Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2023/June

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← May 2023 · June 2023 · July 2023 → · (current)

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кринджи

Absolutely no clue. {{R:grk-mar:RRS}} gives the form крингки, which suggests that this goes back to *κριγγι(ν), but there's no Greek cognate that I know of, and I can't find any plausible Urum or Russian/Ukrainian donor.

Pretty sure that the "earring" sense is primary, for what it's worth. Thadh (talk) 13:37, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

It would be pretty cringy to have penises hanging from your ears. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:50, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

It might be from the Goths, who dominated the area c. 300 AD. Specifically a Gothic equivalent of Old Norse kringla, "disc, circle, orb". And kringja "to encircle" comes even closer phonetically. (The Greeks were here long before the Goths) For the semantics, compare the sense development of Schmuck.24.108.18.81 23:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

There are no known borrowings from Gothic to Greek and most Mariupolian Greeks have migrated to Crimea after the (mainstream) Goths left the region - I don't think this theory is grounded. Thadh (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Thadh. There also κρίκος (kríkos), but it's also probably not a relative word. By the way, the etymology of שמאָק (shmok) ain't so obvious neither (i reckon, you've meant this word). Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The Greeks were established in Crimea since ~600 BC, and never left until they were deported to Mariupol in Soviet times. w:Greeks in pre-Roman Crimea. There is no reason why they should not have been in contact with the Goths. 24.108.18.81 20:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Greeks settled and re-settled the region until the fall of the Byzantine Empire, and if you can find me any mention of Gothic borrowings into Greek I'll be happy to consider it. Thadh (talk) 22:35, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

w:Ulfilas was a mixed race Greek-Goth who translated the Bible into Gothic. His ancestors combined Greek and Gothic culture. Here is a perfect environment for Greeks to borrow Gothic words, and vice-versa. So kringla is not beyond the realm of possibility, and no-one has come up with a better explanation, 24.108.18.81 06:35, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

That's still the other direction - Greek to Gothic. Wakuran (talk) 07:15, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Only a dozen words of Crimean Gothic are recorded. Demanding direct evidence of the above hypothesis when you fully know that there is none is in one word sadomasochist. Sadistic because you begin to enjoy it the more often you punish people for challenging your grounded theory. Masochistic because you like speculation against all better judgement. 141.20.6.65 16:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

.Goths and Gepids aren't always distinguished, historically. Köbler does have Gepidisch *krings ? "Ring, Platz; arena", not jewlery. Anyway, Greeks prefered to think λυγγούριον was dried lynx urine, so cut me a cheque if I don't count classicist opinion as the bench mark to meet. I do recognize that Scythian has very similar problems in Iranian, so no ard feelings. 141.20.6.65 16:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

long firm

RFV of the etymology:

• From Old English gelang (“fraudulent”) and Italian firma (“signature”).

The etymology comes from Dan Davies (2018) Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World, page 28, but it looks completely made up (maybe the book title is partly self-reference?).

To start with, I can find nothing in Bosworth-Toller for the alleged Old English etymon- Old English gelang exists, but it means things like "belonging to", "coming from", "dependent on", etc. Even if this sense existed, the likelihood of Old English being combined with modern Italian to form a slang term is pretty much nil, so it would have to have passed through Middle English to modern English- but we have nothing at long with such an etymology. On top of that, I'm not sure that the slang term predates English firm, so the author's insistence that it has to be directly borrowed from Italian firma seems unmerited.

The previous etymology wasn't that great- it looks like someone's guess in the 1800's that got passed along by everyone else- but at least it was hedged. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

A 籠 firm, a “cover company”? (Less a bamboo one as in bamboo wife.) Or a 龍 firm because it is predatory? The most sense we obtain if we see therein a 弄 ”trick” or “show” firm. Much more things that can be “long” there than in English, wherein a 1864 story thinks about “long purses” or them keeping distance from justice, or half the rogues in the kingdom belonging to it. Fay Freak (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying it's necessarily modern Italian; the author mentioned both Latin and Italian. When did firma develop the sense of "signature" in any Latinate variety? That will probably determine whether it is more accurate to call it Latin or Italian. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:17, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

