2055: Words for Wine across Linguistic Boundaries Jul 31, 2020
Wine is something that has been shared around the Mediterranean and beyond, both literally and also linguistically. Old, basic concepts tend to have lots of related cognated across related languages, but in the case of 'wine' it is actually shared across unrelated languages as well. 'Wine' in English comes from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root '*uoin-a-', and there are plenty of other PIE-descended words too, like the Latin 'vinum'. Likewise, there are many related non-PIE words like the Georgian ღვინო (gvino), the Armenian գինի (gini), the Hebrew יין (yáyin), the Amharic ወይን (wäyn), and the Swahili 'mvinyo'. Of course, many of these words, including those of Africa and Northern Europe especially will be borrowed, but there is no consensus as to whether this original root is from a Semitic, Indo-European, or even Kartvelian language; some theories will be more convincing than others though.
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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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1908: gazette Mar 6, 2020
There are several quintessential titles found in newspaper names, including Times, Chronicle, and Gazette. However, for something so ubiquitous, 'gazette' doesn't really mean anything on its own. It actually comes from Venetian Italian "gazeta de la novità" referring to the cost of a newspaper being a ha'penny. In Italian, 'gazeta' was a Venetian coin approximating about a half-penny. This would be as if we referred to dime novels or penny dreadfuls as 'dimes' and 'pennies' respectively.
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1846: gauche and droit Jan 4, 2020
Left has long been associated with negative things. The word sinister comes from the Latin for 'left' (sinister) but the Romance language French has a totally different word for 'left'; they say 'gauche'. However, even that means 'awkward', so while the word is a different one, the meaning, ultimately, is not. Likewise, the French word 'droit' for 'right' is not from the Latin one 'dextrus', but is a doublet of the English 'direct'.
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1713: copper Aug 23, 2019
There's a belief that the term 'copper' for police officer comes from copper badges, but this is folk etymology. Instead, it comes from the verb 'to cop', meaning 'to seize' referencing their arrests. This root is very old however, and it is also related to the modern word 'cheap', since the root word (something like 'kap-') meant 'to grab' and in other languages derivative terms sometimes mean 'to buy'.
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1682: Hymen and hymen Jul 23, 2019
The Greek deity of marriage is referred to as Ὑμήν ('hymen') but this is not the express origin the homophone denoting female anatomy. For one thing, the deity was conceptualized as a man, but more importantly the physiological term comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *syu-men- with *syu- meaning 'sew' or 'bring together ('sew' coming from the same root). To be clear, the name of the Greek mythical is estimated to generally come from the same derivation but in the sense of bringing two people together through a wedding itself.
1653: mare and march Jun 24, 2019
The word 'mare' dates back to Old English as a feminine word for 'horse'. Today, it means denotes a female horse but Old English had 3 grammatical genders, and 'mere' (mare) was merely the feminine equivalent for 'mearh' (horse). That word has since been usurped by 'horse', which also existed in Old English. Therefore, the Welsh word 'march' meaning 'stallion'—with no female equivalent—is one of its closest cognates, certainly outside of Germanic languages. See more on 'mare' in 'nightmare'.
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1631: dreidl Jun 2, 2019
Following yesterday's post about the folk-etymology surrounding dreidls, if someone needed further evidence that they're not of Semitic origin, it would be as easy as going to ask a child. 'Dreidl' (דרײדל) comes from 'dreien' meaning 'to turn', like the German 'drehen', but in Hebrew the word is 'sevivon' (סביבון), and this was invented by the 5 year-old son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who had invented Modern Hebrew. It is based from the Semitic root meaning 'to turn', but at the time, another word from Hayyim Nahman Bialik, "kirkar", was in use, based on the root for "to spin" but this did not catch on in spoken Hebrew. Many other words were used in Yiddish dialects too, based on Germanic or Slavic words.
1576: daemon vs. demon Apr 8, 2019
'Daemon' today may just look like an older way of writing 'demon', and while there is some truth to that, it is much deeper. As with many English words with 'ae' or 'oe' representing only one sound, this word is from Greek. At that time, it could mean anything supernatural from 'deity' to 'lesser spirit', and this reflected somewhat in 'daemon', which still means 'divinity' or 'inner spirit'. The purely negative connotations came later, and are now denoted exclusively in 'demon', despite identical pronunciation. Indeed, 'demon' only became the popular way to write the word in the 19th century.
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1544: Vittle vs Victual Mar 6, 2019
English spelling often is not clearly related to the pronunciation, and while this is an acknowledged nuisance, there have been times when this is done, if not intentionally, then incidentally counterproductively. In the past for instance, the word 'victual' was written as 'vittle', and given that 'vittle' does rhyme with 'little' and 'tittle', this pattern makes a lot of sense. However, 'victual' with the addition of the notable C especially mirrors the original Latin 'victualis'. In Latin however, the sounds represented by the spelling would have been more or less pronounced.
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1251: The Nuance of Proof May 13, 2018
There is no harm in seeing that words can have multiple and even conflicting meanings, though there are some words for which a misunderstanding can lead to communicational problems with deep social and cognitive effects. The word 'proof' for instance has the sense of sounding as if it means something has been confirmed as a fact. Indeed, often this is the way in which the word is used, but as is evidenced (proven?) with the statement and expression "the exception that proves the rule", if 'prove' meant "confirm as factual" then the statement would not make sense, as exceptions make rules invalid. Instead, what 'prove' means 'to test'. To say this is all it means though would be prescriptivist; due to past misunderstanding and misinterpretation, the word has gained a more objective sense of sounding infallible, and this may lead people to be critical of the uncertainty of proof. At this point however, all one can do is to be mindful of both.
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700: Wrong Division Nov 7, 2016
Often on Word Facts words will be tracked over time, but the changes, either from language to language, or within the same one, are not explained. There are a slew of reasons why English takes has so many words that are different from their original Old English, Latin, or whichever language it may be, including accent-differences, and people's unwillingness to speak consistently with the native pronunciation or grammar rules. When words change within a single language, however, it is easier to spot why. "Wrong division" is a term applied to words which have sounds split, most commonly from the indefinite article 'a'. The snake, 'adder', and the drill, 'auger' are both of Germanic origins and both used to have an initial N; in fact 'nave' and 'auger' come from the same word even though they sound nothing alike. This is true also of adopted words, such as 'umpire' which comes from the French, 'nonper' meaning, 'not equal' and for a period in Middle English was, 'noumpere'.
For more on this, see Napkin and Apron and also Nicknames
169: well good god! May 26, 2015
There is a correction on the last sentence.
Why is it that the adverbial form of 'good', 'well'‽ The reason is that not only did they come from different words entirely, but completely different meanings. 'Well' comes from the Old English adjective 'wel' which meant more or less what the adverb does today. 'Good', however, comes from the Old English 'gōd', which meant "god, deity".