Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2024/June

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Cyclidium

The protist Cyclidium is the type genus of the family Cyclidiidae. A priori it comes from the latin cyclus (circle), but I don't see anything circular in that protist. Have you another idea ? Gerardgiraud (talk) 15:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Cyclidium looks like the straightforward Latinization of an Ancient Greek word *κυκλίδιον (kuklídion), which could be a learned neologism formed from κύκλος (kúklos) +‎ -ίδιον (-ídion), which speakers of Ancient Greek would have understood to mean “little circle”, or, more generally, “little round thing”. I don't know what Müller saw, but in some preparations the appearance is rather round.^[1]  --Lambiam 19:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@Gerardgiraud: Ancient Greek κύκλος (kúklos) can also refer to a wheel. Does it have anything like spokes or revolve like a wheel would? Chuck Entz (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Müller's original description here, says "Vermis inconspicuus simplicissimus pellucidus, complanatus orbicularis, vel ovatus (i.e. flattened circular, or ovate)." Gerardgiraud (talk) 13:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

The use of vel suggests that Müller considered complanatus orbicularis and ovatus to be synonymous. He adds Danish names, for Cyclidium bulla BOBLE-RUNDEREN, which may mean something like “the bubble rounder” (Latin bulla means “bubble”). All other Cyclidia he describes are assigned a Danish name of the form XXX-RUNDEREN. I don’t find a singular noun Runder in any Danish dictionary, so I’m not quite sure how to explain these Danish names.  --Lambiam 11:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I guess that in Danish, the -er-ending might not necessarily indicate a doer, but can also just be a noun ending, like a "roundie". Then, I'm also a bit baffled by the coinage, anyway. Wakuran (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

auto da fe

Why was the term for this concept borrowed from Portuguese rather than, say, Spanish (auto de fe, which the TLFi actually says is the etymon of French autodafé) or Italian (atto di fede)? PUC – 15:38, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Port wine became very popular in England in the 18th century, when, due to the Anglo-French wars, French wine could not be imported. England had much stronger ties with Portugal then than with Spain, even though Spain too sided with Great-Britain.

The Online Etymology Dictionary forwards the theory that the Portuguese form took hold in English through popular accounts of the executions following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Our article does not mention executions, but that on the Portuguese Wikipedia relates that the Inquisition burned an effigy of Francisco Xavier de Oliveira in an auto-da-fé. The Inquisition had condemned Oliveira in absentia (he lived in London) for publishing a pamphlet reportedly ascribing the earthquake to God's wrath for Portugal's Catholicism and its support for the Inquisition.  --Lambiam 11:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Belial

Anyone fancy cleaning up the etymology that was just added (judging correctness, adding Hebrew script, etc)? - -sche (discuss) 18:46, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

This actually comes from the Hebrew scriptures. Here's an example from 1 Samuel 12 that I think shows what's really going on:

וּבְנֵ֥י עֵלִ֖י בְּנֵ֣י בְלִיָּ֑עַל לֹ֥א יָדְע֖וּ אֶת־יְהוָֽה׃ (Hebrew)

Καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ Ηλι τοῦ ἱερέως υἱοὶ λοιμοὶ οὐκ εἰδότες τὸν κύριον. (Septuagint Ancient Greek)

porro filii Heli filii Belial nescientes Dominum (Latin Vulgate)

Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD. (King James Version)

Now the sons of Eli were scoundrels; they had no regard for the LORD. (New Revised Standard Version)

The Hebrew בליעל (“b'liya'al”) בני (“b'ney”) seems to be analyzable as "sons(of)" ["without"-"use"]. The Septuagint translates the second word as Ancient Greek λοιμοὶ (loimoì), a word for pestilence or pest. The Vulgate interprets it as a name, and the KJV follows suit. I included the NRSV to show how a modern Protestant translation treats it. Hebrew doesn't have a lot of morphology for adjectives and adjectival nouns, so having a noun phrase followed by a noun in the construct case followed by a compound adjective with nothing in between doesn't surprise me. I would interpret the Hebrew as saying "The sons of Eli were sons of worthlessness [no-good men]".

We thus have a Hebrew figure of speech meaning "no good" (of men) (the female equivalent also occurs) being misinterpreted as "sons of Belial". That would be like interpreting "bitch" in "son of a bitch" as literally meaning "demon". Such is the nature of medieval biblical scholarship...