By the way, more precisely the author said that gelang came from "Anglo-Saxon", which I normalized as "Old English" based on the fact that the former redirects to the latter on English Wikipedia (but I'm not an expert on the history of English). The Phantom Capitalists is another source which indicates: "Gelang was the old Saxon word for fraudulent, and this could be its source." It also mentions "the early usage of 'firm' as 'signature'", in a way that seems to suggest that firm is an obsolete English word; can we find any attestation of this definition? If we can, then we don't need to worry about Latin/Italian. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this long the same as the use in long con? I always thought it was just a con that took longer than other types to mature. DCDuring (talk) 18:46, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Tatar

w:Alexander Vovin says that Khitan has borrowed many words from Korean, so it seems reasonable that Tatar (once a near neighbour) might have done the same.So "Tatar" might have been borrowed from a root similar to Korean 타다 (tada), to ride. Please note that Ottoman Turkish تاتار‎ means courier as well as Tatar. Vovin:[1] Map:[2] 24.108.18.81 18:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Do you have any source that reliable derives Tatar from the same source as 타다 or is it just your own guess?

Also I'd not use the Ottoman Turkish's usage as courier for proof, it is likely a case of later semantic expension from nomadic tribe > nomad > horse rider etc., especially considering the sense "courier" isn't recorded in Old Turkic texts. Yorınçga573 (talk) 16:52, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Scriptorium is a place to try out our ideas for polite feedback. 24.108.18.81 15:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

ermines

Any clue as to the origin? It's difficult to search for because both online dictionaries and search engines treat it as a search for "ermine". The OED has (sparse) cites going back to the 1500s (but not earlier), and speculates it's from a plural herminès of herminet, supposedly a diminutive of hermine, but I can't find it (only herminette with a /t/)— perhaps one of our French editors can. (If anyone does find French heraldic sources, maybe you can also check how old ogoesse is; it looks like a corruption of English ogress which looks like a corruption of ogles "eyes") - -sche (discuss) 04:57, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

There's this, even though it only mentions the word in the definition. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:53, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

This seems to go back to a time when English people writing French would whimsically add or remove an s, thus we get Marseilles instead of Marseille. 24.108.18.81 15:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Klingon (surname; Russian?)

When I looked through early 1900s US census records for a recent RFV, almost everyone I found with this surname was from Russia (or their parents were from Russia, or they got the surname by marriage to someone from Russia). Is it a transliteration or ellisization of a Russian surname? (A few other uses findable via Google Books don't have any immediately apparent connection to Russia.) - -sche (discuss) 07:43, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I started that RFV, and I was surprised to find out the surname was real. I agree it looks very un-Russian, but Russia was much larger then, having a direct border with Germany, so we may be getting a Russian transcription of a German or at least Germanic surname. Russia's borders also extended further in other directions, so Germanic isnt the only possibility. The ng cluster in particular is very unusual in Russian. Though it's possible, as you said, that there is a real Russian name behind this that got mistranscribed into Roman letters, I think that's less likely given that there were seemingly several independent Klingon families who moved to the United States at different times. Thanks, —Soap— 09:55, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I found the Celtic surname Clingan, although direct Celtic derivations into Russian might be few. Otherwise there's German Klinge (blade) and klingen (ring, sound) or Dutch klinken (clink, sound). Possibly an occupational surname for a bell-ringer or metal sharpener? Wakuran (talk) 10:46, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Russia still got around 60 languages with somewhat official status. So it may be any language what so ever. If it is Germanic, it may be a wrong spelled form of Клинген. If im not wrong, the same situation is by the surname Штейфон. Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:56, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

If this were a Russian surname, it would probably be a French name originally. The ending in -on is atypical for Russian surnames, and as Soap said, -ng- is also very rare. Thadh (talk) 10:52, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Unstressed o and a was pronounced identically, I recall... Could there have been some kind of orthographical mixup? Wakuran (talk) 11:01, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

There were Russia Germans with the surname Клинген (Klingen). Search Клингенъ on Google Books. Vahag (talk) 11:39, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, all. - -sche (discuss) 01:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

PIE *méh₂trih₂ks actually from *méh₂tēr,

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2023/May#PIE *méh₂trih₂ks actually from *méh₂tēr,.

1. LA matrix says it's from PIE *méh₂trih₂ks (empty) through *mātrīks (notice long i). Also in "Related terms" we have mater.
2. LA mater says it's from PIE *méh₂tēr

• Is it too adventurous that *méh₂trih₂ks comes from *méh₂tēr in zero degree (in whatever hellish declension it corresponds) + a suffix *-ih₂ks (unknown to me; thus long i); and include it within "her" ?
• Or a conflation/convergence/rebracketing/resegmentation/re(tro)analysis/surface analysis with/through LA -trix (long i), itself from *-trih₂?

