Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2023/January

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dicky senses #2 and #3

The Dickies brand of polo shirts has been around since 1922, and apparently got their start in the American southwest selling bib overalls to farm workers. This is an excellent match to our definition #3 of the word, a detachable shirt front, collar or bib. The company was named after its founders and was known as Williamson-Dickie until the 1940s. Therefore I think it's very likely that sense #3 of dicky derives from the corporation.

Which would make it quite the coincidence if the rather similar definition #2 were etymologically unrelated. The two definitions are not the same, but then, in the past 100 years the Dickies brand has expanded around the world and has also begun making polo shirts and other types of shirts beyond their original lineup. Most Americans today are probably much more familiar with the Dickies brand than with the narrow sense it was once confined to, and I would think the same would be true in other countries.

Is it possible that the explanation given in sense #2 is spurious? I tried to look up the origin of the phrase dicky dirt, but all I found were a few other people who were also trying to find the origin and coming up empty, even after searching the OED. Dicky dirt doesnt really sound like the type of set phrase most common with Cockney rhyming slang. There is apparently a clothing store somewhere called Dickie Dirts, but it isnt that old and one site claims it was named after the rhyming slang. So that gets us nowhere closer to finding the origin of dicky dirts.

Is there such a thing as reverse Cockney rhymes, where two originally unrelated words are paired together with a new word that rhymes with the second, to create a pseudo-etymology? What I'm saying is that I wonder if the word dicky in the sense of shirt was already in use in Britain from a fairly early date, and that it became expanded to dicky dirt to give it the same flexibility of usage as an ordinary Cockney rhyming term. If this is the case, then the newly coined phrase dicky dirts can only have come into use after dicky came to mean a collared shirt in the UK, and therefore cannot be the etymology of sense #2 or any other sense of the term. —Soap— 00:32, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

See also the Wikipedia article Dickey. According to etymonline.com, the sense "detached shirt front worn in place of a shirt" is attested in 1811,^[1] a century before the Williamson–Dickie Mfg. Co. was founded. If the origin is indeed Cockney rhyming slang (a Dictionary of Modern Slang from 1859 calls it “formerly the cant for a worn-out shirt”^[2] without reference to rhyming), one would expect the term "Dicky Dirt" to have had an unrelated meaning. Here is a cryptic 19th century use; it may have conveyed meaning to the reader then, but is opaque to me know.  --Lambiam 16:36, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay thank you. The twin origins are indeed a coincidence then, although the preexisting British sense may have influenced the American company's decision to shorten their name. And it looks like the British origin actually better describes definition 3, not definition 2 as I'd expected. Then, definition 2 could have a separate and somewhat later origin from the Cockney rhyming slang term, which would come from whatever Dicky Dirt meant in that magazine. (From what we know, Cockney rhyming slang didnt even begin until about the 1840s, so it cannot be older than the usage in 1811.)

Still, Im suspicious .... why would people use rhyming slang to assign a meaning to a word that's almost the same as what it meant already? And yet the 1859 dictionary suggests that there was a time even further back when it meant a full shirt like it often does today, which makes it even less likely that it comes from Cockney rhyming slang. Really the only argument in favor of any connection to rhyming slang is that the phrase dicky dirt exists, and yet we dont even know what its original meaning was. But thank you ... you've answered all of my questions and I'm confident that nobody really knows the true origin of this word ... we have some very good information, but no solid proof of anything. I may still in the future want to bring up the dicky dirt question again later, but I understand everything else now. —Soap— 22:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

It would appear that "Dicky Dirt" in the Punch sense would be related to dirt, since the context is about keeping up a house for guests. And apparently "dicky" has several negative connotations in British English, such as "troublesome" or "small and insignificant". Maybe a search in older British dictionaries could come up with something. Wakuran (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

bitzer

Could this be from "bits of", or bit(s) + -er, as in "a bit of this, a bit of that"? The alt spelling bitsa (which we don't yet have, but I've added to WT:REE) seems to support this possibility. 70.172.194.25 01:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps altered to make it sound like a German dog breed such as a spitz? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:22, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I figured it would be related to bite, although that theory makes sense. And now I know from where Shaun the Sheep picked up the name. Wakuran (talk) 14:57, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

mirex

Merriam-Webster says the origin is unknown, but are we sure it's not a genericized trademark? Given its employment against ants, might it be an alteration of Ancient Greek μύρμηξ (múrmēx)? Hythonia (talk) 18:44, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The PIE root *morwi- is found widely outside of Greek. I could also imagine some inspiration from pismire. Wakuran (talk) 21:07, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The word mire is also an obsolete term for an ant.  --Lambiam 14:34, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