Anyway, that's my best guess. I'm not sure how to write this up in the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:37, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

What Hebrew noun corresponds to use in this term, by itself, without בְּלִי? The entry mentions “ya-al”, which suggests יָעַל. There is יֹעַל (yo'al, “he is made efficient”), but this is a verb form.  --Lambiam 12:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Shetland

Is the Celtic kaletos ety added here correct? I can't find any works supporting or even mentioning a connection to kaletos, and the cited paper merely argues that derivation from Calidones is "a strong candidate", not that it definitely does come from kaletos. See Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/2024/May#Lisbon for background; many other etys by this user have had to be reverted as incorrect or spurious. - -sche (discuss) 16:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

The same author (Andrew Jennings) has also published (according to his homepage) an article called "Hjaltland Revisited: The Place-name Shetland and its Celtic Origin", which implies that he believes the hypothesis (or did back in 2011). If there's no evidence of anyone else believing this, then we shouldn't put too much weight on what appears to be a fringe suggestion. I can't tell if the paper linked at the bottom of the entry has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal or if it's only been uploaded to academia.edu by the author. It doesn't seem to have any date of publication. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Searching for Shetland+Caledones is bringing up as little as searching for Shetland+kaletos did—only Jennings, AFAICT—so I've attributed his view to him; no objection if you or anyone else want(s) to reduce its prominence even further (say, move the whole suggestion to Further reading, or remove it). - -sche (discuss) 20:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I read the article. It is the author's preferred explanation and I find it a sound argument. The article was published in volume 87 of Norna-rapperter, which is peer-reviewed. The volume is titled Etymologiens plass i navneforskningen. Although I can't find it online, not even a table of contents, it must have appeared in it because there is what this review has to say about it:

Andrew Jennings bespricht die Möglichkeiten, das Erstglied des Namens Shetland auf eine Bezeichnung für die ursprünglichen keltischen Einwohner zurückzuführen.

Andrew Jennings discusses the possibilities to trace the first part of the name Shetland back to its original Celtic inhabitants.

I had already removed the mention of *kaletos because it is tentative and not important to the line of argument in the article. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Were the original inhabitants of Shetland even Celtic? I don't think Goidelic speakers ever settled there; are there traces of Pictish in the archipelago? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:20, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Jennings doesn't voice an opinion, but he discusses all the possibilities. He just calls them the pre-Norse inhabitants. That they were Celtic is an inferral of the reviewer. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 15:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

William Watson thought so in 1926, and he has a lot of academic standing. Watson argued for a *cat- origin rather than a *kalet- origin, but the Celtic origin of Shetland has been the mainstream view there for a century.

Watson, William J.; (1994), The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, Edinburgh, Birlinn, →ISBN, First published 1926. 24.108.18.81 02:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Just noting I have restricted the IP from editing content pages (they can still edit discussion pages) for reasons explained at Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup#Special:Contributions/24.108.18.81. Other edits need to be checked. - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

forest

Specifically, where Latin forestis comes from. I'm not all that enamoured with the Latin-internal explanation, as far as the semantics are concerned, but at least it would explain the form forestis. Germanic seems more promising, though I don't understand @Leasnam's deriving the word specifically from Proto-West Germanic *furhiþi when that would not explain the /st/ in both Latin and Germanic forms like Forst. Coromines & Pascual (cited on the Latin entry) describe the origin as ‘perhaps from a Frankish *forhist, a collective of/from *forha "pine"’. I can't seem to find a Germanic collective suffix like -hist, so I don't know what to make of this. Whatever this source has in mind, if it does explain the form *forhist then that would strike me as the best proposed etymology. Also it'd be nice to account for the gender mismatch between Latin~Romance (feminine) and Germanic (masculine) if possible.

Paging @Sokkjo as well. Nicodene (talk) 20:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Old High German has both forst m and forsti f (> Middle High German vorste f, perhaps > German Förste (plural)). The Proto-(West) Germanic *forhist has been around for some time if I'm not mistaken, and yes supposes an ending of -ist (not -hist, the h being part of the stem), but where this -ist comes from is also a mystery. If Latin foresta comes from Proto-West Germanic *forhu, the how is really unknown. The nearest thing is Old English fyrhþ and fyrhþe from Proto-West Germanic *furhiþi. I'm not saying definitively that I stand on this as a theory, but it hypothetically might possibly be arrived at (with lots of luck and magic), IF *furhiþi goes into Latin as *forisi- then back into Old High German where an excrescent -t is added then BACK into Latin...it'd be a mess. But thoughts are welcome Leasnam (talk) 22:22, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

@Nicodene: I think a Germanic etymology is the only reasonable explanation. Germanic does insert *s before *þ/t in some environments, but I think most likely is that WG *furhiþi merged with *hursti to form Continental WG *fur(h)isti. -- Sokkjō 22:06, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

So a sort of blend. Interesting. Perhaps that deserves an entry of its own. What might explain the modern Germanic forms being masculine? Nicodene (talk) 22:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Blended *fur(h)isti is also possible, and may alternatively be a blend of *furhu + *hursti (literally “fir-thicket”). The fact that Old High German forsti is feminine also agrees with *hursti f, and Old High German hurst is both m and f, a-decl and i- Leasnam (talk) 22:26, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I should’ve checked the gender of the descendants of *hursti.

