Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2022/April

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The etymology of Genus-name Heliopais.

The Genus-name Heliopais comes from Greek ‘Ήλιος (Helios)’, meaning ‘sun’ and ‘παις (pais)’, meaning ‘child’, to mention a bird which is believed as the child of the Sun. H. personatus (Masked Finfoot) had been considered congeneric with the African Finfoot, Podica, but Sharpe (1893) believed its soft tail, and bill and wing-shapes reflected a truer affinity to the Sungrebe, Heliornis [[1]] — This unsigned comment was added by 103.213.236.38 (talk) at 04:50, 1 April 2022.

baud

The etymology is circular, with the English term claiming a borrowing from French and vice versa. It's clear that it ultimately comes from Baudot's name, but which language had baud first? 70.172.194.25 06:35, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

The 1926 recommendations of the International Consultative Committee on Telegraphic Communications of the International Telecommunication Union were published in 1927 in French. So the first appearance in print of the name of the new unit was in a French-language document.^[2] I’m fairly convinced the members of the international committee themselves would have considered the name translingual or at least multilingual.  --Lambiam 14:12, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Hindi सन्नाटा 'silence' from Sanskrit संनादः 'noise'?

The page for Hindi सन्नाटा "silence" says that it is "ultimately from Sanskrit संनादयति (saṃnādayati, “to cause to respond”)." I found this quite puzzling seeing as that Sanskrit verb (which is the causative of संनद् saṃnad, "to cry aloud, sound, roar") in fact means "to cause to resound, fill with noise or cries." (From Monier-Williams, p. 1146, col. 1). The closest we get to the Hindi word in Sanskrit is संनादः sannādaḥ, which again means the opposite of "silence": the word means "uproar, din, clamour" (from Apte). If this etymology is accurate, are there any explanations for this reversal of meaning, and maybe any intermediary Middle Indic words that can attest? --Vivaksha (talk) 10:00, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

adesso in romance languages

The Italian word adesso ("now") and its cognates all link their etymology to Latin ad ipsum. This is unlikely since the word with all its cognates clearly descend from */aˈdɛsso/, while the proposed etymology would lead to */aˈdesso/. Treccani flags its etymology as uncertain (see here). Garzanti and Nuovo de Mauro mention this etymology as probable (see here and here). Should we add a "perhaps" to the etymologies of these pages? Catonif (talk) 13:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, we should. BandiniRaffaele2 (talk) 12:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that the open è is enough evidence to dismiss this etymology. Incidentally, there was also an Old Spanish adiesso, which, together with the Italian word, appears to reflect a Proto-Italo-Western Romance */adɛssu/. It would not be the only example of /e/ ( < Latin /ĭ, ē/) lowering to /ɛ/ at that stage; cf. *nevis < Latin nĭx, nĭvis. Alternately, per the FEW, /ɛ/ was likely taken from *adpressum (> Italian appresso), meaning 'near'. Nicodene (talk) 01:17, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It's true that the front mid vowels /e/ and /ɛ/ often fluctuate, though usually when it happens the original value is maintained somewhere (cf. Latin nĭx, nĭvis also has descendants that reflect the original */e/) while as for this word, I couldn't find any reference of the */e/. It's even weirder since it doesn't evolve parallel to ĭpsum, which instead maintains the */e/ (it. /ˈesso/, sp. /ˈeso/). On the other hand, the influence by adpressum seems reasonable. I suggest the creation of the Reconstruction:Latin page exposing the theory. I'm still a newbie here so I'm not really sure how to make it work. Catonif (talk) 17:46, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I've made the page at ad epsum, I'll wait for some sort of verification before linking it from the descendants. Catonif (talk) 16:21, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for doing so. I've made some edits to bring it in-line with other reconstructed Romance entries. Nicodene (talk) 02:31, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

French sot -- do not rely on Mozeson's garbage

The entry in Wiktionary for French sot says, inter alia, "of uncertain origin, possibly a Semitic borrowing: Aramaic [script needed] (s(h)ote, “fool”), Hebrew שטן‎ (sat, “transgressor, rebel”) or [script needed] (s(h)atooy, “drunk”), [script needed] (s(h)atyan, “drunkard”)" and it references:

Mozeson, Isaac (2000): The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals the Hebrew Source of Englis.

Mozeson is a religious fanatic, without the slightest training in linguistics, who believes that Hebrew was the original language of the human race and that all other languages, therefore, derive from Hebrew.

He was debunked twenty-five and thirty years ago:

Gold, David L. 1990. "Fiction or Medieval Philology (on Isaac E. Mozeson's The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals the Hebrew Source of English)." Jewish Linguistic Studies. Vol. 2. Pp. 105-133.

Gold, David L. 1995. "When Religion Intrudes into Etymology (On The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals The Hebrew Source of English)." In Kachru and Kahane 1995:369-380.

