2012: Words from Onomatopoeias Jun 18, 2020
When an etymology is given for a certain word, it might trace back to older forms of a language, like Old Chinese or Ancient Greek, but of course the question is answered with another question: where did that come from? Even for certain words for which a root has been reconstructed—which is of course really just a guess—the questions for an origin goes on, except in cases of onomatopoeic words. There are a few obvious ones like animal sounds, the word 'flick', but some are less obviously derived from onomatopoeias, like 'black' or 'mom'. Indeed, this is probably true of lots of words for relatives for two reasons: first the fact that basically every word for mother or father across the whole world are already similar because they're derived from baby noises, but also that names for relatives over time aren't consistent. In Polish, the word for grandfather is 'dziadek' which comes from the Proto-Slavic root, dědъ, related to words for 'uncle' (dė̃dė in Lithuanian), and even 'grandmother' (τήθη (tḗthē) in Ancient Greek).
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