It sounds like we all think *furhisti is the best (or least problematic) proposal? As for the *furhu + *hursti explanation, I don’t see how it is accounting for the first *i of *furhisti. Nicodene (talk) 22:55, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point. *furhiþi makes more sense. Leasnam (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless it derives from a consonant-stem Proto-West Germanic *furh (> Old English furh/fyrh), which I see we don't have (yet). Leasnam (talk) 23:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Shall we create an entry *fur(h)isti, then? The descendants seem to justify the form, and different possible explanations can always be mentioned in the etymology. Nicodene (talk) 23:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I have no objection :) Leasnam (talk) 23:50, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, a Germanic origin is likely considering it was first used in Francia. Any explanation should also account for the fact that Latin forestis specifically meant “king's forest”. I can't find a reference for this, but I wonder if the Latin is instead based on Proto-Germanic *furistaz (“first, ruler”), perhaps a contamination of an adjective Proto-West Germanic *furistī (“royal, the king's”) and *furhiþi (“forest”).

Also, important for the derivation from *furhiþi + *hursti, I can't find the spelling <forhist> in althochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Does a Germanic form with <h> really exist? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

@Caoimhin ceallach I've not been able to locate any forms showing a reflex of */x/, which does seem problematic for the aforementioned theories.

I've no objection to adding your *furistī theory to the entry *furhisti and perhaps even renaming the entry as such, depending on what the other resident Germanicists think. Nicodene (talk) 08:46, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Hungarian törpe ("dwarf")

Does anyone know the etymology of Hungarian törpe ("dwarfish, miniature; dwarf")? Seraphinanewt (talk) 13:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

If my understanding is correct, per the entry in Kiss Gábor's Etimologiai Szótár, it seems this is derived from obsolete verb töpik meaning something like "to wither up", by the addition of a frequentative -r suffix. We see a reflection of the resulting töpör- stem in reflexive / intransitive verb töpörödik (“to shrivel, to shrink”, see also the entry in the A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára). The term törpe arose as the present participle of the töpör- stem, by means of reduction of the second vowel to töpr-; addition of the (now-obsolete / dialectal) present participle suffix -e to töpre; then metathesis of the "p" and "r" to current form törpe.

That said, I don't entirely trust my grasp of the Hungarian, so I'll leave it to others more knowledgeable than I am to double-check the above and update the törpe entry as appropriate. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Nupedia

It may be an easy one to solve, but I couldn't find any specific reliable data as for the 1st element of the brand name Nupedia. (This was the project Wikipedia grew out from.)

A project presentation probably written by co-founder Larry Sanger suggests (without explicitly stating it) a derivation from the yod-dropped pronunciation of new – /nu(ː?)/.

Joseph Janes from University of Washington derives it from GNU in a 2015 podcast, but I think chronology makes this unlikely, see e.g. w:GNE (encyclopedia).

Anyone has reliable information in sight? Javítgató (talk) 16:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

A quote from How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia: “The computing power and capital to take on new projects at Bomis made it the right time to fulfill a dream of Wales's: creating an online encyclopedia. He wanted to call it Nupedia, again sticking with a GNU-inspired name, but without wanting to step on Stallman’s toes.”^[2] The book has a foreword by Wales, and the introduction states that the book would not have been possible without extensive interviews with “the principal enablers of Wikipedia”, including Wales.  --Lambiam 11:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Any relation between German fordern and fördern?

I dimly recall reading years ago something about German verb pairs centering around an umlauting mechanism, where the (usually transitive) one of the pair reflected some kind of ancient causal suffix or infix. Pairs like German fahren (“to go somewhere”, intransitive) and führen (“to lead”, transitive).

• Is my memory correct on this kind of mechanism in certain German verbs?
• Is this relevant for German fordern (“to demand, to require”) and fördern (“to support, to move something forward, to encourage”)?
• Even if not relevant, are fordern and fördern related? If so, how?

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

From what I can make out, both are related to words like fore and further. Wakuran (talk) 20:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

We actually have entries for both verbs' Proto-West Germanic ancestors: *forþ(a)rōn for fordern and *furþrijan for fördern. They are related, because they both go back ultimately to Proto-Germanic *furþą (“forward”), but they're not an intransitive/causative transitive pair (not least because they're both transitive). —Mahāgaja · talk 20:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both!