Kachru, Braj B., and Henry Kahane, eds. 1995. Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary: Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta [= Lexicographica: Series Maior, vol. 64]. Tübingen. Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Mozeson's name should not be mentioned anywhere in Wiktionary or in Wikipedia except to note the worthlessness of his book.S. Valkemirer (talk) 10:05, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I've updated the entry. DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 15:48, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

So much for WT:NPOV and not being proscriptive. This isn't Wikipedia, lol. ApisAzuli (talk) 04:24, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Etymologies are different from the rest of the entry: like content on Wikipedia, they should be referenced using reliable sources. As for NPOV: it applies to how we present information, not whether we present it. There's no reason to include utter hogwash, whether it's someone who says everything is from Greek or it's all from Hebrew or it's all from a Nigerian language or it's all from an imaginary language called "Low Saxon" or it's all from Turkish or it's all from Celtic. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:16, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Why is it proscriptive to exclude garbage when it is just garbage? Wiktionary shouldn't be an echo chamber for stuff that's even beyond fringe. –Austronesier (talk) 19:13, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Because prescriptivists or proscriptivists are all other than myself that I don’t like. No, but ApisAzuli was ironically referencing our manners of editing in that we have to evaluate the material by rational criteria, to preserve consistency and reliability. There is little room for value judgements in the first place, over linguistic material as opposed to people which Wikipedia biographizes, thus a “neutrality” expectation cannot have the same meaning, it is more like we have to do, sometimes convoluted and experience-dependent, probability judgements—even if some references have been bad at it. As for that particular book, @Mahmudmasri is pinged for having referenced it this year, having overestimated references for quality content. In this field, one absolutely can create bad content strictly supported by even good references, if one wants to. Even further against the typical standpoint of Wikipedia, the references are only as good as their users 🤫 Fay Freak (talk) 23:45, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The point is exactly that rejecting accidently correct results is correlate to tolerating poor results because of argument from authority, which is a kind of ad hominem. And it's simply not true that etymologies absolutely have to be referenced until they are rfe'd in practice. Eg. the equivalent interjection sod is currently deriving it from sodomia in analogy to bugger, without any reference. More over, after the etymology was edited with sources, one does not give the page number, which isn't too bad iff it has an index verborum, and the other is unreliable per se because there is no reliable theory of expressives whatsoever. This is besides the point though because the tone is irrational to begin with. You can't really have a person debunked, and it's not clear if you all mean the book or the individual comparison when you say "hogwash", "garbage", or whatever, as if it wouldn't make a difference. So much for NPOV. ApisAzuli (talk) 06:25, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Fay, please don't ping me in irrelevant talks and publicly defame me for something I didn't do. Thanks! --Mahmudmasri (talk) 03:24, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mahmudmasri: diff. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:46, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Public! Only a few dozens of Wiktionary fiends are reading these sections anyhow, and a year later about nobody. Obviously I ping you not to miss anything instructive! But now I recall that you have barely read or assessed the relevance of that which you have cited either. Which must be contemplated as a common occurrence on Wikipedia in general, too. Fay Freak (talk) 05:26, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

See also *xȗjь, which I'm pretty sure I have seen surface as "chud" on the internet. A Yiddish tangent wouldn't be so unlikely from Poland, would it with regards to dating? ApisAzuli (talk) 13:54, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Thinking of choad, am I. ApisAzuli (talk) 01:40, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Tiberis

I strongly suggest removing the second of three possible etymologies offered under Etymology for Tiberis, i.e. from Celtic *dubros “water”. This “etymology” is fanciful and quite impossible. I believe any expert etymologist would readily agree, also because there are no Celtic etymologies for hydronyms or place names in general that are this ancient in the Italian peninsula. The other two etymologies can stay, even if tentative. Pasquale (talk) 10:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I tweaked it a bit and added a source supporting the Celtic borrowing for the second etymology, though I agree that more sources supporting this are wanting. At any rate also added the PIE parent of the supposed the Celtic borrowing (*dʰewbʰ-), which is supported. DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 15:06, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

This has mitigated the pressing need for somehow expressing the doubts concerning that etymology, at least. Fay Freak (talk) 23:49, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Hungarian gally

I'm pretty sure the Slavic cognates I added are what was intended. This book snippet shows that there is a Russian word gol' meaning "stick" (French "bâton"), but I'm not sure if anyone knows more. голь appears to have a different meaning.

I gather that all of these are related to Proto-Slavic *golъ in the sense of being leafless. 70.172.194.25 20:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, literally “nudity” primarily, with a well-known suffix *-ь, hence the Russian word is related. Trubachyov, Oleg, editor (1980), “*golь”, in Этимологический словарь славянских языков [Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages] (in Russian), numbers 7 (*golvačь – *gyžati), Moscow: Nauka, page 16; they mention Old Russian голь (golĭ, “twig”). Fay Freak (talk) 20:20, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added it to the entry. 70.172.194.25 23:55, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Hindi -वाला '-doer' suffix

The etymology section of the agentive suffix -वाला (as in चाय-वाला, 'chai-maker', or बोलने-वाली 'speaker') indicates that it's from "Sanskrit पाल (pāla) or पालक (pālaka)", the latter meaning 'protector' or 'guard'. McGregor's Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary seems to agree with this. But does this mean pāla was used similarly as an agentive suffix in Sanskrit as well? I can't seem to find any attestations that this was the case; I can only find uses that have the more literal sense of 'protector', eg. kṣetra-pāla "a guard of the field", or go-pāla, "protector of cows, cowherd". Or does the agentive usage come from Middle Indic / Prakrit usage? --Vivaksha (talk) 04:34, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

