2774: Dear and Teuer Jul 25, 2024

The words ‘dear’ in English and ‘teuer’ (expensive) in German both originate from the same Proto-Germanic root, but over time they have diverged in meaning and usage. Both ‘dear’ and ‘teuer’ trace their origins back to the Proto-Germanic word *diurijaz, which means ‘precious’ or ‘valuable.’ While the sense of money being valuable (in the sentimental sense) might be clear by itself as a gradual progression in German, the English usage was also reinforced by Old Norse ‘dyr,’ meaning ‘precious.’ Likewise, ‘expensive’ (i.e., teuer) is divergent from the original sense in that it is the reaction to something being valued, but this would be the same sort of relationship as another doublet pair with ‘wet’ being the experience of ‘water,’ each word coming from the same root. ‘Dear’ and ‘teuer’ are yet another of countless examples of cognates with understandably similar but by no means identical meanings.

2762: Pomp to Psychopomp Jul 13, 2024

‘Pomp’ and ‘pompous’ don’t mean exactly the same thing as another –ous suffix pair like ‘fury’ and ‘furious,’ but one can still understand the connection. ‘Psychopomp,’ on the other hand, referring to any mythical figure whose job it is to guide a soul through the afterlife, on its surface has nothing to do with either ‘pomp’ or ‘pompous.’

‘Pomp’ ultimately originates from the Ancient Greek πομπή (pompē), meaning a solemn procession or display. It historically transferred to signify grandeur and ceremonial splendor. ‘Pompous’ derives directly from ‘pomp,’ initially describing something characterized by grandeur or splendor. However, over centuries, ‘pompous’ shifted in connotation, now used to describe individuals who exhibit self-importance and excessive dignity, without any necessary splendor.

‘Psychopomp,’ then, is the only one of these terms that still refers to a procession, with the compound literally meaning ‘soul-conductor’ as the one who leads a procession. It is typical that the newer a word is, the more it retains its older source’s meaning. This word is relatively modern, originating around 1860 and gaining popularity since the mid-20th century, mostly still in academic circles.

2757: Sad, Sate, and Satisfy Jul 8, 2024

The word ‘sad’ comes from the Old English sæd, having the same pronunciation as it still has. Thanks for reading and sign up for the email list.

Of course, that isn’t very interesting, unless you consider that the Old English word meant almost the opposite of ‘sad’ as it is used in Modern English, having the sense of ‘sated’ / ‘satisfied’. This sense was born from the word’s other connotation of ‘weary’, as in after a meal one would feel sæd, which in this context is to say full and tired. Thus, the split was formed in the two doublets with one going on emphasize the qualities of being weary, eventually being taken to mean ‘depressed’, while the other kept the sense of ‘filled’ emphasizing the state of satisfaction. 

As mentioned, ‘sate’ comes from this sense of ‘full’ but this is not related to ‘satiate’ or ‘satisfy’, despite their similar forms and meanings, that come from Latin instead.

2720: UK / US Doublet Herb Names Jun 1, 2024

In the UK, ‘coriander’ refers to the ground up seeds (as it does in the US) as well as the leaves of the herb, while in the US, the relatively contentious spice ‘cilantro’ may be thought of as a flavor prominent in Latin cuisine, it is also simply latin. Both of these words come from the same origin, the Latin ‘coriandrum’ which was borrowed into English and then effectively borrowed again from Spanish with ‘cilantro’. This is not to be confused with ‘culantro’ which also comes from the same etymological root but it is a plant native to Central America. 

The same process occurs with British ‘rocket’, ultimately from the Latin ‘eruca’ is known in the US as ‘arugula’, also from ‘eruca’, though in this case introduced by Italian immigrants to America and widely adopted by the 1970’s to the point that ‘rocket’ for the name of the leaf is virtually unrecognized. The difference here compared with ‘coriander’ is that ‘rocket’ was heavily influenced by French, making it look more different to the original Latin.

2703: Gelatin and Gelato May 15, 2024

Words like gluten, gelatin, glutamate, and even gelato are all related, beyond just having a vague food relation, but it may not be obvious why. In the case of ‘gluten’ and ‘gelatin’, which do not look so alike, this from the Latin ‘gluten’ meaning ‘glue’, though ‘gelatin’ is older in English, passing through many other languages along the way, but both become very sticky and springy in water and then harden into a shape, likely coming from the same source as ‘clay’ etymologically. This quality of sticking did not only extend to things that are sticky to the touch, but that come to stick together in some other way when they harden. ‘Gelato’ is called such since ‘gelata’ in Latin means ‘frost’, when water begins to bind, or even ‘glass’, made from sand coming together.

2701: Gardens, Orchards, and Paradise May 13, 2024

It’s lovely to sit in an orchard, though far less lovely sounding to sit in a wort-yard, yet this is what it would have been called in Old English ortgeard. 'Wort' in this case simply means ‘plant’, still seen at the end of many plant names, like butterwort, woundwort, and spearwort. However, etymologically speaking, there is an even better sounding orchard-word: paradise. 

Paradise comes to English ultimately from the Avestan (Persian) word pairidaēza, meaning “enclosed garden” but in Ancient Greek παράδεισος (parádeisos) meant “palace gardens”. Because of this lofty definition, this word became associated with the Garden of Eden and by extension heaven (e.g. Dante’s Paradiso), displacing the enigmatic Old English word ‘neorxnawang’. These biblical connotations to ‘paradise’ do not exist in the doublet ‘parvis’ (i.e. “cathedral gardens”) but coincidentally came in the Hebrew פרדס (pardes) took on extra, spiritualism, while in Modern Hebrew still denotes an orchard.