@Mahagaja, setting aside this particular verb pair, is my memory about umlaut and a causative element at all on the mark, as part of the derivation of certain German verbs? Or have I gotten my wires crossed? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

@Eirikr: fall and fell are one example. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:10, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

See also soak/suck, flay/fly, lay/lie, sit/set, sprint from Proto-Germanic *sprantijaną, lead from Proto-Germanic *laidijaną, twinge from Proto-Germanic *twangijaną, as well as Proto-Germanic *-janą. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, a lot of pairs like that in German. They're most apparent in the basic verbs used to describe placement and position: legen/liegen (equivalent to lay/lie), setzen/sitzen (set/sit), Quite often, subsequent linguistic evolution mean this isn't immediately clear - see the long etymology on hängen (where the umlauted forms have merged in the present tense, but not the past forms)

My favourite pair is schwimmen (to swim, to float) and schwemmen (to wash something away, derived as "to cause to swim"). Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

My favorite is drink/drench (= cause to drink), which corresponds to trinken/tränken. One pair that's still transparently intransitive/causative is ertrinken (“to drown”, intransitive)/ertränken (“to drown”, transitive). The PIE causative suffix *-éyeti took the o-grade of the root, which became a in Germanic, which was then umlauted, which is why so many of these causatives or former causatives still have /ɛ/-vocalism to this day: fell/fällen, set/setzen, legen (with secondary lengthening), hängen, schwemmen, drench/(er)tränken. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:54, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

hawk, hock (cough)

We give hawk ("try to cough up something from one's throat") as onomatopoeic, whereas we give hock ("cough heavily, especially causing uvular frication") as a variant of hack ultimately from PGmc. hakkōną ("chop, hoe"). I suspect hawk and hock are actually related to each other. Merriam-Webster gives hawk as "imitative", and hock as a variant of hawk (see their entries, but also this discussion of hawk-vs-hock). […] - -sche (discuss) 00:32, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

if MW is right then we should probably move hack (“cough”) out of the entry because it seems most likely to be imitative too. —Soap— 20:03, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

When you say we should ‘remove hack out of the entry’, are you suggesting that we should remove the ‘cough’ sense of the word hack from etymology 1 at the hack entry itself, perhaps creating a new etymology in the process, or are you referring to a different entry altogether? Overlordnat1 (talk) 05:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

yes, remove it and add a new etymology for it as a variant of hock or perhaps hawk, as i find it unlikely the semantics shifted from the physical motion to the sound effect independently. (But if even a single other dictionary DOES say it happened independently then we can go with that.) —Soap— 05:29, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point, I think it would be safest to move the "cough" sense to its own etymology section and then explain the possible origins there (that it could be from the "chop/cut" sense, or could be imitative); I'll do that. Etymonline says the "cough" sense of hack is attested since 1802, "perhaps from hack (v.1) on the notion of being done with difficulty, or else imitative"; v.1 is the "cut/chop" verb, which they say is attested "with a notion of 'get through by some effort,'" since 1955, from hack after "keep working away at" which is from the 14th century. We should also examine to what extent hawk, hock and hack have different definitions, vs should be harmonized. - -sche (discuss) 05:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a sensible approach. We could also do with adding some pronunciations and maybe regional tags as to ‘hawk/hock a loogie’ sounds very American, unlike to ‘hack up phlegm’ (often a precursor to ‘flobbing’). Also the pronunciation can vary wildly - some people actually say the words as ‘hock’ or ‘hawk’ but others say both as ‘hahk’ or say ‘hock’ (and occasionally ‘hawk’) so that it sounds closer to ‘hack’ in any case. Could flob come from phlegm+gob instead of simply being imitative btw? Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Etymology of "Alatri", "Alatrium", "Aletrium"

Clearly the word Alatri is the regular Alatrese development for what would have given Italian Alatrio (Alatrese has ´-i where Italian has ´-io, ´-ia, ´-i(i) or ´-ie), so Alātrium, a variant of Alētrium, but where does the Latin name Alētrium, whence Ancient Greek Ἀλέτριον (Alétrion), come from?

Antonio Sciarretta proposes that "The name seems to be built with an IE suffix *-ter-, which denotes an agent. Thus, the stem could be derived from the IE root *al- 'to grow, nourish', or even from a parallel root with a meaning 'to grind', from which the Armenian word alauri 'mill', originally reconstructed as *alatrio-".