According to a 1978 report published by the EPA, with the title “Reviews of the Environmental Effects of Pollutants: I. Mirex and Kepone”, the preparation of mirex was first described by McBee et al., (1956).^[3] The paper in question (McBee, E. T., Roberts, C. W., Idol, Jr., J. D., & Earle, Jr., R. H. “An investigation of the chlorocarbon, C₁₀C₁₂, M.P. 485° and the ketone, C₁₀Cl₁₀O, M.P. 349°”. J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 78 (1956), p. 1511–12. doi:10.1021/ja01588a067.), which also elucidates its molecular structure, does not use the term “mirex”, referring to it consistently as “compound I”, in which “I” is the Roman numeral. Coinage must have taken place later. While the EPA report uses “Kepone” written with an upper-case “K”, the term “mirex” is written throughout with a lower-case “m”, showing that it was then not a trademark.  --Lambiam 19:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The term is found, spelled with a capital M, as early as 1962.^[4][5]  --Lambiam 20:15, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

According to Walter Tschinkel, The Fire Ants, pp. 49–50, mirex was patented by the Allied Chemical Corporation in 1954, and I found a defunct trademark listing filed by the ACC for A-C Mirex dating from 1969. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The ending -ex could be a generic ending for chemical compounds, but I think it could very well be a specific ending referencing Latin ex-, ex (“out, away (from)”) and related words like exterminate. This document has the example of a pesticide called Grub-Ex, and I also found an herbicide called Silvex (the first part of which is probably Latin silva). When I search "Fungex" on Google, I get results for fungicides. So I think there's a pattern here. (Edit: I just noticed that we already have a suffix entry for -ex which explains that it's used for product names in general, not just for these kinds of specific products. That explanation also fits.) 70.172.194.25 20:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

toca

RFV of the Spanish etymology 1.
Is this not related to Italian dialectal toca (“veil”), tòcche (“headscarf”), and standard Italian tocca (“silkcloth”), which are from Lombard toh, from Lombardic *tuoh (“cloth”) ? Leasnam (talk) 16:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Leasnam: This is a very old relation, even found Dozy Vêtements 1845 linked at the end of the Arabic word, as well as in the Encyclopedia of Islam at the same Arabic page cited, and later clamed as fact: Supposed expert Cristóbal Cuevas García who probably wrote too much El pensamiento del Islam 1972 p. 190 Este hábito se completa con una especie de gorra —la taqiyya, palabra que ha dado origen a la española «toca»; still I (who added the etymology in 2019) find your opinion better. Fay Freak (talk) 17:23, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

So, it'd be related to *dōkaz, then? Wakuran (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

If that be the case, then yes, it seems that it would. Leasnam (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Updated. Leasnam (talk) 18:43, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

聖徒

RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:49, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

It strikes me as more plausible historically that it's directly from Latin sanctus, if e.g. the Jesuits came up with the term. Searching for that, I found this monograph that says 「聖徒」(saint) 這個字眼源出拉丁文的 “sanctus”, and this article (FWIW) says the same thing (基督教中的圣徒是一个圣洁人，因为词的拉丁词源表明(sanctus, “圣洁”) 。). I can't find any info on when the term came into use, though the fact that it's generally limited to Catholic (and Orthodox) contexts might support the idea of an intentional coinage. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:34, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

קלייט

Yiddish term for a grocery store. Perhaps related to the German word Kleidung, which was originally a verb meaning "to clothe", around the time of Proto-Yiddish / MHD. Liminal Thulean (talk) 18:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Do we even have an entry for that word ? Leasnam (talk) 18:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%99%D7%98

I cannot figure out how to link it to this entry. Liminal Thulean (talk) 21:08, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Various sources ([6], [7]) seem to say this is from Slavic, and that this word is only known in Litvish and/or Ukrainish. History of the Yiddish Language (vol. 1, 2008) is more specific:

Similarly, central Yiddish does not have kveyt (flower) and kleyt (store), although Polish does have similar words (cf. in today's Polish kwiat, klat[ka]); we must therefore seek the direct ancestors of these Yiddish Slavic-component words in Belorussian (cf. kvetka, klecj).