2629: obliterate Feb 26, 2022

The English words 'obliterate' and 'literature' come from the same root. Although 'obliterate' is thought of in a generic way meaning 'total destruction', in a more literal sense it means 'blotting out with ink'. It is for this reason that the French 'oblitération' can mean 'stamp; validate a ticket'. Beyond this the word becomes obscured because the history of the Latin 'littera' is not clear.

2611: prune & plum Feb 7, 2022

There are a few cases where dried fruits have completely different names to the normal version, but this is pretty rare. Prunes for instance are dried plums, but this is just because the the Ancient Greek προῦνον (proûnon) means 'plum', likely borrowed from a native Anatolian language. The word 'plum' does not have a separate origin though, and merely stems from the Latin form 'prunum' which morphed over time into the English form. The Modern Greek word for a plum now is δαμάσκηνο (damaskino) meaning Damascus.

2579: charm & oscine Jan 5, 2022

One might not think so by looking, but 'charm' and 'oscine' are related to each other. 'Oscine', which means 'related to a songbird', and while he prefix 'os-' is a mutation from 'ob-' (towards), the remaining '-cine/-cen' doesn't look that similar either. Both 'charm' [1] and 'obscen', here in its nominal form, are related to the Latin 'carmen' and come from the verb 'canere' (to sing). In Latin, '-cen' is tacked onto the ends of instruments as well to denote players thereof, such as 'lyricen' (lyrist) or 'tubicen' (tubaist; trumpetist).

2485: Legal Doublets Oct 1, 2021

Legal doublets are phrases, used in legal and common uses, which uses two or more nearly synonymous words, such as "cease and desist", "clear and present danger" or indeed "will and testament". Like other binomials, these are often connected with 'and', and often cannot be said out of order. These are not totally random however, nor purposeless (at least historically), since many started as Latin or French words followed by an English translation, though others originated as near-redundancy. Eventually both parts became English translations, and this phenomenon, which is already especially particular to law, does not exist across languages as much.

2465: piano Sep 11,

'Piano' means 'soft' in Italian, and this might seem strange on its own considering the power of the instrument, but it is shortened from 'pianoforte', literally 'soft-loud', named for the fact it could alternate volume more than its predecessors, harpsichords and clavichords. The word for 'piano' was borrowed, but words of that same root had been around for some time before. Both 'plane' and 'plain' are related to each other come from the sense of level, smooth, broad, even etc..

2244: turban and tulip Feb 5, 2021

The words 'turban' and 'tulip are related, loaned to European languages through Ottoman Turkish دلبند‎ (tülbent), but initially the word was from Persian دلبند‎ (dolband). These two English words are clearly related in shape‚ hence the original meaning in Persian, but not so clearly in phonology. In Italian, the word for 'tulip' in 'tulipano' retaining the '-an' ending, but this was dropped in Germanic languages, being very similar to some of the most common suffixes. Likewise, it isn't exactly clear what caused the change of -l- to -r- in 'turban', but it likely happened in a even before it was borrowed into any Romance language.

2234: clock and cloak Jan 26, 2021

The words 'cloak' and 'clock' are related, but as little as as those two have to do with each other on the surface, they also might not seem to do much with the common root. They both come from the Medieval Latin 'clocca' which actually meant 'bell', though this is thought to be originally Celtic. That word itself it thought to be onomatopoeic, and related to other words meaning 'laugh'. The cloak was called such not for the function or sound of course, but for having a generally bell-like shape. More on clocks in the next post. ב״ה

2230: Reborrowing Jan 22, 2021

Reborrowing is a process by which a word that is adopted into one language has a derivative that is borrowed back. A few examples are:

•'Anime' (English) from Japanese アニメ (anime) from the 'animation' (English)

•'Cookie' (Dutch) i.e. online information from English 'cookie' from 'koekje' (Dutch)

•Modern Hebrew תכלס [(tachles) 'directly'] from Yiddish תכלית [(tachlis) 'serious business'] from Hebrew תכלית [(tachlith) purpose]

•There is even double borrowing in the case of the English 'redingote' from French 'redingote' from English 'riding coat' from French 'cotte'.

These are usually doublets, that is to say a pair of words with identical origins and different meanings, but also included this would be borrowing calques, i.e. literal translations, such as

ready-to-wear → French prêt-à-porter (1951) → English prêt-à-porter (1957).

2132: The Evolution of 'Idiot' in Hebrew Oct 16, 2020

The Hebrew word אידיוט (idyót) is a loan word meaning 'idiot', probably coming as a loan word through Russian. This word however, in many languages, was adopted from the Greek, whose meaning there was more or less neutral, and changed into something explicitly negative, as happened in English. This is seen clearly through another Hebrew word הדיוט (hedyót) which come from the name Greek word ἰδιώτης (idiṓtēs) with both of them meaning 'layman' or 'regular', as in someone who is not educated on a particular subject. but not necessarily stupid as the modern sense implies.

1738: liaison and ligation Sep 17, 2019

'Liaison' was originally a cooking term, as discussed yesterday, but there is more than one way how that word changed. 'Ligation' is a doublet of 'liaison', meaning that they both came from the same word but diverged phonetically over time. I this case, 'ligate' came directly from Latin for 'to tie' (ligare), whereas 'liaison' evolved within French first. Many words in medicine, in this case specifically surgery come directly from Latin, and, more importantly, have not existed as long, such that they are more similar to the original.