Is this true? LorenzoF06 (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Allerwertester

just hoping someone can help with what i gather is meant to be a silly word ... Allerwertester ... it means bum, bottom, ass, rear end, but i cant really figure out what speech register it belongs to other than that it's obviously not vulgar. Google Translate says it means "best regards" and that sort of looks right for a literal translation of aller + wertester but it won't back-translate English "best regards" into anything even close to Allerwertester, space or no space. so Im hoping a native speaker here or a well-acquainted learner can give us a better etymology than the redlink we have right now. Best regards, —Soap— 19:58, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Not necessarily a native speaker, but the classifier "colloquial, humorous" looks about right. I'd say that it literally means something like "the most valuable", "the most worthy", but the exact connotations and semantic history eludes me. Wakuran (talk) 22:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Correct. The literal meaning is "most worthy one", which was originally a polite address. For the further development, I would say that in polite speech it can be a bit awkward to mention other persons' body parts, especially of course with women. So I suppose people would add "your most worthy" when they had to refer to a lady's body parts for some reason. I could easily imagine a polite 19th-century gentleman say something like "Meine Dame, seien Sie vorsichtig, dass Sie sich nicht Ihr allerwertestes Bein stoßen!" (My lady, please be careful lest you should bruise your most worthy leg!), because only mentioning the leg would touch on the indelicate. And then obviously the need for such euphemism was even stronger in case of the bottom. -- In terms of contemporary style I would call it "colloquial, euphemistic, humorous" along with DWDS (umgangssprachlich, verhüllend, scherzhaft). 84.63.31.91 07:18, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

so it's a nominalized adjective, not a re-singularized plural noun? OK. Even that much wasn't clear to me from my limited knowledge of German and Google Translate's attempt at figuring it out. If I decapitalize it on GTrans the meaning changes completely. Could we rewrite the etymology to say it's a nominalized adjective (even though we don't list that adjective yet), with a meaning like "most worthy"? Thanks, —Soap— 08:37, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

The declension is exactly as one expects for a nominalized adjective, with strong/weak/mixed declensions. Without much effort I also find neuter nominalizations with apparently the same sense (Versorge Dein Allerwertestes mit Feuchtigkeit). For a literal translation, most precious seems better (to me) than most worthy, which would correspond to *Allerwürdigster, as in, Wer kann die Glorie Deiner Würde, o Allerwürdigster, erreichen?^[3] As always, take good care of your most precious.  --Lambiam 09:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, may be better :) As I said, I translated it quite literally. 84.63.31.91 11:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Although on second thought neither is perfect. "Wert" is not the same as "wertvoll". It kinda unites the meanings of "worthy" and "precious".84.63.31.91 12:01, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Some dictionaries make a clear distinction between worthy of and just worthy, e.g. Collins. Merriam-Webster even has separate entries: worthy of, worthy.  --Lambiam 19:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

ovo

RFV of the etymology. @Benwing2 in diff removed the references I added, and called them "garbage etymology." Now there are no sources. Please also update Wikipedia if the source was wrong. 184.146.170.127 00:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Clearly, Plutarch cannot be considered an authority on Latin etymology. The source that was removed, The principal roots of the Greek tongue, a text from 1859, is also not up to present-day etymological standards. The etymology given for ovation (“sheep   f. ὄϊς  ιος whence ovation”) seems to imply that Latin ovis comes from Ancient Greek ὄϊς (óïs). These two terms are cognates, but only by having a common PIE ancestor. Claiming a Greek root for ovation is about as absurd as claiming that English ewe has a Greek root. The book is full of bloopers, such as deriving bias from βία (bía, “bodily strength”). De Vaan, who is an authority, does not even mention the imagined connection to ovis, but only remarks that the similar Ancient Greek verb εὐάζω (euázō, “to cry in honour of Dionysus”) comes from words like εὐαί (euaí), thereby suggesting that the Latin verb may have a similar onomatopoeic origin. If true, we can only guess what the Latin jubilant cry was.  --Lambiam 08:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Walde-Hoffmann goes a bit further by deriving it and εὐάζω (euázō) from Proto-Indo-European *ew-eh₂-ye-ti (literally “to do "ew"”). It seems fine, so I don't know why De Vaan doesn't follow it. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Walde-Hoffman writes, “aus *eu̯āi̯ō”.  --Lambiam 08:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Same thing. *ā = *eh₂ pre-Laryngeal Theory. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh sorry. I mistook it for a reliable and authoritative source just because it was a published book. I didn't read more than that page and the cover when copying from Wikipedia. Removed from Wikipedia. 184.146.170.127 12:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

soutien-gorge, soutien

The descendants list (of various descendants that look about like soutien, with no hint of gorge, and mean "bra") is currently divided between the two entries, some on one and some on the other, some on both. I suspect they should all be on one page, either all derived from soutien (which has the right form, but as our entry currently stands, not the right sense—maybe it's missing a sense for use as a clipping of soutien-gorge?), or all derived from soutien-gorge (which has the right sense, but the languages must've all clipped off the second part)... - -sche (discuss) 16:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