We don't yet have an entry for the Belarusian word клець (kljecʹ), but see Proto-Slavic *klětь, which lists some other descendants. 70.172.194.25 21:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

So, there appears to be a lot of Slavic words related to housing, but none to vending. When and where did the semantic shift occur? Wakuran (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

A lot of the Slavic descendants (and the Baltic cognates) have meanings like "storeroom, shed, granary, cellar", in which case the shift could be from a place to store something (for one's own use) to a place where things are sold, which seems pretty plausible. Compare American English store (“shop”), which developed from the earlier meaning of "place where items may be accumulated or routinely kept". In fact, even English shop is from Proto-Germanic *skup- (“barn, shed”). I'm not sure what meanings are present in Belarusian and Ukrainian, though. 70.172.194.25 22:25, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Russian клеть (kletʹ, “closet, storeroom”) or some ancestor or close cognate of it is far and away the most likely contender (indeed, the only likely contender) to be the source of Yiddish קלייט (kleyt). —Mahāgaja · talk 13:39, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree as well. This also makes sense given that the modern Yiddish use seems to not just be a store, but specifically a grocer. Liminal Thulean (talk) 14:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

You are missing German Ankleide as a sort of store room, literally dressing room or simply closet. It resembles claudo well enough, whence closet, that I would consider seriously the possibility that it is related. Verkleidung (“cladding”) as a term in construction makes that very clear. 185.238.219.28 16:53, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Different roots, as the mainstream hypothesis. Is this more of User:ApisAzuli's pondering? Wakuran (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I am not aware of "Ankleide" being used as a noun without a suffix. There is "ankleiden", meaning "to dress" and there is the noun "Die Ankleidekabine", which I believe is more commonly "Die Umkleidekabine", both of which refer to a type of changing or dressing room. I do not think this word was in use in MHD so there is not satisfactory path there either. It might just come down to morphology though. At least in Litvish, the verb ankleide would theoretically become "anklaide", an umlaut the word in question does not contain. Maybe someone else knows if Yiddish umlauted slavic loanwords in this way which might have turned "клеть" into "קלייט ". Liminal Thulean (talk) 08:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I cannot find evidence of Ankleide-, Umkleide- or Anschlusszimmer before modern High German in DWDS’s corpora. Kleid per se is not attested before early Middle High German (“Ende des 12. Jh.s frk.”, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen). However, Proto-Slavic *klětь has no IE-etymology to speak of (Derksen 2014) and it appears similarly delayed. If the root is Balto-Slavic, perhaps the best evidence is found in Old Lithuanian kletkininkas "Budenſiʒer", “Krämer” (ALEW 2.0 [8]), further supported by German Klitsche with the etymon of Polish kleć. Note that glossing "outhouse" in the German entry could be debatable but it makes sense in the colloquial register of Bruchbude, Wohnklo and so on.

If I understand correctly, the expected High German outcome of PIE *kl would be Laden (“shop”), with weak support from “ontl. ‘’laððe’’ < ‘’*klāþia’’” cf. de Vries s.v. kleed [9] and a particular folk etymology equating Latten with Lappen in the idiom durch die Lappen gehen.

[25], above, explains the Ukrainish outcome due to phonetic incompatibility between the local tongues, which I can neither deny nor confirm. Elsewhere I read of palatal liquida, which got me thinking that spelling קלייט is too ambiguous to be sure. 79.140.114.201 18:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems that Laden is from another root, apparently, related to English lath and German Latte. A building made out of wood, perhaps. Cf. Zimmer. (Although the usage both for the buildings and the material is old, apparently.) Wakuran (talk) 14:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

angletwitch

RFV of the etymology. Specifically, are the Middle English and Old English forms actually attested? 70.172.194.25 10:56, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

The OED says angeltwicca, angeltwæcca, angeltwicce are all attested, and gives two OE citations, and there are also Middle English citations from the 14th and 15th centuries, spelled angiltwacches and angeltwacches. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

That's "angle" as in "fishing hook", I'd presume. Wakuran (talk) 13:28, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Litonotus

Hello and happy new year 2023 to all. The protist Litonotus is the type genus of the family Litonotidae but its etymology is unclear. Lit can mean 'small', but is notus comes from 'not' (back, convexity, shell), literally '(body) weakly convex' (in reference to the body shape of this protist), or from Latin nota (mark, sign)? Thanks for the help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 07:49, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

The primary meaning of Ancient Greek λιτός (litós) is “simple, plain”. “Small” is a tertiary meaning (“simple, plain” – “frugal, scant” – “petty, small”). The second part may be from Ancient Greek νῶτος (nôtos), an alternative form of νῶτον (nôton), which can (among several things) mean “the rear part of the body”. A Greek origin seems more likely to me than Wresniowski resorting to a hybrid Greek–Latin compound. Unfortunately, the volume of the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie in which he published the description appears to be missing from online repositories.  --Lambiam 17:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

lamp

Sense 3 of the verb lamp (‘hang out or chill’) is listed under the same etymology as ‘lamp’ = ‘fit light bulbs’/‘use lamps for hunting’ but it says at the following link that the use of ‘lamp’ to mean ‘chill’ was probably coined as an alteration of the word lampoon by Flavor Flav of Public Enemy in 1988 for his song ‘Cold Lampin’ with Flavor’[10]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