The track of a tracked vehicle

The noun track in the sense of the continuous belt of a tracked vehicle is defined as “(automotive) Short for caterpillar track”, where the origin of the latter term is explained in a usage note (why not an etymology section?) as “The name came originally from the Caterpillar Tractor Company, but is now common in uncapitalised form.” However, the term track occurs in a patent issued for an “endless self-laying track for vehicles” issued in 1893,^[3] while the earliest use in print I can find of caterpillar (in uncapitalised form!) in reference to this type of traction is from early 1910.^[4] (The Holt Caterpillar Company was founded in 1909.^[5]) Wouldn’t it be better to explain this term as “(vehicles) Short for self-laying track”?  --Lambiam 10:26, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes. To me it seems quite likely that the Caterpillar Company would have appropriated pre-existing use of track. It would be interesting to know whether there was any other use of track before it came to be used with caterpillar or Caterpillar. It could be that the patent was a nonce use of the word in this sense. This is the kind of thing that the American Dialect Society loves and which members may even have investigated. DCDuring (talk) 14:00, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

The earliest relevant patent by Holt, filed for in 1907 before the Holt Caterpillar Company was founded, uses the terms “endless traveling platform” and “endless traveling belt”.^[6] The term “track” does not occur. It does occur, especially in the combinations “track laying (mechanism)” and “endless track”, in a patent filed by another inventor in 1905.^[7] The earliest use of “track” by the Caterpillar Company that I found is in an ad from 1911,^[8] in which the secret of the Caterpillar success is said to be that it “lays a track and travels on it”.  --Lambiam 21:43, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the Wikipedia article for w:continuous track shows that early forms were much like railroad tracks except tied to the wheels. And that the farmers had it before the military did ... what i think of as "tank wheels" when i see mudplows working outside is actually a farmer's invention first and foremost. It may be that the definition of "track" here cannot be untangled from that of the railroad track, and that the meaning changed gradually. Caterpillar would not have used their own brand name in such a manner, so I agree self-laying track is the original phrase, even if it is today just called a caterpillar track. in fact, our definition for tank even uses "caterpillar track" so we may want to change that. —Soap— 10:48, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Even if it's a generic trademark, I don't think there are any reccomended usage against it, as long as the term is established. Wakuran (talk) 11:07, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

steal

How did Middle English stelen become steal? --Espoo (talk) 05:12, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Do you mean in reference to the phonetics ? Leasnam (talk) 14:23, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Both phonetics and spelling. --Espoo (talk) 05:02, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I would almost have expected the reverse position of the spellings "steel" and "steal", considering the Germanic cognates. Wakuran (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Your expectations are probably out of line because steel doesn't quite correspond to Dutch staal, German Stahl, Swedish stål, etc; it's a extended form originally meaning "steel weapon"; c.f. Old Saxon stehli (“axe”). The English cognate to those forms would probably be *steal; c.f. English tear, Swedish tår ← *tahrą (German Zähre is a fossilised plural of *Zahr). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 08:30, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

My answer may not exactly be what you're looking for, but the exact tenor of your question is unclear. To beginwith, inal /n/ was often lost in Middle English, so stelen /ˈstɛːlən/ frequently became stele /ˈstɛːlə/; when and where final schwa was lost, this became just /ˈstɛːl/; by the Late Middle English period, the losses of /n/ and schwa had both progressed pretty far, making this the usual pronunciation. Then the Great Vowel Shift successively raised /ɛː/ to /eː/, then /iː/, yielding modern steal /ˈstiːl/ by c. 1750. However, due to insertion of a epenthetic schwa, many speakers will pronounce steal as disyllabic /ˈstiː.əl/; this appears to be a relatively recent development. All these changes are entirely regular; compare the development of Middle English swelen /ˈswɛːlən/ > sweal /ˈswiːl/, /ˈswiː.əl/. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 08:13, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

"Then the Great Vowel Shift successively raised /ɛː/ to /eː/, then /iː/, yielding modern steal /ˈstiːl/ by c. 1750." -- I understand the process or at least the concept of the great vowel shift, but how and why did the complicated and weird spelling "ea" arise and how/why did it come to represent the sound /i:/ ? --Espoo (talk) 05:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

If there was a distinction between /ɛː/ and /eː/ when the spelling originated, then it makes sense to use ea for the former and ee for the latter, similar to an æ (although the glyphs are in reversed position). Wakuran (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

The spelling "ea" existed in Old English; it was used there used for a diphthong that evolved in Middle English into /a/ when short and /ɛː/ when long. Middle English on Wikipedia says "ea" occurs in Middle English as a "rare" spelling of /ɛː/ (more commonly, Middle English /ɛː/ is spelled "e" or "ee", the same way as /eː/).--Urszag (talk) 07:49, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, so it seems to have been an archaism already in Middle English spelling. Could it have been picked to differentiate between 'steal' and 'steel', perhaps? Wakuran (talk) 10:09, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Hebrew kns, Aramaic knš

Based on the following source (for the Persian-derived Hebrew root gnz), am I to understand that the root kns/knš related to 'collecting, assembling' is ultimately from Persian گنج (ganj, “treasure”) as well?