※Sobreira ◣◥ 〒 @「parlez」 20:42, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The *méh₂trih₂ks derivation seems oddly specific, and was apparenly added by a user blocked for long-term abuse. Without sources or explanations, I feel skeptical. Wakuran (talk) 23:01, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Yep. "Oddly specific" applies to a lot of their contributions. If there isn't enough evidence for a reconstruction, they just make something up. They're also known for adding translations like these to words such as television. I wrote an abuse filter specifically to keep them out of the Reconstruction namespace (and Japanese entries, but that's another story). Unfortunately, there's only so much one can do without shutting down anonymous editing from a significant part of France. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:43, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Assuming this dates to PIE, and isn't just māter rebuilt with -trīx, it would be reconstructed simply as *méh₂trih₂. The Latin -x is secondary, compare *ǵénh₁trih₂. --{{victar|talk}} 02:57, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I removed it ※Sobreira ◣◥ 〒 @「parlez」 07:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I've rewritten it as an affixation within Latin. I don't see any particular reason to believe it even goes back to Proto-Italic, let alone PIE. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:14, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

みそじ

This word, historically also pronounced みそち and みそぢ, is spelled 三十 and 三十路, and lemmatised in both entries. The etymologies in these entries contradict each other:

三十: (referencing Kokugo Dai Jiten) Compound of 三十 (miso, “thirty”) +‎ 路 (chi, “road”), where the road sense of 路 (chi) is used metaphorically as a unit of time, usually expressing a sense of day, but also sometimes used to mean year.

三十路: Compound of 三十 (miso, “thirty”) and suffix 箇 (chi). The kanji 路 is ateji (当て字).

Which explanation of the origin of ち is correct? Also, should these entries be combined? Mcph2 (talk) 11:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

• "Also, should these entries be combined?"

Yes. Our general current approach (albeit inconsistently implemented) is to create the main entries for native-Japonic terms under the kana spellings, and use {{ja-see}} under the kanji spellings to point readers to the main entries. Since both 三十路 and 三十 are alternative spellings of the modern misoji and archaic misochi readings, we should ideally consolidate at the みそじ (misoji) and みそち (misochi) kana spellings.

• Re: contradiction:

I worked on the 三十 entry and dimly remember the research I did for that. Long story short, the monolingual JA resources I consulted all described the final -ji as a suffixing element, but none of them mentioned that 路 is used here as phonetic ateji. This same 路 (-ji, -chi) does also show up as a suffix itself, used metaphorically to indicate time, and I went with that when I last edited at 三十.

Seeing what Bendono had entered when creating the 三十路 entry clarifies things -- the JA references I consulted were misleading / incomplete in their entries. The suffix 箇・個 (alternative spellings) appears as -tsu as a generic counter (Old Japanese -tu), and this shifted to -chi (Old Japanese -ti) in certain cases that fossilized around number of years → age, such as in modern Japanese 二十歳 (hatachi, “twenty years old”, irregular reading, deviating from the expected Chinese-derived nijūsai).

Semantically, I think Bendono's 箇・個 explanation is the better fit.

I don't have time today to rework these entries, but as and when I do have time, I'll give it a go if no one else has gotten aroudn to it.  :)

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:40, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll move them to the kana entries for the time being. Mcph2 (talk) 03:06, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Stockport

I noticed that contradictory etymologies appear for Stockport on Wikipedia. Stockport claims that the name means ‘market place at a hamlet’ or ‘castle in a wood’ but at Stockport County F.C it claims that the name comes from the De Stokeport family. We’re essentially claiming in our etymology that it means ‘market town by a house’, which is similar to the ‘market place at a hamlet’ version given at the Wikipedia Stockport article. Which of these etymologies is right? can ‘port’ ever mean ‘wood’? Is Stockport the only existing place name where ‘port’ isn’t used with its modern meaning of harbour but ‘market place’ or ‘market town’ instead? Surely the ‘de Stokeport’ family takes its name from a place called Stockport, simply due to the fact ‘de’ means ‘of’, and so they are probably named after the place rather than the other way around (unless there used to be a place with a similar name that no longer exists that they took their name from)?

I’ve also broached this issue at the relevant talk pages on Wikipedia. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I guess "de" could be an article, if the name's derived from Dutch or Low German. Wakuran (talk) 12:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

The name was attested in 1170. During that period, the elite spoke Norman Old French and the commoners spoke early Middle English. Dutch and Low German weren't in the picture at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Stockport isn't unique for the meaning 'market place'. There's also w:Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire, and there's a Newport in Shropshire. RichardW57m (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Good point. I suppose I should've thought of Newport Pagnell. It goes a long way towards confirming my suspicions that 'the market place/town by a house/hamlet' is the correct etymology. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:04, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

singulus in single

single says that LA singulus is a diminutive of PIE *sem-, but there it says it's created by addition of the particle *ǵʰe, citing De Vaan.