As soutien would basically just mean support in French, it'd appear as if the word was widely borrowed with the second part clipped. I can't find any evidence that soutien ever has been widely used with the sense bra in French. Wakuran (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

French soutien is also attested in that sense, but it's informal and not super common imo. PUC – 20:22, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I couldn't find a source for that. I didn't see any listing in any major dictionaries. Not sure if it would be due mostly to rarity or poor searching. Wakuran (talk) 22:14, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט, פּאָטעפֿאַלנע

Still thinking about these. I mean, I've found 5 whole dictionaries with this root at this point, both European and American dictionaries. Am I missing something here? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 15:09, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, used by Sholem Aleykhem. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Even if we assume that po- is just a prefix, this word is still mysterious. Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The only thing I can ascertain from this is that פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט (potefalnost) was probably derived from פּאָטעפֿאַלנע (potefalne), since East Slavic and Polish have a regular pattern of deriving such abstract nouns (-(н)ость (-(n)ostʹ)) from adjectives (-(н)ы (-(n)y)). In addition, the alternate forms suggest that this probably has non-negligibly unstressed vowels which is more typical of Russian or Belarusian than other Slavic languages. But that's all I got. I did find Тофалары, but that's a group of people in Irkutsk. What the hell would that have to do with Yiddish or even Jews?? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

-nost is surely Slavic and it is no problem to have both -nost and po- in a same word. Am sure it has nothing to do with Tofalars, but rather some Slavic or German word. F can sometimes interchange with KH in Russian and Ukrainian dialects, but "potekhalnost" is not a word neither in no language. @Vahagn Petrosyan it can not be related to Tefal (some people use it on their frypans), because Tefal was not existing in the times of Sholem Aleykhem, but honestly am was also thinking about it LOL. Can this word (ot its root) be from Hebrew? Like, תפל or טפל? Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Initially, I'd have guessed that it could have been a Slavic-Germanic merger with a variant of German Teufel, but looking it up, it appears as if the Yiddish variant is טײַוול (tayvl), so it's most likely just a shot in the dark. Besides, the Devil might be less significant in Jewish circles than in Christian, anyway. Wakuran (talk) 11:53, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Θούλη, Thule

I am exploring Thule, from Θούλη (Thoúlē), and I wish to bring up the idea that Proto-Celtic *tullos (“perforated”) (referring to the ragged shorelines of islands in that area) might be a possibility. Celtic languages have been spoken in that area since ancient times, and Celtic initial-mutation could account for the alternation between Θ- and T-. 24.108.18.81 16:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, where exactly are you saying Celtic languages have been spoken since ancient times? —Mahāgaja · talk 16:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Celtic languages have been spoken in Britain since at leat 500 BCE, and probably before w:Insular_Celts#Linguistics. Thule is likely to have described a vague and extensive area - most of the northern North Atlantic has "perforated coasts". The name Ultima Thule would be given to the furthest known bit at any given time. 24.108.18.81 17:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The first account using the name, the travelogue On The Ocean by Pytheas, was written around 325 BCE. (Unfortunately, the work was lost; the earliest surviving text using the name is The Histories, written by Polybius c. 140 BCE, who is sceptical of Pytheas's account.) We don't know how Proto-Celtic was pronounced, but it was no longer spoken when Polybius was travelling. A Celtic language was then probably spoken in the southern part of Britain; it is not clear how far north it had spread. At that time, Ancient Greek Θούλη was still pronounced /tʰúː.lɛː/, with an aspirated /tʰ/ as in some pronunciations of tea, not with a /θ/ as in thin. Nothing suggests a leniting mutation.  --Lambiam 17:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

We don't know where Thule even was. Nicodene (talk) 17:30, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

If it comes to that, Pytheas and Polybius didn't know where it was either. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:54, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Nicodene (talk) 21:46, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

It was not necessary to know precisely where it was to name a general area. 24.108.18.81 04:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Sw pömsa "sleep" and pömsig "sleepy"

this is a companion post to the RFV i posted earlier today, but since this involves a separate word i figured it would be best to post here too. basically my question is, whether this word family is

1. a well-known children's language game (similar to Pig Latin and jeringonza) involving transformations like C₁VC₂C₃-INFL > pVC₂C₁-INFL, which also produces other words,
2. a once-off formation that does come from sömn ~ sömnig but isnt an active word formation process even among small children, or
3. a word in its own right, that has nothing to do with sömn.