• Klein, Ernest (1987) “גנז”, in A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English‎^[9], Jerusalem: Carta, →ISBN, page 105a: “Related to כנס [kns].”

None of the current pages like كنس, ܟܢܫ, כינס, Knesset make this connection. 70.172.194.25 09:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Possibly g-n-z, if you find the Iranian influence in Southwestern Arabia and Ethiopia relevant, see جَنَازَة (janāza), but hardly ك ن س (k-n-s), for which I in fact long have written a distinct meaning ladder. Fay Freak (talk) 13:42, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Peking

RFV of the etymology.

As @Geographyinitiative noted a while back, this predates the Postal Code romanization system, which is what we used to say was the source. That was removed from the etymology, but not from the Usage notes. Today an IP, who seems to be the same as the new account @Fairnesscounts. replaced the entire etymology with a statement that Martino Martini used this spelling in Latin works such as this one in the mid 1500's. While a true statement, it obliterated any mention of Chinese, let alone 北京 (Běijīng), the obvious original source. Can we make a real etymology out of this? There's some good information on the talk page, but we need to make a coherent statement about how this started out in Chinese (which lect?) and the steps along the way (Portuguese?) to its ending up in English. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:54, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Comment: Exciting! After a look at Google Books and archive.org, I think the Martini explanation is at least plausible on some level, but keep in mind that in all my efforts on Wiktionary, I really have not ever determined the actual origin of any specific romanization/loan word from Chinese characters into the English language from before Wade-Giles (1860s). All I've been able to say so far is "it's older than postal, Wade and etc". I just presume that Portuguese churchmen and saliors casually made the original words in a non-systematic fashion (like Bashi Channel) and then those words were loaned into English. But I think Ricci had some kind of romanization scheme; perhaps there were others. I hope to learn what the actual origins of words like Peking, Nanchang, Hainan, Yunnan, Yellow River, Xansi, Xensi and similar are. You could give a bland "From Mandarin XX". But that's not anything like a full answer: I'm talking dates of origin, names of persons who first used or generated certain special romanizations, and/or the names of romanization schemes. It is so sad that these origins are so obscure and occluded in 2022. I am fascinated to perhaps realize that 'Peking' may not have been used in English contemporaneously with the Ming Dynasty- the older variants must have been used at that time. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Ricci's transliteration system was based on Portuguese. He gave Beijing in Latin as "Pechinum". Martini was writing in Latin and had a Dutch publisher. The "k" isn't regular in Portuguese or Latin. Perhaps it was geared toward a Dutch audience. Fairnesscounts (talk) 14:02, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This might conceivably be the result of Martini misinterpreting Portuguese orthography. The sound represented as "k" is actually an unaspirated palatal affricate in modern Mandarin. Portuguese doesn't have the aspirated/non-aspirated contrast which is also basic to English, so they might well represent it as a voiceless affricate or even a shibilant (I don't know Portuguese very well, so I'm not sure how their orthography handles affricates). I'm not too clear on the distinction between "ç","ch" and "x" in Portuguese, but I believe that "chi" would sound like English "she". In Martini's native Italian, "chi" is the equivalent of "ki" in English, with "ch" being use to avoid the English "ch" sound before front vowels like "i", in the same way that "qu" is used in Portuguese. When it comes to palatalization and non-palatalization before vowels, European languages use quite a variety of different strategies in their orthographies, so confusion would be quite understandable. I really don't have time right now to work it all out, but there are plenty of people here who know all the languages in question better than I do, so I'll leave to them. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Is it possible that the Mandarin pronunciation has also changed? That's what I'd always assumed .... they had a proper /k/ in the name back then, and they don't (and can't) today because Mandarin Chinese has palatalized all /k/ before front vowels. —Soap— 20:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Chinese still has a /k/. It can no longer appear at the end of a syllable as it did in Middle Chinese. The problem with the "k" in "Peking" is not the sound, but that the letter is irregular in Latin. In Latin, a "k" indicates a loanword. Fairnesscounts (talk) 11:58, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Mst.

