Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2019/November

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zelfingenomen

The etymology reads: "possibly a calque of English self-absorbed." Though the chronology fits, I'm sceptical about this. Ingenomen and absorbed are not really good analogies, and the Dutch phrase met zichzelf ingenomen, from ingenomen zijn met X, is attested as early as the mid 18th century (though the main text is a translation from English, the extremely long biographical foreword is mostly absent in the English version). Any thoughts? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Does Dutch zelfingenomen really mean “self-absorbed“? I think it is related to the adjective innemend, “charming” (not listed as an adjective here), from the verb innemen, “to conquer” – specifically by breaking through the defences, hence figuratively “to conquer by charm”. People who are zelfingenomen are charmed by themselves.  --Lambiam 07:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

The formation of the word appears to fit a pattern:

• door zichzelf benoemd → zelfbenoemd
• van zichzelf bewust → zelfbewust
• met zichzelf ingenomen → zelfingenomen
• door zichzelf uitgeroepen → zelfuitgeroepen
• door zichzelf verklaard → zelfverklaard
• door zichzelf verkozen → zelfverkozen
• van zichzelf verzekerd → zelfverzekerd
• van zichzelf voldaan → zelfvoldaan

 --Lambiam 06:28, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

I have changed the definition to “self-complacent, self-satisfied, smug” and removed the calque theory.  --Lambiam 16:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

𢳂

RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:52, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

open

For this word did the noun really come from the verb? Is there a source that supports this? The etymologies were divided back in March 2017 by @Leasnam, and before that they were just all under the first etymology. Century lumps the adjective and noun together under one etymology. Also, the MEC says the noun comes from the adjective.[1] (I don't know how authoritative their etymologies are.) If those are correct I would think etym 3 should be recombined with etym 1. -Mike (talk) 05:26, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

It seems to me that some current noun uses come from the Middle English noun (to bring into the open) and some others from the modern English adjective (the open championship → the open). We currently only list a Middle English adjective open (as well as an Old English one), but no such noun or verb. I see no reason to doubt the Middle English Compendium. Etymologically, in Proto-Germanic, the verb is derived from the adjective.  --Lambiam 06:56, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

缽

“Glyph origin: Ideogrammic compound (會意／会意): 缶 (“pot”) + 本 (“basic”) – a basic (humble) pot.” Tagged since October 17, 2016, but not listed.  --Lambiam 07:11, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Looks like folk etymology to me. 本 is acting as a phonetic component according to Zhengzhang Shangfang. I've revised the glyph origin. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 20:38, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

RFV: LA rhonch- < GRC ῥέγχος/ῥόγχος

• RO râncheza, LA rhonchus & CA/ES/IT/GL/PT ronco (and LA ronco!!!) say from GRC ῥόγχος (rhónkhos)
• CA/ES/GL/PT roncar & LA rhoncho/rhonchare say from GRC ῥέγχος (rhénkhos)

Is the different vowel a mark of PoS? Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 09:33, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

L&S and Bailly only have ῥέγχος (rhénkhos) as a variant of ῥέγκος (rhénkos), but give the verb ῥογκιάω (rhonkiáō) (ῥογκιῶ) as a Dorian variant of ῥέγκω (rhénkō). Also, ῥογχασμός (rhonkhasmós) is given as a synonym of ῥέγκος. Unless stated otherwise, the POS is Noun for all variants.  --Lambiam 10:42, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Those are different ablaut grades. The best known example of ablaut is in inflection, where different parts of the paradigm in many Indo-European languages sometimes use different ablaut grades. In English we have sing (present), sang (simple past) and sung (past participle). I don't know why the ablaut grades are different between the different Ancient Greek dialects, but the dialects that colonized parts of Italy were mostly different from the Attic dialect that became dominant in Greece itself. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Κρότων from κροτών

City https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%9A%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD

Plant https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BD

pleoh

RFV of the etymology.

tagged but not listed Leasnam (talk) 21:45, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I've edited it since the tag was added. Leasnam (talk) 21:46, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Hebrew גּוֹיָה as feminine of גוי

I'm aware that the use of גוי to mean non-Jew, often assumed to be a semantic loan from Yiddish, was in fact used as early as Maimonides as well as by the Sephardi Joseph Karo.

