2544: glass Nov 30, 2021
Although 'glass' refers to a material in English, throughout Indo-European languages the root of this word often led to other meanings for a variety of colors. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *ghel- meant 'shine' and as a result eventually came to mean 'glass' in Germanic languages, but also led to words for the colors yellow such as Old English 'glær' or Latin 'glaesum' (amber) or indeed Modern English 'yellow'. In Old Irish 'glass' meant 'green' and in Welsh 'glas' means 'blue'.
2543: Etruscans Nov 29, 2021
Indigeneity of a people to a land is not an easy thing to ascertain. Before the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, there were Celtic tribes, but before then archeological evidence points to several other waves of inhabitation. Likewise, while the pre-Roman Etruscans might not have literally been the first peoples on the peninsula, they are often considered to be the indigenous people before the Romans. Indeed, they contributed much to overall linguistic development, modifying the Greek alphabet into one that would go on to be used by the Romans and spread around the world, and gave many common words to the vocabulary of Indo-European languages. That said, they didn't speak an Indo-European language, and have generally obscure origins. Some have tried to create a language family from linguistic evidence found around the Alps and Adriatic, but this is not agreed upon.
2541: 'Sesquipedalian' and a Phobia of Syllables Nov 27, 2021
The word 'hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' refers to the irrational fear of many syllables, but it is also somewhat nonsensical. Its creation being so absurdly long was purposeful, and can be broken down into elements 'monstrum' (monster) which is an English understanding of the Latin meaning 'portent', but even more ridiculous is that the first element is from 'hippopotamus'. The whole thing really is an extension of 'sesquipedalian' which means 'polysyllabic' or more colloquially 'long-winded' from the Latin 'sesquipedalis' meaning 'a foot and a half'. In Latin, this term also related to excessive speech.
2535: Why 'Un-' Doesn't Assimilate Like 'In-' (Ir- Il- Im-) Nov 21, 2021
The prefix 'in-' assimilates to different sounds depending upon the context, becoming 'im-', 'il-', and 'ir-', but this is not true of 'un-', which is similar both semantically but more importantly, phonetically. For instance, 'in-' + 'responsible' is 'irresponsible', but 'un-' + 'responsive' is 'unresponsive'. This was true of the negating prefix 'in-' in Latin whence this use was borrowed, and while 'un-' is distantly related to this, it is really considered to be of a Germanic root where this does not happen.
2534: aquarium, terrarium, vivarium Nov 20, 2021
In Latin, the word 'aquārius' as either a noun or an adjective referred to anything water-related, including an aquarium (hence the English) but also aqueducts and workers thereon. Still, in its association with artificial animal-enclosures this led to 'terrarium' on the same pattern. Latin also had the word 'vīvārium' which does exist in English but is significantly less common, denoting any sort of enclosure for raising animals.
2526: mediterranean Nov 12, 2021
The name for the Mediterranean is from Latin, but it isn't what the Romans called it. They called it Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) or occasionally Mare Internum (Interior Sea) but never Mediterraneum Mare, which is from Late Latin, after the collapse of the empire. 'Mediterraneus' anyway doesn't specifically refer to water and literally means 'middle of the earth', so if the term was used by the Romans, it could have had a broader understanding. This was adopted into English via French, and beforehand the Old English 'Wendelsæ' was used, named for the Germanic Vandals who occupied the area of the former Western Roman Empire.
2525: Hendiadys Nov 11, 2021
Hendiadys is a literary term used to describe a sort of periphrasis wherein two words in which one could modify the other are instead connected with a conjunction like "this pie is good and hot", rather than "this is good, hot pie" which ostensibly means the same thing. Hendiadys does not indicate actually different clauses either, such as with the example before it would not mean to say the pie would be just as good cold, necessarily. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, "[o]h what a rogue and peasant slave am I?" the adjectives are certainly not to be considered separately. This exist very prevalently in Latin poetry such as "vinclis et carcere" (with chains and with prison) which effectively means "in prison chains" from the Aeneid, or in Biblical Hebrew with גר ותושב עמך (ger v'soshav imcha) literally 'a stranger and a resident with you' but meaning 'alien resident (i.e. convert) with you'.