The full word is "Mosammat". I think this is from Arabic, from something like the feminine of the passive participle of the verb سَمَّى (sammā, “to name”). But I can't find the right form, despite trying. 70.172.194.25 14:48, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

The right form is مُسَمَّاةٌ (musammātun), the feminine of the passive participle. Fay Freak (talk) 16:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

בחור

Are the "choice" and "youth" senses related? Klein at least doesn't seem to think so, treating them as two distinct roots ב־ח־ר (b-ḥ-r) and relating the latter sense to Akkadian baḥūlāti (“warriors”):

• Klein, Ernest (1987) “בחר”, in A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English‎^[10], Jerusalem: Carta, →ISBN, page 69b

Strong on the other hand does treat them as identical:

• H970 in Strong, James (1979) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible

Strong doesn't seem to know much about Semitic languages other than Hebrew and Aramaic though. (My own random idea is whether there's any possible connection to ב־כ־ר (b-k-r) with a slight change in the second consonant, but that probably doesn't work for some reason.) 70.172.194.25 23:22, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

bekâr

Does the Arabic word بَكَار (bakār, “bachelor”) exist? This user on Twitter claims no: [11]. 70.172.194.25 15:30, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

It doesn’t, and the word (and its spelling, after all) is the expected outcome of Persian بیکار (bi-kâr, literally “without occupation”). Fay Freak (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

scortum

Re the question as to what semantic development could have given rise to the “prostitute” sense in Latin. In Irish too, craiceann ‘skin, hide’ can mean ‘sexual intercourse’. Sense 4 here: https://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fgb/craiceann --Caoimhin (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

In the Swedish cant Månsing there's the word "fjälla" for girl, which is hypothetized to have been derived from the verb "fjälla" (chap, chafe), and refer to a prostitute with chapped skin due to a venereal disease. If so, the reasoning is pretty similar. Wakuran (talk) 00:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

So the meaning “skin, hide” is attested, where is the problem? The development is directly, as in Arabic شَرْمُوطَة (šarmūṭa), Russian шма́ра (šmára)^→ru or very recent Russian тря́пка (trjápka), which shows that the idea is nothing else than that of a cumrag—an idea consistent for millennia. Fay Freak (talk) 16:37, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

The meaning "skin, hide" is post-classical according to Varro and rare whereas the frequent, older attested sense is the one in question [...] meretrices, quia ut pelliculae subiguntur. Omnia namque ex pellibus facta scortea appellantur, [...] (J&S w.f.r.). They note that anything made of pelt may be called scortum to justify the transfer of semantics, if I understand correctly. I just don't understand the first half of it and I think it's possibly a folk etymology anyway, or coincidence at best, because euphemisms. The precedent with the root "to cut" is tolerable without pelts e.g. in skirt (viz. UK woman, intercourse) as well as Ger. Schürzenjäger, perhaps shorty (AAVE, I reckon). ApisAzuli (talk) 20:16, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

This sounds like non-sense, since Varro himself is pre-classical. Fay Freak (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Not a romanicist myself I was uncertain, but it's really saying that [12], [13] ApisAzuli (talk) 04:55, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Upon closer investigation, I could not confirm this from the Roland G Kent edition (1938, [14]), meaning the quote has to go to G. Goetz & F. Schoell (1910), which I cannot access at the moment. BTW, "subigur" "Quia ut pelliculae subiguntur" appears in a footnote from Kent with another reference to Festus. I still don't see how pellis is relevant. ApisAzuli (talk) 08:46, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Polish kulczyba

Doroszewski's and Brückner's dictionaries both claim the word is derived from an unspecified Tatar word, with Brückner "specifying" that the word means "crow's eye." I assume there's some truth in there, because Strychnos nux-vomica is called "kulczyba wronie oko" in Polish ("wronie oko" meaning "crow's eye"), but I'm not sure what the Tatar word could be. Any ideas? Hythonia (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

See here, pages 55–56 for a detailed discussion. Vahag (talk) 13:48, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I can add Armeno-Kipchak küčälä to the comparison. And note that when the ancients say "Tatar", they mean "Kipchak" (code qwm), not the modern language on the Volga (code tt). Vahag (talk) 14:17, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

What's the etymology of холих?

I couldn't find it in the database. I wonder what its etymology is and could it be related to холбох ("to couple")? Any etymological data would help. BurakD53 (talk) 21:17, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Latin sapo - via Frankish?

Was sāpō (“soap”) really loaned from Frankish rather than directly from Proto-Germanic? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 23:25, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Considering the fact that sāpō is attested as early as Pliny (per L&S), 'Frankish' is clearly wrong. Nicodene (talk) 01:09, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

We have "Frankish" go to PWG, cf. blank (any others?), roughly in line with Pliny if North and East-Germanic are to have separated by the turn of the millenium, and well in line with Roman occupation in Nijmegen for example, the isles not to mention. Incidently, soap and blankets go well together, if you'll excuse the pun. Conversely, as a matter of sheer coincidence, I've come to wonder if soda has anything black about it (discussed last month, indeed rejecting {{m|ar|سَوْدَاء||black bile) but concluding in */sawda/ nevertheless, if I understand correctly), also in Black snake (firework). For example Ossetian са́у (sáu, “black”) (not chai "black tea"), श्याव (śyāva, “dark, brown”) is cognate with hue (“dye”), {{m|sa|छवि||cuticle, skin, hide; beauty, splendour); I am obviously in no place to judge the dozens(!) of unrelated languages which present with similar morphemes under black, eg. Georgian, Chamicuro, Permic, or Georgian. Greek μέλας (could of course betray *s(w)~, cp. μέλδομαι and Schmalz, equivalently sebum ("tallow, fat, grease"), the latter akin to soap. ApisAzuli (talk) 08:48, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The word was used in a writing by Pliny the Elder, in the year 77 AD, but soap did not become commonplace in their culture until after the fall of Rome and so it is possible that the existence of the word in Pliny's Naturalis Historia does not mean it was part of the Latin language at the time. This may be the reason we've been assuming a late date of borrowing. However, an earlier loan might better explain why the /ai/ ended up as /ā/, and perhaps also why the Latin speakers adopting the word recognized it as an n-stem. Indeed, looking into it some more, it seems vowel length was already gone by the maturation date of proto-Romance, so it is difficult to explain unless we assume it was a "bookish" loanword into early Medieval Latin and that the vowel length was not really there in common speech. —Soap— 02:25, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