However, I am less sure about the origin of the feminine equivalent, whether it originated in Rabbinic Hebrew or whether it first appeared in Yiddish. My guess is that it's obvious enough to have originated independently of Yiddish, and that even Yiddish speakers forming the feminine with -e would have had a Hebrew prototype in mind (otherwise you would expect a more Yiddish feminine form, as in חבֿרטע (khaverte)), but I am going to be searching for textual evidence in rabbinic literature as well as in the non-rabbinic literature of Muslim and Christian Spain, and would appreciate help with this. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 09:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

active shooter

1. Are etymologies like that allowed in the first place and what is it exactly supposed to convey? 2. In any case, I think this sense is early 2000s at the latest, probably becoming current in the wake of the Columbine shooting. Perhaps a 1999 cite can be found in a media corpus. Google results before 2000 are completely unreliable however. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:14, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It creates the incorrect suggestion that the term was coined in the October 2008 booklet. Here is a police use from May 2007.  --Lambiam 22:45, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

This Word document, which uses the term in the first paragraph of the Introduction, is from March 2004.  --Lambiam 11:40, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

And here we see a use in a 2000 issue of Soldiers of Fortune, probably the April issue. (Quote: ‘The term “Active Shooter” is defined in a recent Illinois Tactical Officers Association newsletter as, “one or more subjects who participate in a random or systematic shooting spree, demonstrating their intent to continuously harm others. Their overriding objective appears to be that of mass murder, rather than other criminal conduct such as robbery, hostage taking, etc.”’.)  --Lambiam 12:04, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Annona

RFV of the etymology:

• Latin annona (“corn, grain; means of subsistence”)

As an IP has pointed out on the talk page, Wikipedia, citing a book called "Florida Ethnobotany", traces it to a Taino word, annon or anón, which we have as a Spanish entry. The DRAE entry for anón says "De or. caribe", which complicates things: "caribe" could mean either "Caribbean" or "Carib". If the latter is meant, that conflicts with Wikipedia, since Taino is an Arawakan language unrelated to Carib. Taxonomicaly, the name traces back to Carl Linnaeus, in his 1753 edition of Species Plantarum. It's interesting to note that the names he cites are all with one "n". Perhaps he changed the spelling on the assumption that the word originally came from Latin. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:25, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

The Spanish term anona has (according to the DRAE), next to the sense of a tree (or its fruit) in the family Annonaceae, also the obsolete sense of “provision of victuals”. There can be little doubt that the latter sense descends from Latin annōna, as does Italian annona; see Praefectus annonae on Wikipedia. It seems plausible to me that Linnaeus “corrected” the Spanish spelling in coming up with his Neo-Latin Annona. It seems somewhat less plausible – although not entirely unthinkable – that he thought the botanical sense came from the other sense, what with the rather considerable semantic distance between “provision of victuals” and “sugar-apple”. Curiously, the 1911 Century Dictionary has the spelling Anona.  --Lambiam 11:11, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Script hybrid

How do you think about these characters if they were going to exist in Unicode: my tweet with 3 pics. --Octahedron80 (talk) 03:09, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

lose face

A calque of Chinese? Why? Canonicalization (talk) 13:43, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Why not ? Leasnam (talk) 23:15, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

But why specifically from 丟臉／丢脸 (diūliǎn) and not (also) from 丟面子／丢面子 (diū miànzi)?  --Lambiam 06:32, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Quiambao

RFV of the etymology. @Mlgc1998 — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:38, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Proto-Germanic *gallô

RFE for this entry and *gallō. A lot of sources 1234 (ish) seem to think that this is from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃- (“green, yellow”). I noticed someone tried to add this etymology but it was quickly reverted. Does it not work? Or maybe it was because that editor was just an IP and didn't cite a source...