That song is pretty confounding already as it is, and without some explicit mention by Flava Flav, himself, I can't really see the derivation trumping something like chillin' under a streetlight. Wakuran (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

You may well be right, I didn't think about the street light/lamp angle. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

yale

We have two very different senses, a beast or a fertile land, and an etymology that says "Possibly from [word for mountain goat]. Possibly from [word for clearing, glade]." Is there a reason we're presenting this as one word instead of splitting it as Etymology 1, the beast from the goat word, and Etymology 2, the land from the land word? - -sche (discuss) 09:05, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

The land sense and the accompanying etymology were tacked on in a single edit by an IP a couple of years ago. They probably didn't know about multiple etymology sections. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:38, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

可愛い

Although the direct evolutional relationship from かわゆい (kawayui) < 顔映(かわはゆ)し (kawahayushi) is unequivocally well-established and uncontestable, is it really so out of the question to consider that it might have had at least some conflationary influence from a Chinese-derived reading 可(か)愛(あい) (kāi)? After all, the insertion of an excrescent -w- between the two /a/ in a /Caai/ structure is also well documented, i.e. the colloquial reading of 場(ば)合(あい) (bāi) as 場合(ばわい) (bawai), 間(ま)合(あ)い (māi) as 間合(まわ)い (mawai), and 他(た)愛(あい) (tāi) as 他愛(たわい) (tawai) (which has actually solidified itself so well that dictionaries give the reading of 他愛ない as たわいない (tawainai) while listing たあいない (tāinai) as an alternative form - including this one!). I'm not trying to argue that it was a major contributing factor, I just want to introduce some food for thought. LittleWhole (talk) 04:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@LittleWhole: According to the NKD entry here (scroll down to the [語誌] section and look at number (2)), the meaning shifted, and then later the kanji spelling became associated with the term. So it sounds like the Chinese 可愛／可爱 (kě'ài) played no part in the semantic development of the Japanese term. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 05:27, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Bakhmut

An IP added an etymology that the city is named after the Bakhmutovka river, a claim I also see on a travel blog. Wikipedia speculates it's a corruption of Turkish or Tatar Mahmud, citing a historian (compare the derivation of Baphomet). - -sche (discuss) 02:35, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

There are many settlements in the area that have names of Tatar, Crimean Tatar (or more general, Turkic) origin, such as Izyum (from "üzüm", grape), Inhul/Inhulets (from "kiŋ gül", wide lake), Chasiv Yar, etc.

Some have strange names from household objects that are uncommon for naming in settlements elsewhere (like Tokmak meaning "pestle", compare Ottoman طوقماق, Балаклія, meaning "trouser legs"), but that's because many villages were named after the tamga of the tribe which they branded on their livestock. (I found a few all the way in Moldova: Taraclia - comb, Cimișlia - ladle, Abaclia - idol) Bogdan (talk) 07:28, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Also compare {{R:uk:ESTU|Ба́хмут|35}} [11]. 70.172.194.25 07:37, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Swedge (as in leave without paying) etymology

Possibly from the Scandinavian word svagga, meaning 'to rock unsteadily or lurch (?). See swag.

Would you have a source for that? As there's a notable semantic shift, and the word is quite rare both in English and Scandinavian, I initially find it unlikely. Wakuran (talk) 14:16, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tate

Is there any possibility that the etymon of unknown origin mentioned in the etymology section could be from or related to Proto-Germanic *attô ("father, forefather") in some way?

From that word comes descendants such as Icelandic táta (“dad”) and German Tate (“dad”), so on that level it would seem possible. And there isn't any question that there were names of a similar nature even within Old English. I immediately think of Bōia, which most likely comes from Proto-Germanic *bō- (“brother, father”).

If that is where the etymon of unknown origin comes from, then hypothetically it might have been bestowed upon a boy who seemed to resemble or who called to mind his father or grandfather in some way.

Have any theories from reliable sources been published about that etymon, and if any have, ought we to include them?