The question of how it got to mean "sexually exhausted" will probably be answered if and only if we can find actual citable use with that meaning, which i hope others will help with at RFV. Best regards, —Soap— 12:38, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Likely #3. I don't know of any common Swedish language games that would produce pöms- from sömn-. The sound -Vms- is fairly common among imitative words in Swedish, though, such as mums (yum), plums (splash), bums (immediately), grums (dregs), gramse (angry, grumpy), vimsig (scatterbrained) and trams/ flams/ jams (silliness, nonsense). Wakuran (talk) 17:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

There apparently exists a similar language game, P-språket, (P-language) but there, 'sömn' would become 'söpömn', also, the Disney comic character Eega Beeva speaks similarly, but in that case, 'sömn' would become 'psömn'. From what I can find out, pömsig is dialectal and/ or baby talk. Wakuran (talk) 23:26, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

According to this site, the word was popularized through a 60s' comedy sketch, which sounds plausible, but might require a better source. [4] Wakuran (talk) 15:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Pøms in Norwegian Glomdal dialect means a woman shoe of some kind. Also, should try to check out this word in Knoparmoj dictionaries and others jargons alike. Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I suspect that comes from German Pumps, from English pumps. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Sounds likely, cf. køntri from country (music genre). Wakuran (talk) 14:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes of course! Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

вунь

Ideas? More specifically, where the palatalization may have come from w.r.t. (possible) cognates like Russian вон (von)? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 02:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

English Khitan

We currently say this was borrowed directly from Khitan 𘱿𘲫 (*qid ún) under influence from Chinese 契丹 (Qìdān), presumably as some kind of learned borrowing from the reconstruction, but the linked source doesn't really support that, as the reconstructed endonym would give something like Khitai. I can think of one instance where a reconstructed endonym has become the predominant term - Jurchen - and Khitai may be another instance, but it seems more likely to me that Khitan is simply a learned borrowing from Middle Chinese 契丹 (kʰɨt̚ tɑn). I appreciate the line is quite blurry, though, since we're dealing with a Middle Chinese transcription of a Khitan term. Theknightwho (talk) 12:40, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Such words are copied around by historians, journalists and other lesser-educated people, without investigating the linguistic points of departure, which is what we do as a first reflex to make sense of the world, and memorize the polyglot knowledge orderly. For them it contains -an from Latin -ānus as much as does Mayan, dovetailing with Cathayan in previous historic accounts. **Khitanan only exists not due to silliness. What the question then is, is indeed blurry. Fay Freak (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

paramodita (Old Sundanese)

Paramodita roughly means 'happiness' or 'delighted' in Old Sundanese according to (Coolsma, 1913). And I am very sure that this comes from Sanskrit, considering how classic the word is (dated from Carita Waruga Guru in late 1600s) and how it sounds very Sanskrit-y. From what I've searched, this might came from Sanskrit प्र- (pra-) and Sanskrit मृडति (mṛḍati), based on the Pali pamudita and Javanese pramudita. What do you think? Udaradingin (talk) 15:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Japanese しまうた

@Fish bowl I did not find it in 奄美方言分類辞典 (Amami Yamatohama dialect [ryn]), or just about most Ryukyuan dictionaries I have. It only exists in Taketomi dictionary 竹富方言辞典 as ɕimautə and in the Hatoma dictionary 鳩間方言辞典 as ɕìmáʔùtà. Both refer to a folk song from Okinawa. I believe it is a recent local innovation, deriving from shima "community" and uta "song". Chuterix (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Most Ryukyuan dialects tend to use sima as meaning "community", not just "island". Chuterix (talk) 01:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, especially since the Japanese Wikipedia describes the term as originating from the Amami region, and since it seems to be one of the major cultural exports. Thanks for looking it up for me. —Fish bowl (talk) 02:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Indonesian layung

Layung means 'the reddish afterglow of sunset'. Perhaps this may be related to lembayung (“violet”). What do you think?

Udaradingin (talk) 02:13, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Why derived and not borrowed?

I wonder what's the distinction that make most words borrowed from Arabic go to the derived Category:Turkish_terms_derived_from_Arabic and only very few go to the Category:Turkish_terms_borrowed_from_Arabic Munzirtaha (talk) 23:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

@Munzirtaha probably because they were either borrowed from some other language, which got them (directly or indirectly) from Arabic, or inherited from Ottoman Turkish, which got them them (directly or indirectly) from Arabic. We only use "borrowed" to refer to a language getting a term directly from the other language. If you think about it, there's a big difference between a word like Turkish gitar, which came from Spanish (probably by way of French), which borrowed it from Arabic maybe half a millenium ago, and Turkish Dübey, which was borrowed directly from modern Arabic by modern Turkish speakers. Both were borrowed from Arabic and ended up in Turkish, but only the second counts as being a Turkish borrowing from Arabic.