Further confusing things is the relationship between *gallô and *gallō (are they alternate forms?) but that's a different question I suppose. DJ K-Çel (talk) 21:52, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

It was reverted because the IPA put a Proto-Indo-European form as an Ancient Greek word and used {{etyl}}, well and maybe the formal explanation wasn’t really there either. Connecting to random roots is easy. Fay Freak (talk) 01:36, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I've moved *gallō to *gallǭ, since the West Germanic descendants are weak. I've also added the descendants of *gallô to *gallǭ. I think we can delete *gallô. Leasnam (talk) 07:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

خي

The Levantine interjection خَيّ (ḵayy!), verbalizing a sigh of relief. Is it by any chance related to خَيْر (ḵayr)? (I'm thinking of elongation along the lines of خييييير (ḵayyyyyyyr...) perhaps leading to eventual apocope of the /r/.) M. I. Wright (talk) 00:21, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Arabic جوا and برا

I'm thinking specifically of the dialectal terms juwwa "inside" (currently recorded for Hijazi Arabic under جوة) and barra "outside". Wiktionary seems to prefer to derive them as pure-Arabic adverbial accusatives of بَرّ (barr, “wilderness”) and جَوّ (jaww, “atmosphere”), but this seems a little bit dubious of a semantic leap... in contrast, consider the Syriac lemmas ܓܘܐ and ܒܪܐ, which match the dialectal Arabic forms in pronunciation and seem to already have the relevant meanings. Now, crackpot nationalists in Lebanon like to use these two terms in particular to help prove that Lebanese is totally not Arabic!!!1, and while that's obviously BS for more reasons than I can count, I wonder if it's not too out-there to propose a serious Aramaic origin for the Arabic words. The sheer spread of the pair (it literally exists all the way from the Peninsula to Malta) would indicate quite an early borrowing, I think, but I'm not well-versed in this history at all, so I don't know what more to look for. Thoughts? M. I. Wright (talk) 09:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

baggi

Do we have any idea where Old Norse gets this word from? Tharthan (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The etymology section at English bag presents a guess.  --Lambiam 09:19, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm going to need to look more into it. Does bǫggr have any modern, Scandinavian descendants? Tharthan (talk) 16:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Nynorsk bagge (“fat and clumsy person, pack, bundle”) is said to be connected to bǫggr. Leasnam (talk) 17:45, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I see that the Swedish Etymological Dictionary appears to claim that the odds are that the medial "gg" is of hypocoristic origin, but I don't know what to make of that. Is the word somehow expressive in origin?

This is a stretch, but (also, @Lambiam) could there perhaps be some sort of relation with Proto-Germanic *būdilaz? Could the medial consonant have shifted in a descendant in a daughter language, and then that descendant was borrowed into Old Norse?

Also, I would imagine that Icelandic böggull (which we give no etymology for at the moment) is related to one of those two Old Norse etyma. No? Tharthan (talk) 20:37, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

böggull (Old Norse bǫggull) is simply a diminutive of baggi.
As for the origin, it has been proposed that baggi might somehow be tied somehow to Proto-Germanic *balgiz (“bag”), although I would see several difficulties with that proposal. Leasnam (talk) 21:10, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

There is also Icelandic böggur, which, like bǫggr, seems to have two senses (“bag” and “harm”). It is unclear to me if these are non-cognate homonyms, or strongly divergent senses with a common origin. See also the treatment here (pdf) under the lemma *bøggvir on p. 1398; it looks to me as if the author does not think these homonyms are cognates, and apparently believes that bǫggr in the “harm” sense has an uncertain origin. I do not quite see how the sense of Proto-Germanic *budilaz (“herald, messenger”) would have developed into “clumsy person” or “bundle” – several of its descendants mean “executioner”. Also, the required consonant shift is not a common one, although, once you are in hypocoristic territory (not in Kansas anymore) much is possible.  --Lambiam 21:38, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I fnd the etymology of bug intriguing, especially the part about conflation with bud, which appears cognate to German Beutel (“bag, pouch”). Could something similar have happened in Scandinavia?  --Lambiam 21:43, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