disinformation

The etymology of the entry valiantly begins with a year: "1955", and Lexico says "1950s". Merriam-Webster tells us: "Many people think [my emphasis] "disinformation" is a literal translation of the Russian "dezinformatsiya," which means "misinformation," a term the KGB allegedly used in the 1950s to name a department created to dispense propaganda." Yet: Citations:disinformation has excellent, non-bs citations from 1887, 1892, 1907, 1917, and 1941. Wiktionary is an absolutely wonderful forum to determine the true origin of this word, or, at least, to come up with some explanation for this situation. The closest analogy I can think of is Citations:hobbit, Talk:Scientology (but those early ones are clearly(?) a different meaning) or the necessity to avoid anachronism by some means [15] (the word existed in 1797 but the original etymology could not happen until the 1860s). Whenever an etymology does not fit the facts, it is absurd to leave it as is unexplained. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:33, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

sittybus

We have Latin sittybus (“title sheet attached to a manuscript”), sillybus (“thistle”), Ancient Greek σίττυβος (síttubos, “cauldron”), σίλλυβον (síllubon, “thistle”).

I don't see how sittybus would be connected to any of those, but I might be missing something. Latin syllabus might be connected, though. 70.172.194.25 18:26, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

It occurs as sittybis in the 1919 Loeb edition of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, e.g. in the last sentence of IV.5,^[16] but some editions have sillybis.^[17] Elsewhere, in IV.8, the Loeb edition has sillybis,^[18] and there is even a code-switch to Greek σιλλύβους in IV.4a,^[19] where it is clear that Cicero is not entirely sure (“quos vos Graeci, ut opinor, σιλλύβους appellatis”). See also about the code-switching here, and for etymological considerations this blog posting and the entry σίλλυβος in LSJ. Many places (including the Wiktionary entry for syllabus) claim that the term syllabus arose as a misprint syllabos appearing in place of sittybas in a 1470s edition of Cicero's Letters IV.5 and IV.8, where sittybas is said to be the Romanization of σιττύβας, the accusative plural of σιττύβα meaning parchment label or title-slip on a book, and LSJ writes “σιττύβαι (q.,v.)”, while complaining this has “an inappropriate meaning”. There is no such entry, though, and I can find no other independent evidence of the existence of such an Ancient Greek term.  --Lambiam 09:36, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Here, however, I see that σιττύβαι is glossed by Hesychius of Alexandria as δερματίναι στολαί· τὰ μικρὰ ἱμαντάρια, meaning “leather garments; small lanyards”. Combining the material of the first sense with the form factor of the second sense gives us leather straps. Note that ἱμαντάριον (himantárion) itself is already a diminutive of ἱμάς (himás, “leather strap”).  --Lambiam 10:10, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

lad

What can explain "semantic shift" from Old Norse Old Norse ladd (“hose, woolen stocking; sock”) to Middle English ladde (“foot soldier, servant; male commoner; boy”)?

The fact that there's ladde "foot soldier" is matching my prior since latrones in Varro is "mercenaries", and later "highwaymen" (Wolfgang D. C. de Melo, A Typology of Errors in Varro and his Editors). The Old Norse tangent sounds like a desparate take, or is there more to it and the "sock" translation misleading? ApisAzuli (talk) 03:59, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

All descendents seem to agree that "thief" could be synonym with "highwayman", the Romanian entry indicates. In particular, OFr. lerre vel sim. (Fr. larron) looks like a reasonable comparison for German Larry, cf. redensarten-index: den Larry machen, "sich aufspielen", "ein billiger Diener sein" etc. [20]) reports that allegedly English *Larry* may mean as much as "Trottel" anyway. From my limited experience I rather thought it means to be lazy.

Derivations from personal names like Lawrence, Dick, Peter, Jack, Ace, whatever won't have much to recommend themselves, I'm afraid. However, where Low German renders au as af(f)e and thus Lafferenz for Laurentius [21] (thus perhaps TV cook Johann Lafer, I imagine), the fact that f occasionally represents former θ may be appreciable, IIRC regularly so in Gothic . ApisAzuli (talk) 04:56, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

That's literally sockpuppets, init? ApisAzuli (talk) 05:40, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

There is the Norwegian ladd, which means "boy, fellow, guy", especially in compound words like Askeladd/Askeladden (a name), tusseladd ("nincompoop"), which actually is the same Norwegian word ladd meaning a "rough sock", "woolen slipper", so this points to the likelihood that the semantic shift had already occurred in Old Norse, and was inherited by Norwegian, and also entered Old English as a proper name (Ladda) and possibly Old English *ladda (“boy, fellow”) into Middle English as a term for a "fellow" that simply wasn't recorded till Middle English times. Leasnam (talk) 19:23, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Curiously, the word "fellow" is an Old Norse borrowing, as well. Wakuran (talk) 20:03, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

du willt instead of du willst

How common was the German form "du willt"? It's missing here despite being quite common in examples on Wikipedia and also for example in the famous aria "Ach, mein Sinn, wo willt du endlich hin?" in the Johannespassion.