2524: gum Nov 10, 2021
Although the term for the product of the resin is 'rubber' in English, the resin itself is known as 'gum'. This is from Ancient Egyptian qmyt (resin; gum), also related to qmy (oil). This was the source of many related European words thanks to its adoption into Ancient Greek and Latin which begot many terms, but also Semitic terms like Hebrew גומי (gumi) and Aramaic גמי (gami), and via Greek קומא (quma), with the later being specific to acacia. On the other hand, 'rubber' is just from the material's association to erasers, and another term, 'caoutchouc' is from Nahuatl, but only refers to unvulcanized rubber.
2521: abacus Nov 7, 2021
The word 'abacus' came to English from Latin hence the plural 'abaci', but this word might really have a semitic origin. While now the term is used exclusively to refer to the mathematical instrument, it used to be more generic, denoting many types of boards including board-game boards and sand tables, as with the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax). This has been likened to the Hebrew אבק (āvāq) meaning 'dust' which would explain the senses of the Catalan 'àbac' meaning both 'mathematical table' and 'board covered in sand'.
2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021
Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.
2516: Rhotacism & Dissimilation Nov 2, 2021
The word 'meridian' in English, or more directly even 'ante/post meridiem' (a.m./p.m.) is from the Latin word 'merīdiēs' meaning 'midday; noon'. This is from a corrupted phrase 'medīdiēs' which is just an contraction of 'medius' (middle) and 'diēs' (day). The R in the middle of 'merīdiēs' therefore is a bit odd at first glance. In fact, this is a fairly normal occurrence of rhotacism in the transition into Classical Latin. This normally happens to the sounds [s] or [z]—not [d]—that they should turn into [r] and really this is a process of dissimilation because it is followed by another [d].
2515: A Shift in Latin 3rd Person Endings Nov 1, 2021
In Latin, the present tense, 3rd person endings are singular '-t' and plural '-unt'. In Proto-Italic however, these were featured an [i] at the end, i.e. '-ti' and '-unti' respectively, though not always spelt that way specifically. This was probably related to the way that Greek constructed its verbs, though it did eventually drop off. There are inscriptions in Pompeii however that show 'estē' for what would be the Classical Latin 'est'. Indeed, Pompeii is a great source for popular writing as opposed to more formal, high-register, and perhaps most importantly edited writing. This alternate form might have been the source for Romanian's verb endings which look like that today somewhat.
2514: calcium & calculus Oct 31, 2021
The words 'calcium' and 'calculus' are related by the common root of 'calx', or translated from Latin, 'limestone'. This makes a certain amount of sense for calcium, since this is an element and is found physically in limestone and even now is another term for kidney-stones, but the association to mathematics is not as clear. This is because the diminutive form of 'calx' took the suffix '-ulus', resulting in 'calculus' meaning 'pebble', which again doesn't seem to relate to math, but is a reference to the stones used as counters on an abacus. Before differential calculus took the more specific definition used today, 'calculus' could just mean 'to calculate', hence the relation there as well.
2513: I Longum: ꟾ Oct 29, 2021
Latin vowels used to be written with apexes, which looked more like traditional accent mark than the macrons used for writing out long vowels in Latin today. This was the only form of punctuation, if it can even be called that, sine historically Latin had no lower-case, no spaces words or breaks for sentences. The only other variable in this system was 'i longum' or 'long i', written as ꟾ which represented the long vowel but didn't take the accent mark. While it is true that J developed from I, it is more accurate to say that J developed from ꟾ. Moreover, in Latin orthography, if two i's would be written together, the second would be ꟾ to distinguish it from N or even U (V). Likewise, in Dutch, there is a common digraph for the long [iː] sound written as IJ, and often further stylized with a smaller i in front, sometimes written as Y, though the Y was not related historically.
2512: serology and truth serums Oct 28, 2021
Serology is the study of blood, and especially pathogens in blood, but its etymology has nothing to do with that really. In Latin, 'serum'—which also led to the the English word 'serum'—which meant 'whey'. Blood has little to do with milky water, and what's more, this is related to other milky terms like Sanskrit सारण (sāraṇa) for 'buttermilk' and Ancient Greek ὁρός (horós) 'whey; curd'. This makes sense for the English 'serum', as this is a yellowish-liquid that's a component of blood. That said, 'serum' as in 'truth serum', while informal, is still a divergence from the original, presumably by association with injections generally. The association with blood in general is also an extension of the specificity of 'serum'.