>I see that the Swedish Etymological Dictionary appears to claim that the odds are that the medial "gg" is of hypocoristic origin, but I don't know what to make of that. Is the word somehow expressive in origin?<

It's referring to its use as a nickname. I wonder if the -gi on baggi might not be a suffix, related in some way to Old English -ga. Leasnam (talk) 22:24, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I did some digging. There is a similar word in ON, bekill (“a clumsy person”), which appears to be formed from bak (“back”) + -ill (diminutive suffix or agent suffix). I wonder if baggi could have originated from something like *bakgi (bak + -gi), derived from bak "back", meaning "small back, mini-back" or "something small worn on one's back" = "bag" (?). Only pure speculation, of course, as I'm not sure how the combination k + g works out in ON, if it becomes kk or gg Leasnam (talk) 22:50, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I meant Proto-Germanic *būdilaz (“pouch, bag”), not Proto-Germanic *budilaz (“herald, messenger”).

> I wonder if baggi could have originated from something like *bakgi (bak + -gi), derived from bak "back", meaning "small back, mini-back" or "something small worn on one's back" = "bag" (?).

That's an interesting thought, Leasnam. Tharthan (talk) 01:55, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

In Old Norse, X + -gi means “not X”.  --Lambiam 11:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

There are possibly 2 suffixes being discussed here: the one I am referring to (which is theoretical and probably a relic by the time of ON (not sure)) is the same one found in steggi, which would come from Proto-Germanic *-gô. I apologise for not making that clearer. Leasnam (talk) 18:35, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

@Leasnam For what it's worth, when referring to Proto-Germanic *pakkô, Kroonen says "Even within Germanic itself, the word corresponds irregularly to Old Norse baggi (“pack, bundle”), which points to Proto-Germanic *bagg- next to *pakk-." do we have a corresponding reconstruction? DJ K-Çel (talk) 15:17, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

@Djkcel to my knowledge we do not Leasnam (talk) 03:48, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

hawker

Ought sense two under etymology one (the kind of dragonfly) be under etymology two, or is it indeed related to sense one under etymology one? Tharthan (talk) 17:40, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

cras

The current explanation given at cras is not particularly satisfactory. Like, what's with the -r-? Does de Vaan have a more precise account? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:01, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

That etymology comes from Lewis & Short (1879), who write, without further elucidation, “crās , adv. root ka-, ku-, to lighten, burn; Gr. καίω; cf. Sanscr. cvas, the same”. De Vaan has something completely different:

PIt. *krās? It. cognates: Fal. cra [adv.] ‘tomorrow’.

PIE *ḱer-h₂ [nom.], *ḱr-h₂-os [gen.], *ḱr-éh₂ [loc.], *ḱr-ḗh₂ [coll.] ‘head’?, IE cognates: Hit. ketkar [adv.] ‘at the head (of), on top’ < PIE *ḱed + *ḱr(h₂), Gr. ἐπὶ κάρ ‘head down‘, ἁνὰ κάρ ‘upwards‘ < *ḱr; κάρᾱ [n.], κάρη (ep.) ‘head’ < *ḱr-eh₂-.

 --Lambiam 11:52, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. That makes a lot more sense and should be used instead. We really shouldn't be relying on a general Latin dictionary from 1879 when a far more current and (on etymology) far superior book (that is, moreover, specifically an etymological dictionary of Italic, and therefore used just about everywhere else in Wiktionary) is available. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:15, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I mean seriously, can you imagine relying on a 140-year-old work in any other field of science? I've now replaced the L&S explanation with de Vaan's. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:14, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Abib

• I reformatted and corrected the etymology at Abib as well as I could, but I am still uncertain. With the original etymology saying "The month was so called from barley being at that time in ear" and the definitions at אביב as they are, the literal translation clearly was not "an ear of corn," but I am uncertain whether "an ear of barley" is a missing translation at אביב or incorrect. I am also uncertain whether the use of "literally" is proper or not. İʟᴀᴡᴀ–Kᴀᴛᴀᴋᴀ (talk) (edits) 02:35, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Original etymology: From Hebrew אביב (abhībh), literally an ear of corn. The month was so called from barley being at that time in ear.