I wasn't able to find any discussion online on this very surprising ending of wollen or any info on its possible use with any other verb. --Espoo (talk) 15:41, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

This is an early Modern High German relic form from Middle High German. In Middle High German, all preterite-present verbs used the ending -t for 2.sg, while Modern High German "regularized" them to -st. With wollen, wilt/willt persisted into the 17th century. It is used in the original version of the Lutherbibel which is why it also appears in Bach's works that directly quote from the New Testament. Note that your Wikipedia search also has a few false positives from Low German (un wenn ji dat nich glöben willt; Wi willt läwen). –Austronesier (talk) 16:55, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that's very interesting! Since this ending persisted only into the 17th century and only with wollen, it must have sounded very archaic a century later when Bach wrote this work in 1724.

Considering he revised it several times until 1740, it's extra weird and interesting that the form willt wasn't updated. I'll have to see if i can find info on whether willt was still used in the Bible text in use in Leipzig at that time.

When did use of this ending with the other modal verbs die out?

Where is there info on this online or in what books commonly available in large libraries? I'm guessing those sources also explain why wissen is partly used like preterite-present verbs and has weiß instead of weißt. --Espoo (talk) 21:06, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Online, there is some info in the German Wikipedia: de:w:Modalverb#Zur_Umgestaltung_der_Flexion_der_Modalverben. A good academic source about Frühneuhochdeutsch is this chapter (see pp. 1584 and 1722 for the preterite-presents) which is accessible via the Wikipedia Library[22]. –Austronesier (talk) 10:20, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Danke! (1548) --Espoo (talk) 20:25, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm guessing the ‹t› would have been /ts s/ for a while someplace earlier than others, the extra -t from analogical repair. jetzʼ, isʼ etc. are very common, and Köllsch sounded something like that to me, too. On second thought it actually sounds like mere ellision, willsʼ, and the stop is maybe epenthetic when I retrieve it. The example that I checked only has 2Sg küst(?), 3Sg kütt, which is odd because the idiom et kütt wie et kütt clearly proves *t not a spirant. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:05, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Anicha

@Inqilābī has some query about the etymology of this English word. He added {{rfe}} without indicating the query. --RichardW57 (talk) 12:56, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

That's the name Anicha? Wakuran (talk) 14:39, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

• The question is, in which language is this used? It could be some Southeast Asian language probably, but I don’t know if the English term is attested. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 15:16, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The etymology of the Albanian word çfarë

The page for çfarë has no etymology and it says to go here.

In the South, they use the words çë/ç' and çfarë interchangeably to mean "what" or "what kind of". In the North, çka/ça (or in some dialects, especially in the Northeast, shka, which doesn't have a page) is used to mean "what", but çfarë is only used to mean "what kind of" and the word after is typically ablative. çë and ç' can be abbreviations of both though. I don't know if it's worth mentioning any of this since I don't have any secondary sources; I'm going off of what I've heard and read used by native speakers. Anyway, the word farë means seed but it is also used to mean "kind" (although this definition isn't included in the page). In Northern Albania (maybe also in the South; I don't know too much about the Southern dialect even though it's the literary standard), a common greeting between men is "a jé burrë?" which means "are you a man?", but once, a stranger in Koplik greeted me with "A jé farë burrit", which means, word for word, "[interrogative particle] are(2nd person singular present indicative) kind man-of(indefinite ablative singular)?". (Using "-it" instead of "-i" for indefinite singular ablative for masculine nouns is considered improper since usually that form is used only for the definite but whatever). It basically means the same thing as "a jé burrë?", kinda like "Are you a kind of man?". Anyway, the reason I'm talking about the word farë is because I'm pretty sure it is the origin of the word çfarë. It seems to me that it is a combination of çë and farë to mean "what kind of". This is supported by two things: First, in the North (maybe also the South; again, I don't know too much about that dialect), çfarë takes the ablative. e.g., "çfarë kombsije jé?", which means "what nationality(indefinite ablative singular) are you?" This is significant because it implies that çfarë is not an adjective but a noun; the indefinite ablative is often used to modify nouns that come before it (e.g., "pýll ahash", beech forest. pýll means forest and ahash is indefinite ablative plural for beech tree). Second, in old books written in Gheg (which is the Northern dialect's name), çfarë is written with an apostrophe: "ç'farë", implying that it's an abbreviation or elision of something. Here's an example:

Po Zo'! shka jeni me gjith ket dritë? (note the use of "shka" for "what")

-- Zâna jemi, Mujo, tuj shetitë,

Tuj u sjellë na njerzvet me u ndimue,

Ti, ç'farë ndere, Mujo, po na lypë? ("ndere", which means honor or here favor, is indefinite ablative singular)

From Visaret e Kombit, Vllimi i Dytë, Kângë Kreshnikësh dhe Legjenda (the Treasures of the Nation, Second Volume, Songs of Frontier Warriors and Legends) by Father Donat Kurti and Father Bernadin Palaj, song 7, verses 35-38. Here's a translation.