2511: Common Words with Etruscan Origins Oct 27, 2021
Just because words are basic and have cognates in other, related languages, does not make the word indigenous, though it would suggest that the term is very old. For instance, 'person', 'populous' and 'military' all came to English, and many other European languages, via Latin, but these are not native Latin words. Instead, these are generally seen as having an Etruscan root, making them pre-Indo-European. 'Persona' in Latin was an actors mask, and likewise that would be in Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu), eventually replacing the native English 'wight'. 'Populus' in Latin, was thought to relate to 'plēbs' (commoner; plebeian) but the root here means 'to fill' and an Etruscan root might make more sense. 'Milēs' has a normal construction for Latin grammar, but the perceived connection to 'mīlia' (thousand) is not a given.
2510: etruscan and tuscany Oct 26, 2021
Often, etymologies for English words list that they are from Latin, and end there, but many Latin words had relatively ancient foreign origins of their own. A number of their words entered from the pre-Roman civilization of Etruscan who spoke a totally unrelated, non-Indo-European language, most obviously name of the region of Tuscany. This is from 'Tuscus', earlier 'Truscus', and even earlier 'Etruscus', but that doesn't exactly give the etymology. Rather, this is uncertain, but some surmise it is related to the Ancient Greek Τυρρηνός (Turrhēnós), from τύρρις (túrrhis) meaning 'tower', which itself is not of Indo-European origin. Alternatively, it has been noted among pre-Indo-European groups that they gave themselves names with -sk-, also seen in 'Basque' and 'Vascones', which is believed to mean 'water' and relate to seafaring peoples. Other explanations have traced to Celtic origins, or even to compare it to 'Troy', but these do not hold up as well. It has even been suggested that this was not the endonym, but rather 𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀 (rasna) was what they called themselves, meaning 'the people'.
2508: Ōs & Os: Two Very Different Destinies Oct 24, 2021
Latin differentiates between long and short vowels for distinguishing words, such as 'os' (bone) and 'ōs' (mouth). The other forms of 'ōs', including the genitive 'oris' is where 'oral' or 'orifice' get the R. Conversely, English has many derivatives like 'ossify', 'ossific', 'ossiferous', none of which have R in the root, because there was none present in any Latin form. 'Ōs' has far fewer derivatives outside of these other forms—except the use of 'os' as a medical term in English—including in Romance languages, relatively speaking. Consider too than 'mouth' is 'boca' in Spanish and Portuguese, 'bocca' in Italian, and 'bouche' in French, all of which come from Latin 'bucca' (cheek) itself likely from a Celtic origin, likely related to 'pouch' of Germanic origin, and possibly related to 'puke'.
2505: duel & bellum: √; duel and dual: X Oct 21, 2021
The word 'duel' may seem unassuming, but it's actually a preserved version from Archaic Latin, used before the 1st century BC. The word morphed into the Classical Latin 'bellum' (war), but the form was revived in Medieval Latin from its perceived association with 'dualis' (of two) and 'duo' but this is not accurate. The word is from the Proto-Italic *dwellom (to injure; destroy) related to other words like the Ancient Greek δαίω (daíō) meaning 'to burn' or δύη (dúē) for 'pain'. In fact, this 'du-' to 'b' transformation led to 'bis' from 'duis' meaning 'twice', further complicating that medieval folk etymology. This is also seem in Archaic Latin 'duonus' to 'bonus'.
2500: Bears: How Fear Developed Terminology Oct 16, 2021
The word 'bear' and its many similar Germanic counterparts, along with other very different sounding words of Northern European regions diverge from the Proto-Indo-European '*rtko' as seen in the Latin 'ursus' and Greek αρκτικός (arktikos). The Proto-Germanic '*berô' is related to the word 'brown' (and as a matter of course, 'beaver') meaning 'brown one'. Many people have claimed this is as a euphemistic reference from fear of bears who more prevalently inhabited Northern Europe than around the Mediterranean where they were fewer and smaller. Not only Germanic languages have this phenomenon, as the Russian медведь (medved) means 'honey-eater' and some Celtic references once had similar euphemistic qualities.