Current etymology: From Hebrew אָבִיב (avív, literally “an ear of barley”); so-called because barley is planted at that time of year.

Definitely not corn in the US sense of “maize”, but note the very first sense given: “(British, uncountable) The main cereal plant grown for its grain in a given region, such as oats in parts of Scotland and Ireland, and wheat or barley in England and Wales”. The KJV translates the word in Leviticus 2:14 as “green ears of corn”. Barley is more specific, but emmer wheat was also cultivated early in the Fertile Crescent – can we be sure how specific the Biblical term אביב was?  --Lambiam 11:05, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Triscuit

In [2], the claim was added that the name comes from "triple" + "biscuit", from the triple ingredients of wheat, oil, and salt. However, I have heard the claim that the name originates from the fact that they were, as an early marketing slogan said, "baked with electricity", and I notice that (according to Wikipedia) oil and salt were only added to Triscuits several decades after they were first made. I can't actually find any authoritative evidence for either of the supposed etymologies. - -sche (discuss) 08:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

The right-hand page of an advertising pamphlet seen here, as well as this ad from 1903, state clearly that the product was composed of whole wheat, nothing else. So the current etymology must be wrong. While the early ads make a great deal of the product being æmade and baked by electricity”, I see nothing specifically confirming that this influenced the choice of name, and any association triggered by the name may have been fortuitous. It may also have been chosen as suggesting the next thing after biscuit, as tris- naturally follows bis-. The editors of the Edinburg Medical Journal in 1903 took the name to literally mean “thrice-cooked”, as did the editors of The Medical Press and Circular weekly.  --Lambiam 10:42, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Wheat, water, electricity make 3 "ingredients".

What seems a better conjecture is that the element tri is from the three-step baking process. Biscuits are (1) baked; then (2) dried in a slow oven. The wheat for Triscuits is (1) cooked in water, the result having 50% moisture content; (2) "tempered" to make sure the remaining water is evenly distributed; and (3) baked to reduce moisture content to 5%. The mechanical layering steps are ignored in this reckoning. DCDuring (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

comedy, comoedus

According to comoedus, κωμῳδός comes from κωμῳδία, but according to https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=comedy and https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/comedy and https://www.dwds.de/wb/Kom%C3%B6die, it's the other way round. And https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comedy and comedy don't even mention κωμῳδός.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/comedy talks about komodios but is apparently not a reliable website. --Espoo (talk) 23:04, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Liddell & Scott suggest that τραγῳδία (tragōidía) is derived from τραγῳδός (tragōidós) but are mum about the relationship between κωμῳδία (kōmōidía) and κωμῳδός (kōmōidós) – and likewise for ῥαψῳδία (rhapsōidía) and ῥαψῳδός (rhapsōidós). I am tempted to think that κωμῳδία (kōmōidía) = κωμο- (kōmo-) +‎ ἀειδ- (aeid-) +‎ -ία (-ía), and κωμῳδός (kōmōidós) = κωμο- (kōmo-) +‎ ἀειδ- (aeid-) +‎ -ός (-ós), making the whole issue moot.  --Lambiam 10:21, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

inofficial

Is English inofficial borrowed from Latin inofficiālis, or is simply an independent formation from in- +‎ official? —Lbdñk (talk) 18:32, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yet another possibility is that this was borrowed from Old French, like English official, or from French inofficiel with adaptation to official. The oldest occurrence in English I found with GBS is in a book from 1803, while French inofficiel is seen in a book from 1676 (line 5 on the page). Webster 1831 explains the word as in- +‎ official. I’m afraid there is no way to determine with any degree of certainty to what extent this is a borrowing or an independent but analogous formation.  --Lambiam 21:19, 30 November 2019 (UTC)