Pinging @Lambiam, @Leasnam, and @-sche, in case one or more of you is aware of any information on this. Tharthan (talk) 01:37, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

It is by no means clear that German Tate is a descendant of Proto-Germanic *attô. At the entry *attô we list a Middle High German descendant atte, which then begs for an explanation of the development Tate < atte. The entry Tate in the German Wiktionary mentions a Middle High German ancestor tate, but calls it an in den indoeuropäischen Sprachen verbreitetes kindliches Lallwort. Compare dada, a child's address of their father in several unrelated languages.  --Lambiam 09:03, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

These Lallwörter might not be roots in the strictest sense. And the conection to Proto-Germanic *bō- (“brother, father”) might be less valid, since *bō- seems to have udergone a semantic shift with several examples of derived words meaning kids or rascals, which isn't the case for Proto-Germanic *attô. (The hypothesis that a parent would name his or her son "dad" since he looked like his dad doesn't actually seem very probable, to me. They could share a name, but that's about it.) Wakuran (talk) 14:11, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

When you put it that way, I can't help but agree. So I would retract my suggestion. Honestly, reading the way that you worded your description of my suggestion back to me actually had me laughing, trying to picture it plausibly happening. I really ought to have given it much more consideration than I did before I posed the question here. Apologies.

With that said, I would have thought that the situation would then have been similar with giving a name like Bōia, or one of the similar names derived from Proto-Germanic *bō- (“brother, father”). As you noted, though, a shift in meaning from, essentially, "close (male) relative" to "rascal, child," (considering the meaning of many of the descendants) would convincingly explain things. Tharthan (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

This thread is old, but I wanted to post this link, showing that parents traditionally call their children mom and dad in Balkan countries, though not as a personal name: reddit —Soap— 20:43, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

German Faustregel

Any ideas about the etymology? Not a single source I've consulted has anything of use. de.wiki just says Die Herkunft der Bezeichnung ist nicht geklärt.; there's also a thread on the discussion page where an interesting but unproven theory (that it derives from the observation that a fist is approximately the size as a heart) is put forth. Myself, I can imagine at least two somewhat plausible theories (albethey far too speculative to include):

1. The word Faust may (situationally) have had some nuances along the lines of "approximate" due to fists being used as a measure of length (Faustbreit).
2. It may derive from any of the literal Faustregeln (missing sense?); the one I'm familiar with is the one where one can determine whether a Gregorian month is short (<31 days) or long (31 days) by counting along the peaks and nadirs of one's knuckles.

— Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 07:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

A Faust could be used as a unit of measure, as in "vier Fäuste breit, und zehn Fäuste hoch oder tief ".^[12] So I assume that this is in analogy to the etymology of English rule of thumb. Although neither we nor the German Wiktionary mention this, this sense has an entry in the German Wikipedia: Faust (Einheit).  --Lambiam 09:43, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

fist

It says in the etymoloy at fist to 'see more at five' but when I follow the link and read the etymology at that entry then I can't see any connection to fist at all. Are these words cognates or should the sentence 'See more at five' be removed from the etymology at fist? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:03, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

The hypothesis is mentioned at Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/fūsti. The hypothesis is that there would be a derivation from "five fingers clenched together", but I don't think it is widely accepted any more. Wakuran (talk) 14:15, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

sufflamino

Probably from sufflamen? Ncfavier (talk) 10:38, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Transparently, but the "clog" gloss looks like an L&S-ism, have updated the entry from more recent references. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

telich

Crimean Gothic telich is listed as being from Turkish, although initially, a derivation from *dulaz appears fairly likely to me. Crimean Gothic tag appeears to show the same unvoicing as in German, cf. German toll. What do the sources say? Wakuran (talk) 17:01, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Wakuran: This voicing happened in Anatolian Turkic until the mid 15th century. So it could be any descendant from Proto-Turkic *tälig with the original ending preserved (see *siarïg which would) or without it but suffixed within Crimean Gothic by Germanic ~ *-īgaz, how ever its descendant looked. Fay Freak (talk) 05:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Alright. And something like *dul- *-īgaz would be unlikely, due to the vowel shift? Wakuran (talk) 14:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

mango

Is it through Tamil>Malay>Portuguese>English or Malayalam>Portuguese>English, I think its the latter as the Portuguese had contact with Malayalis before SE Asians AleksiB 1945 (talk) 16:33, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

bꜣyt

Which of these senses, if any, are derived from Proto-Semitic *bayt- (“house”)? The Semitic reconstruction page gives a hieroglyphic spelling, ending with the pr (“house”) determinative, that doesn't match either of the headwords currently on the Egyptian entry. 70.172.194.25 19:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I checked some other references and didn't find much. The only entry for bꜣyt in Lesko's Dictionary of Late Egyptian is actually a gloss not at our entry, "likeness". Given the history of how it was added—it was added to the etymology section as "cognate" as one of 5 total edits by a new user, subsequently qualified as "possibly" cognate, then moved to the descendants—I would be inclined to remove it from Proto-Semitic *bayt- unless/until its existence is verified. I have read that there are cases of Semitic written in hieroglyphs with pronunciation and semantic components, which would fit this claimed spelling, but I'm not sure it would actually be in the Egyptian language. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Egyptian can say more. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

