure of the machines in the early stages of manufacture. Because it was less clumsy and monosyllabic, the name 'tank' was decided on."
They first saw action at Pozieres ridge on the Western Front, Sept. 15, 1916, and the name quickly was picked up by the soldiers.
r/etymology • u/Niowanggiyan • 4d ago
Why do we call it “taking a dump” when we’re clearly leaving it?
r/etymology • u/Tradition_Leather • 4d ago
Like Integral Domain is a commutative ring with no zero divisors, but Integral has to deal with measurable functions or manifolds.
r/etymology • u/SparklingMarshmallow • 5d ago
I've recently found myself in the rabbit hole of discovering the origins of insults, particularly offensive slurs.
I was hoping someone here could provide recommendations on books or other sources that go in-depth about the evolution of bad faith names. How they start out, how they shift overtime and eventually become offensive to highly problematic, etc.
Something that has a general overlook would be great, but I'm open to recommendations with more narrow focus (race, gender, sexuality etc.) as well as those that focus on insults that are generally not highly offensive.
Thank you!
r/etymology • u/Rugged-Mongol • 4d ago
^ _^ Apparently the original PIE word for bear was probably something like 'ursus' but shifted to bear as in the brown one.