• Could be the first one correct? Two possibly correct hypothesis? ※Sobreira ◣◥ 〒 @「parlez」 09:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Since the diminutive suffix is -ulus, it could be from *sm̥-ǵʰ-ulus (an anachronistic form, but you know what I mean). —Mahāgaja · talk 09:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Whereas singulus states that Proto-Italic *senɣelos is from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one”) + distributive particle *ǵʰe, singulī states that *senɣelos is from Proto-Indo-European *semǵʰo-.  --Lambiam 09:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

tlú#Irish

This word isn't in {{R:DIL}}, and {{R:ga:Corpas}} has only two hits earlier than the 1890s. So where did it come from? None of the languages Irish is in contact with--not even Scottish Gaelic or Manx--has anything remotely like it. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Macbain's old dictionary speculates about it in the entry on clobha:

• clobha, a pair of tongs; from Norse klofi, a fork (of a river), a forked mast, snuffers, klof, fork of the legs, "cloven, cleft". The Ir. clobh(a) in Con. and Fol., and the clomh of Lh., seems a Scottish importation, for Coneys says the vernacular is tlobh. In fact, the Ir. word is tlú, tlúgh: "lifter"; root tḷ- as in Lat. tollo?

This points to something more recent: Gearóid Mac Eoin published "Notes on the Irish terms tlú and tlú garmaint" in Ulster Folklife 32 (1986), pp. 33–6, if anyone can get their hands on it. Google Books' copy is only snippet view, though from what I can see he does discuss it in proximity to /kl-/ words like those Macbain mentions, e.g. p. 34: "...and tlú is recorded from Donegal. For Manx Wagner gives the form /klau/, which is the phonetic representation of clou, the form given by J.J. Kneen and A. Cregeen. For Scottish Gaelic, the general orthographic form is clobh(a), rendered in east..." I can't see enough to tell if he is saying those words are etymologically related, or just discussing all of them as semantically related.

This article on Norse loans in Irish does explicitly derive tlú from the /kl-/ forms (MIr. clobhadh), from Norse.

- -sche (discuss) 22:47, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Great, thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 09:25, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Gdańsk

We have been discussing Gdańsk, and it is agreed that old theories involving Danes or Goths don't hold up.

The two main theories now involve Proto-Slavic *gъd- (“wet, damp”) or Proto-Baltic *gud- (forest), but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of either one.

Does anyone have more info about *gud- or *gъd-? 24.108.18.81 22:27, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I am inclined to combine the two into single root meaning wetland forest, woodland, swamp, similar semantically to *drę̀zga, which has this double meaning. Many place-names in NE Europe refer to moisture, swamps etc.

This still leaves the question of whether there is evidence for a root *gud-. 24.108.18.81 23:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Just so it's out there, I've added a sourced etymology showing how it's disputed and what most etymologists agree with. Vininn126 (talk) 07:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Does it help at all that the spelling Gyddannyzc is recorded in a late 10th-century document? And that there might be something even older. —Soap— 15:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

That is mentioned in the source I added. Vininn126 (talk) 15:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

sepurture

Any idea what the etymology is? Though more recent uses and mentions treat it like an adjective, it looks like a noun in -ure and the earliest uses are of "in sepurture" as if indeed it started as a noun. (Compare the use of overture in heraldry for the posture also, and perhaps better, termed overt.) Is it from a variation on separature (separation) of the wings? One book says "the wings point[ing] different ways" is a defining implication of sepurture. (It's equated with wings expenced, which seems to be related to expanse, expanded.) - -sche (discuss) 01:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

This is just a qualified guess, but some kind of blend of se- (apart) and apertura (opening)? Wakuran (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Tokophrya

The protist Tokophrya is the type genus of the family Tokophryidae : phrya comes from the Greek οφρύς / ophrýs, "eyebrow", but what does the prefix toko- mean? . Can you help me please? Thanks Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:41, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, τόκος (tókos) means "birth" or "offspring." Not sure if that helps. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Andrew Sheedy, that helps me a lot. Gerardgiraud (talk) 15:59, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems semantically odd, though. It's worth noting that it's probably just tok-, not toko-. And that the family contains two other genera with names ending in -(o)phryidae, which seem to have somewhat more sensible Greek meanings (possibly helmet and hair) for something related to eyebrows. On the other hand, I cant find any words with tok- that arent derivatives of the word for birth, even searching on Perseus. Admittedly some of them have wide semantic ranges, like poultry farming and financial interest, but it really seems like it's all coming from the single root meaning birth. —Soap— 14:48, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