阿差

As an ethnic slur, I think that this term is more like the clipping of 摩囉差／摩啰差 than Hindi "accha". Mahogany115 (talk) 15:08, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

哎呀 and 아야

Is Korean 아야 a borrowing from Mandarin 哎呀? FunnyMath (talk) 15:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily, it seems simple enough to have occurred independently. Cross-linguistically, I think that expressions of pain are often expressed as variations of either [aɪ], [au] or [ax]. Wakuran (talk) 16:45, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

After looking at ouch#Translations, I think you're right. Italian ahia, Navajo ayáo, ayáh and Tamil ஐயோ (aiyō) are all similar to the Mandarin words 哎呀 (āiyā) or 哎喲 (āiyō). But those words are almost certainly not cognate with the Mandarin counterparts. FunnyMath (talk) 04:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The specific form the sound takes might be an areal feature, though I doubt it's possible to determine much in terms of "borrowings" and the like, yeah. Korean does also have native 아이고 (aigo), which is quite dissimilar. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 05:42, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The -go ending in aigo looks more atypical, although I guess you can see similarities with Englih gah / gaah, functioning somewhat similarly. I'm not too savvy in Korean ideophonic vocabulary to know its connotations to a Korean speaker. Wakuran (talk) 14:47, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

아이고 (aigo) sounds similar to 哎喲. Mandarin 哎喲 may have been borrowed from the Korean word, and later the "go" got palatalized to "yo". So yeah, probably an areal feature. FunnyMath (talk) 05:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. Aren't loans from Korean into Mandarin pretty rare overall? And it seems less likely for interjections. Wakuran (talk) 13:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

True. Considering the points you've made, my suggestion now seems kind of outlandish to me. The similarities are most likely a complete coincidence. FunnyMath (talk) 16:20, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

ᏔᎹᏟ

RFV of the etymology.

• From Classical Nahuatl tomatl, from Proto-Nahuan *tomatl.

A direct borrowing from Classical Nahuatl seems less likely than borrowing from an intermediary such as English or Spanish. To start with, Classical Nahuatl tomatl refers to a tomatillo, rather than a tomato, and then there's the issue of whether Cherokee had direct contacts with Mesoamerica during the Classical Nahuatl period. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:35, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

The presence of the l in ᏔᎹᏟ (tamatli) argues against an English or Spanish intermediary as neither tomato nor tomate has an l. I suspect rather a learned borrowing: probably some writer of a Cherokee dictionary decided Cherokee needed a word for tomato and so adapted the Classical Nahuatl etymon of the English and Spanish words, rather than an "organic" borrowing through language contact. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Bugeja

According to Joseph Aquilina, this Maltese surname comes from the Algerian port of Bougie, which was named after the French word for candle, as candles were made there. The Arabic name of the port is pronounced similarly to Bugeja. 45.81.188.142 20:17, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

I think it is the other way around: the French word for candle came from the name of the port.^[13] The candles were made in France using candle wax exported from Bougie/Béjaïa. I am pretty convinced that the jump of the sense from “wax” to “candle” arose by shortening of the phrase chandelle de bougie,^[14][15][16] a superior product compared to the cheaper chandelle de suif (tallow candle).  --Lambiam 22:39, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

It does make sense. I have always thought that the word "bougie" looked significantly "un-French" in its appearance. (Which would be explained if the name originally was Arabic.) Wakuran (talk) 01:42, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

zombitude

I can find zombitude in both and English and French from around the same time, in the 1990s. I would not be at all surprised, though, to learn that the French word is older, presumably originally from or alongside Haitian Creole. I have suggested that the English version might be derived (probably borrowed and extended, but I used {{der}}) from French, or that it might be independently derived by analogy to other words ending in -itude. (The English suffix is also derived via French, so there is that.) @CanadianRosbif seems to suggest that my etymology is sufficient, but if anyone has other ideas I would be happy to see them. Cheers, Cnilep (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I find it unlikely that Haitian Creole would have had a bigger impact on 90's standard French, than the impact from Anglo-American pop culture. Anyhow, it's not impossible that the two words could have been coined independently. Wakuran (talk) 17:36, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Two things: (1) I'm mainly interested in the English etymology; sorry if that wasn't clear. (B) Both French zombi and English zombie (probably) come from Haitian or other Caribbean creoles, so connection doesn't seem terribly unlikely. Cnilep (talk) 00:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

By the 90's, zombies have been international pop culture staple monsters for decades. Wakuran (talk) 01:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

γνωτός

I bring from Wiktionary:Requests for verification/Non-English:

• Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ǵenh₁- 'to be born' names it in unnassorted, as meaning (2) "kinsman".
• article also has the meaning1 of "known"
• article etymology makes it come from γιγνώσκω, itself from Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/ǵneh₃- 'to know'
• I suspect meaning 1 comes from H3 and meaning 2 from H1. Can anyone confirm so to split etyms?

