1947: Wanderwort: Silver Apr 14, 2020

A wanderwort is a word which has been adopted into many languages, accounting for specific language variation too, but which are not necessarily linguistically connected. For instance, the Indo-European root meaning 'silver' is actually more in line with the Latin 'argentum' (see 'Argentina') but many Germanic and Balto-Slavic words, including the German 'Silber', Russian 'serebro', or Lithuanian 'sidabras' come from this other root. It has been debated where this comes from, but it is possibly from a language native to the Iberian peninsula, predating the Romantic presence there, which was written about yesterday.

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