*h₁én

I would like to revisit a long discussion about the PIE word for "in" I had with @Sokkjo/Victar in which neither of us budged and which has sat unresolved, held at User_talk:Caoimhin_ceallach#See_WT:AINE and Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₁én. I've let it be for a while in the hope that someone would drop by but no one has. I'd appreciate if someone here is willing to give their two cents.

A few questions:

• I found no formal policy on syllable structure in PIE, in particular not in WT:AINE. Is there an informal one?
• What is your view on empty onsets in PIE, ie words reconstructed without a default leading laryngeal?
• Should *h₁én be moved?
• If not, should the alternative reconstruction *én at least be given?
• Is LIPP as bad as Sokkjo/Victar thinks it is?

—Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 01:21, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My two cents: (1) While roots and content words were never vowel-initial in PIE, prepositions, particles and the like might have been, so *én isn't impossible. (2) It's probably safer to keep the page at Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₁én, but I support the hard redirect from Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/én. (3) I haven't seen LIPP myself, but Brian D. Joseph (whose opinion I respect) seems to think it's pretty good. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

pronunciation of تعداد #Persian

Hi, I have doubts about the current pronunciation given, which suggests Classical Persian as /tiʔdɑːd/. But maybe it should be /taʔdɑːd/.

Hayyim says: تعداد (ta'dad). Steingass says: تعداد taʻdād. Platts (Urdu dictionary) gives: "A تعداد taʻdād, vulg. těʻdād"

Arabic is given as ta'dad by Alsharekh

Hindi borrowing is तादाद (tādād). Tajik spelling is теъдод, but таъдод is a variant.

So has pronunciation shifted from /a/ to /e/ (because of the ع maybe) and not from /i/ to /e/? Exarchus (talk) 18:20, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is originally /a/ at least in Arabic, not because of the ع; form II verbal noun is taKLīM but with geminate verbs taKLāL occurs: تَجْفَاف (tajfāf), تَكْرَار (takrār). It may have been raised in Persian very recently, like the name of Iran’s capital تهران, the pronunciation of which natives are unsure about. Fay Freak (talk) 20:51, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Exarchus (talk) 21:19, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

clacker

Clacker, with the meaning of a testicle, surely belongs under etymology 1 as it either refers to someone’s balls (testicles) clacking together or comes directly from clackers or clacker balls referring to the toy consisting of metal balls that clack together.

According to Eric Partridge, the Aussie term clacker (arse) came from the fact that when some people fart it can sound a bit like someone twirling a clacker (a mechanical device which makes a clacking sound) around. He rejects the possibility that the word derives from cloaca[3]. I can also find some evidence that clack is occasionally used as a slang term for fart in its own right, so perhaps that’s the true etymology? Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:55, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, we have nads as another example of a word for testicles deriving from scientific vocabulary, so i wouldnt rule out the cloaca theory for at least the anus sense. Cloaca > testicle requires an additional semantic shift on top of the shortening of the word, and quite a strange one. I find the sound symbolism idea strange too, but I guess there's got to be some sort of explanation. —Soap— 16:05, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, given that the cloaca is the all-purpose "that's where it happens" of private parts, i could even see cloaca being the source of a word for testicle. I still think it's unlikely though, as, because it has two meanings, it would most likely need to be borrowed from student slang twice independently, once for anus and once for testicle. —Soap— 16:11, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Medicine students? FYI, one ball hangs slightly lower to evade clacking. Nutcracker syndrome is something else about a lodged renal vein but one symptom is pain in the left hand side testicle. Their lead is "[[nut (fruit)|nut]] (the reinal vein)". That must be mistaken because one infamous limerick ("I once took a shit in this stall") refers to the left ball specifically, indicating that the left hanging lower is common knowledge I am not a doctor and cannot confirm that. Actually I thought your opening line is blunt and offensive. But I can remember it has been told in school way back when and they refered to nutcracking specifically. 2A00:20:6082:200:9B2C:EECF:48C9:5401 10:52, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Amusing and informative as your post is, you seem to be making a case for testicles to be referred to as 'crackers' rather than 'clackers'. In the event that ones gonads aren't of equal weight, whichever one is larger will be heavier and hang lower but not necessarily the left one. It does seem strange that a rather medical term like 'cloaca' would be used as slang and then shortened but I suppose it's just feasible that it was used by Aussie chicken sexers rather than doctors or professors of medicine. The fact that 'clacker' seemingly isn't used as a word for testicle in Australia but it is used that way by some people in the UK and the US, as well as the fact of the semantic shift, leads me to doubt the cloaca➡clacker➡arse➡bollock hypothesis though. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