IP said: "Beekes assigns both meanings to the root of γιγνώσκω (gignṓskō): γνωτός, -τή 'relative' belongs to γιγνώσκω."

Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 07:51, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

It's difficult to get the ω vocalism from *ǵenh₁- as *ǵn̥h₁-tós would have given *γνητός (*gnētós). I think both senses must come from *ǵneh₃-. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:37, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Wodtko et al. (Lexikon der indoeuropäischen Nomina: ) point out that Beekes (The Development of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Greek, 1969) reckoned with *ǵnoh₃- in the proto-language ("grundsprachlicher Verallgemeinerung"), but that Rix (Kratylos 14, 1969) shows the fullgrade was realized later in those languages which have merged *ǵn̥h₃-tó- and *ǵn̥h₁-tó-, implying that the sense of familiar relative is derived from semantic drift. 62.155.150.198 16:58, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

The semantic drift is unsurprising. The Irish word gnáth is an exact cognate (both words coming from *ǵn̥h₃tós) and in the plural has the meaning "intimates, associates". It's not semantically far from there to "kinsmen". —Mahāgaja · talk 21:30, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

German Bekannter, literally meaning “known [person]”, also implies a stronger familiarity than merely knowing someone, more like the American loose use of friend.  --Lambiam 22:01, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

snickerdoodle

whats the etymology of snickerdoodle? it kinda sounds funny Cheesypenguigi (talk) 15:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

There are some hypotheses at Wikipedia, including German dialectal Schneckennudel (Snail-Pastry), a cinnamon roll-like pastry. Another hypothesis is that it would just be whimsical old English slang for something like "snickering simpleton". Wakuran (talk) 17:27, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Even though snickerdoodles are not formed as coils like Schneckennudeln, the German origin appears far more likely to me in view of the similarity in meaning. The term is found in 18th-century German cookbooks and does not appear to be dialectal, apparently referring to the coiling of a snail shell.^[17][18] (These are also called just Schnecke; see sense #6.) The earliest US use of snickerdoodle I found is from 1889.^[19]  --Lambiam 21:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

• See also https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snickerdoodle. They mention the potential connection to German Schneckennudeln, but also describe that this might be problematic. HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:09, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

  I wonder were the contention comes from that Schneckennudel is specifically Palatine German. Both Schnecke and Nudel are standard High German, and the two cookbooks referred to above are written in standard German. One is from Vienna, the other from Leipzig, both remote from the Palatinate. In the second half of the 19th-century millions of Germans migrated to the US, coming from all German states, forming in fact the largest group of immigrants. Their density was particularly high in New Jersey.^[20] People like Marion Harland can easily have picked up the term from any German immigrant; it may have stuck and spread precisely because (after a minor alteration) it sounded so funny.  --Lambiam 23:36, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

décolleter vs. décolléter

I noticed that both of these words had entries, and while they are defined differently, I’m just wondering if anyone knows whether the less common one (décolléter) is a genuinely unique word, or merely just a varient of (décolleter). CanadianRosbif (talk) 17:04:, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I think décolléter is just a mistake. The external link at the bottom actually point to an entry for décolleter. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

So do I. Never heard or seen.--Virda (talk) 22:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

com#Chinese

The etymology this word has been in my head for quite some time now, and I can't really figure out what the etymon is. At first I thought it is from "common", after that I changed to "communicate" as that makes more sense semantically (words.hk also says so, but it may or may not be them copying from us); later I came across this blog/site which suggests from "compromise". At some point I even thought of "come to a consensus", but that's just extremely unlikely. For now I've listed all three as possible etymons.