It may be asked, "if you don't have any secondary sources, is there any point in writing any of this?" and the answer is yes, I have a project in English due yesterday that's 10% of my grade and I'm procrastinating. — This unsigned comment was added by 68.32.152.246 (talk) at 23:19, 19 April 2022 (UTC).

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but procrastination does more than its share ... Chuck Entz (talk) 02:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Unlike Wikipedia, we do not require etymologies to be sourced, but it may be best to hedge a proposed etymology with weasel words like probably, as in, “Probably a univerbation of ç' (“what”) +‎ farë (“kind”).” The Albanian Wiktionary gives the sense “kind” as the 11th sense (out of 16) for the entry farë.  --Lambiam 05:23, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I am slightly confused about the gloss ("polite") in the usage example's translations. Most obviously it refers to the pronoun të, whose entry does not yet say so, but it got me thinking. If farë ("kind") is from *sper-, as our entry and primary definitions indicate, I could see an parallel to Sprössling and offspring for an appellative, pressuming that *sperǵʰ- was an extension of *sper-; see e.g. Roman gens, or kindly for that matter. The fact that barn (“child”) etc. are phonetically so similar is of course a problem in view of s-mobile, shatemization, etc. Anyway, if I understand correctly, "old books written in Gheg" might as well be relatively early in the attested history of Albanian, and the reconstructruction of it's prehistory is all the more difficult for it, so there should be room for doubt. And indeed, ç' "(interrogative pronoun) Is used as vocative replacing çfarë", so the entries are a little contradictory in this view.

By the way, probably should per haps mean probe-ably, so it would be useful to restrict the claim to what can be probed with some degree of reliability. The spelling clearly indicates that it was understood as contraction. Beyond that, as messy and difficult as pronouns and inflections are (quoth Ringe), it might be less than clear. ApisAzuli (talk) 11:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I ever really have understood any of your posts, but I guess barn is simply just something born or borne. Wakuran (talk) 19:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Mistake among descendants of Latin cremō?

Why does it include French crémer?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 04:21, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

crémer is a descendant, just not an inherited one. It should be listed as a learned borrowing to make that clearer. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:59, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

I've discovered that my question reflected (at least a bit of) user error. My bafflement arose because I was understanding crémer in the sense of "to cream," and when I checked its entry I failed to notice that it includes two senses. The addition by Mahāgaja of the "learned" labels should help others avoid making my error and, to further reduce the likelihood, I've also augmented the reference to crémer among the descendants with the gloss “cremate, consume, burn.”―PaulTanenbaum (talk) 16:49, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

And no sooner had I done that then I discovered the right way to prevent my bafflement, which is {{senseid}}. So I've made that change and I think I'm now done.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 17:10, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

tiomáin

Originally the entry claimed OIr. **timáinid, I changed it to derive from do·immaig (see do-immaig in DIL). But since it is back-formed from the verbal noun timmáin, this is not ideal. Also it seems to me that do·immaig in a deuterotonic form isn’t directly attested in Old or Middle Irish even though it has an entry in DIL (or at least I can’t find any example in DIL). There is also an entry for timáinid in DIL which obviously isn’t an Old Irish form and it smells of Early Modern/Classical tiomáinidh in conservative spelling to me (but I have no idea how old are two of the examples quoted in DIL, might be a late Middle Irish form too?; the other examples are post-14th century) – anyway, I don’t understand why DIL authors decided to have two separate entries, especially when they refer IGT Verbs forms (tiomáinfead, ní thiomáineabh ⁊c.) in do-immaig, not timáinid.

So probably the etymology should say something like back formation from timmáin (“driving (about, around)”), the verbal noun of [unattested?] Old Irish [*]do·immaig (…)? But if so, I’m not sure how to word it properly, and whether do·immaig should be said to be unattested or not. What do ye think? // Silmeth ^@talk 14:06, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Silmethule: I wouldn't call it a back-formation, since it doesn't involve the deletion of a morpheme. I'd just say it's denominal from the verbal noun. And although do·immaig isn't directly attested in the deuterotonic, it does have attested finite forms that aren't denominal from the verbal noun (because they don't have -áin-), so do·immaig is a reasonable lemma to put them under (but as Middle Irish, not Old, since the forms that are attested all seem to be of Middle Irish provenance). So, I'd say the etymology should say "Denominal from {{der|ga|mga|timmáin}}, verbal noun of {{m|mga|do·immaig}}, from {{m|mga|to-}} + {{der|ga|sga|imm·aig}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:24, 21 April 2022 (UTC)