haiya

Obviously, this word was popularized by Uncle Roger, but was it in Jackie Chan Adventures? I think that it was aiya instead of haiya according to Google search. Mahogany115 (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

-ize and -idus

I see a similarity between Latin -idus, -idiō and Ancient Greek -ῐδος (-idos), -ῐ́ζω (-ízō).

Similative verb < adjective + verb suffix. Proto-Indo-European *-id- is the similative adjective suffix that the others derive from.

Latin -idiō, Latin -izō, Latin -issō < Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ízō) < Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō < Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti (similative verbal suffix) < Proto-Indo-European *-id- (similative suffix) + *-yéti (verbal suffix).

Proto-Germanic *-itjaną < Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti (similative verbal suffix) < Proto-Indo-European *-id- (similative suffix) + *-yéti (verbal suffix).

Latin -idus < Proto-Indo-European *-id- + Latin -us < Proto-Indo-European *-id- (similative suffix) + *-os (adjectival ending)

Ancient Greek -ῐδος (-idos, genitive), -ῐς (-is) < Proto-Indo-European *-id- (similative suffix) + *-os (adjectival ending)

Then these following surface analyses would become possible:

Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ízō) < Ancient Greek -ῐδος (-idos) + -ω (-ō)

Latin -idiō < Latin -idus + -iō

Does this etymology work? Daniel.z.tg (talk) 00:49, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a bit more complicated than that. See Rau (2010) “The Derivational History of the Greek Stems in -άδ-” for an explanation. --{{victar|talk}} 06:02, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Mongol

etymonline says Mongol comes from a word mong meaning brave. I cannot find such a word in Turkic or Mongolic, but Chinese 猛 (/mˠæŋX/ or měng) has exactly this meaning. All wiktionary etymologies only refer to the ethnic significance, not the basic meaning. How does a Chinese loan-word sound as a suggestion? 24.108.18.81 05:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yiddish suffixes

I've been trying to trace the etymology of two suffixes in Yiddish: ־עכץ and ־וואַרג. I've not been able to find any German or even Germanic cognates. Any clues? Not very versed in Hebrew, suffixes or otherwise, so if those two suffixes are of Hebrew origin then some help would be appreciated. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 10:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Slavic is as likely a source of suffixes as Hebrew, but I can't think of any Slavic cognates either. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:11, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I stumbled across Irish -acht, but it feels highly unlikely to be anything more than a coincidence... Wakuran (talk) 14:03, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Dravidian paṭak- and Malayo-Polynesian paʀaqu

Is there any relation between Dravidian paṭak- and Malayo-Polynesian paʀaqu? according to DEDR there are only 5 languages having the word and they are the main 4 costal ones + Tulu with no interior languages having them so I dont think it is a native word. There is a related word in Sanskrit beḍā~veḍā with descendents like Sindhi's b̤eṛī. This map says there are cognates even in Somalia? AleksiB 1945 (talk) 21:06, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

This is discussed in notes at Blust's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary entries for *paraqu and *padaw. The name for a type of ocean-going vessel seems like a good candidate for a Wanderwort (perhaps originally neither Dravidian nor Austronesian), but the geographical spread implies something relatively early. This is way over my head, so I can only guess. Perhaps @Austronesier knows more. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:51, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I should also mention that the letters used by Blust are sometimes different from their IPA values (I believe "q" is a glottal stop), but I'm not sure where it's explained on the site. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:03, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

By the way: the shaded areas on that map show the distribution of two types of outrigger canoes that probably originated in the Malay Archipelago (used as an indicator of ancient contact with people from that region), not the distribution of cognates. The fact that Madagascar is in a shaded area is no surprise, since the languages spoken there fit in nicely with those found in a specific area of Borneo. There's no reason to doubt that there was ancient contact between Malayo-Polynesian and Dravidian speakers all along the coast of India, since the best way to go back and forth between the Malay Archipelago and Africa involved using the seasonal alternation in wind direction linked to the monsoons to follow the coasts around the Indian Ocean.