"communicate", while semantically possible, is the least likely one phonologically: the expected reading is kam6 as the first syllable is not stressed in English; kam1 must be via comm#English or similar. "common" is possible phonologically but less so semantically, while "compromise" works in both aspects. I'm almost tempted to change it to only saying "compromise", but I would like some insight from others before making any changes. @justinrleung, RcAlex36 – Wpi31 (talk) 17:39, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Would Cantonese differ between final -m and -n, as both are nasal sounds? Otherwise "consensus" doesn't sound too unlikely. (It seems that Wiktionary doesn't have a separate language code for Cantonese, although it is quite distinct from Mandarin.) Wakuran (talk) 00:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Wakuran: we have a language code for it, but the writing system is not specific to any one lect and there would be a massive amount of overlap and redundancy if we had a separate language section for each lect. Instead, we use a complex system of templates and modules to deal with them within a single Chinese language section. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

These sounds are distinguished in Cantonese, whereas they are merged in Mandarin. A further thing that I should note is that /-ɔm/ is merged into /-ɐm/ in early modern Cantonese, so the -on and -om sounds are perceived totally different. – Wpi31 (talk) 08:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Drobeta-Turnu Severin

RFV of the etymology – recent changes connecting the name Drobeta to a reconstructed Albanian term still seem a bit suspicious. I also can't access the added source. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Hyllested doesn't endorse the interpretation, as the wording currently implies, but it is otherwise copied word for word from the citation (page 224 note 2: "However, Hamp 1982 argues that the ancient toponym Drobeta (in present-day Romania) reflects a Roman misinterpretation of *druwā-tā 'the wooded (place)', with a postposed definite article, suggesting it reflects an old Albanian syntagm."). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

All attempts to explain Dacian toponyms by Albanian seem to me to be wishful thinking more than anything. The same about linking Albanian to Illyrian. We don't know whether they were closely related at all. Also, we don't even know if Drobeta was Dacian or Getae or Moesian or whatever other unknown language was spoken in the area. Bogdan (talk) 21:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Bogdan: It's worth noting that Hamp's article is apparently specifically about this etymology and is very widely cited (search the title "The oldest Albanian syntagma" in Google Books, Hamp 1982, or Hamp Drobeta). It doesn't seem the article itself has been digitised, though there is a slightly longer summary at the top of this page. Hamp has a much more nuanced view of Albanian than the Illyrian theory (cf. section 2 here), and he views the postpositive article he detects in Drobeta as evidence of a pre-Albanian substrate rather than of Illyrian. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:42, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Also, the claimed etymological link of Severin with Severinus of Noricum is just as unlikely as the other claim link to Severus. The Romanian expected inherited form would *Sirân. The fortifications date from the Second Bulgarian Empire, which had a northern border post there, so its name is from the Old or Middle Bulgarian сѣверьнъ (sěverĭnŭ, “northern”). Bogdan (talk) 21:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that deleting previous theories was the right thing to do – I have readded, but worded them a bit differently. Taking into consideration that the city was rebuilt by Hungarians in the Medieval Ages and that the citadel church was put under the patronage of Severinus of Noricum, doesn't that constitute as plausible evidence of the city's current name? The long history of founders named Severus/Severinus but also the Old Church Slavonic form сѣверьнъ (sěverĭnŭ, “northern”), leads me to believe that providing a definitive etymology is somewhat impossible, cause we don't know where one ends and the other begins. --Robbie SWE (talk) 08:06, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

جنوری

RFV of the etymology. I'm sorry, but wasn't Pakistan a Britsh Colony? How did Urdu borrow the English names of the months from a country that never spoke English? If anything I'd assume the opposite. Can anyone provide a source that Urdu borrowed the names of the month via Dari but Hindi borrowed them straight from English?--Sameerhameedy (talk) 07:32, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, the Persian Wikipedia article on ژانویه (žânviye, from French) states in the lead that the Dari name for the month is جنوری. If Iranian Persian speakers, from a country that never spoke French, managed to borrow the name from French, it is not impossible that Afghani Dari speakers borrowed it from English. Note that the Pashto name is جنوري (ǰanwarí) (also seen on the Pashto Wikipedia).  --Lambiam 09:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's possible that Urdu borrowed it from Dari, which borrowed it from English, but what is the evidence that Urdu didn't just borrow it directly from English? That would be the Ockham's razor hypothesis. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:33, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I'm not against the idea that Dari could borrow a word directly from English, but I find it hard to believe that Urdu didn't. I suppose it's possible, it just seems unlikely that during its time as a British Colony (using the British calendar) the English names of the month never came up in Urdu; and the Urdus first exposure to the word was via Dari. I would be just as suspicious if you told me Lebanese Arabic borrowed the word Merci from Iranian Persian instead of Directly from French. That being said, I don't know if Dari directly borrowed the names from English or borrowed them via Urdu. But it's worth mentioning that most countries names in Dari are borrowed from English via Urdu so I assume the same here. --Sameerhameedy (talk) 06:01, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Although Dari is also spoken as a minority language in Pakistan (specifically in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), I agree that borrowing directly from English is more plausibly the major pathway. My comment was specifically in response to the stated unlikelihood of donorship “from a country that never spoke English”, which IMO was irrelevant.  --Lambiam 09:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)