If you think about it, the Turkish people have been in contact with people speaking Arabic or using Arabic words in other languages for so long that it would be really surprising if they hadn't picked up most of their Arabic vocabulary long before the creation of modern Turkish. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I should add that all terms that come from other languages go into the "derived from" categories, including those that are also in the "borrowed from" categories. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. In this entry e.g. sur Inherited from Ottoman Turkish سور, from Arabic سُور (sūr). I meant to say the Ottoman Turkish is borrowed from Arabic not that the modern Turkish is borrowed from Arabic. Is this syntax correct? Or the order doesn't imply such a thing. What if I want to say word1 is borrowed from word2 or word3 where the order is not relevant? Is there a documentation for this? Munzirtaha (talk) 12:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

The Turkish < Ottoman Turkish stage would be inheritance, but the borrowing template would only be used on the Ottoman Turkish entry, not the modern Turkish one. {{bor}} and the "borrowed" category are only for direct borrowings, with no intermediary, even an older stage of the same language (if we treat it as a separate language on en.wikt). I'm not sure about your given example of word1 < word2 or word3 - do you have an example? Is it a case where it's not known which source is the correct one? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 13:10, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. An example is the Ottoman Turkish word ابراش which has two different meanings and seems to be borrowed from two Arabic words أبرش and أبرص. The 1st. meaning is a color and the 2nd. is a disease. Don't quote me for this since I am not an authority by any mean. So, assuming I understand the references correctly, what's the correct way to write this? Munzirtaha (talk) 20:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Homonymous terms with different etymologies get two separate entries on the same page, with headings Etymology 1 and Etymology 2.

Do you have a source for Arabic أبرص meaning a disease (presumably scabies). At our page for Turkish abraş we only give the adjective, the colour sense (“dapple”), but in Ottoman Turkish the sense was more generally “speckled” and could also mean “leprous” (of a skin), so it is a small step from there to a disease characterized by a mottled skin.  --Lambiam 20:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Actually أبرص is one with leprous disease and the two words sounds similar. What kind of source do you need? If you understand Arabic, check any Arabic dictionary (Kamus) for it. Now for the abraş entry, it's me who added it. But my question here is because I felt I did something wrong when I wrote "Inherited from Ottoman Turkish ابراش, from Ottoman Turkish ابرش". I now feel like I should say "Inherited from Ottoman Turkish ابراش or from Ottoman Turkish ابرش" or may be I should says "from ابراش or ابرش". Being new here, I need to know the correct syntax Munzirtaha (talk) 21:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Ottoman Turkish was hardly a spoken language, and inasmuch as it was spoken, it was mostly not by native speakers, who spoke a language closer to both Old Anatolian Turkish and present-day Turkish, grammatically and lexically. There is no corpus of written texts in this language. For example, izlemek survived from Old Anatolian Turkish to modern Turkish; the Ottoman Turkish verb was تعقیب ایتمك (tʿaḳib itmek), which became takip etmek. For non-religious terms coming from Arabic, it is a safe bet though that they entered the modern Turkish lexicon from Ottoman Turkish, often with Classical Persian as a stepping stone. Hardly any Turk would have known the meaning of Ottoman Turkish عكس‌عمل, via Persian from Arabic عَكْس (ʕaks) + ال (al-) + عَمَل (ʕamal), which became Turkish aksülamel but led a dictionary-only existence.  --Lambiam 20:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks all, but if I understand you correctly then all the entries at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Turkish_terms_borrowed_from_Arabic is wrongly categories as borrowed where they are actually derived. Because most if not all of them are not borrowed to the modern Turkish directly but through Ottoman Turkish at least, long ago. Am I right? Munzirtaha (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Antarctica

When was Antarctica discovered? Your first impression will be to say to me: "Google it my bro, it's like 1820 by some sailor." Yeah, I get that somebody saw something in 1820. I get that the Wilkes expedition discovered coastline in the 1840's. But couldn't those guys have been seeing a mere big island, as far as they knew? When was a solid concept of the modern scientific notion of the "Continent of Antarctica" in the works or actually established, such that citations we can find will be connected to the real actual concept of the real continent? I've got a book from 1891 by a respected geographer cited at Antarctica who was really doubting what Antarctica really was- was it a continent that had been bona fide established like the other continents? He writes: "The five largest islands or peninsulas in which the crests of the World Ridges break through the uniform covering of the hydrosphere are termed continents, and designated by the names Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. They are distinguished from other islands and peninsulas by size alone, Australia being ten times larger than New Guinea, and Africa ten times larger than Arabia, these being the greatest island and peninsula not called continents. The elevated region round the South Pole is crowned by the unexplored and scarcely discovered continent of Antarctica." after listing five continents two sentences earlier. You'd think he'd include Antarctica as a sixth continent if it had been scientifically established. I draw attention to the words "scarcely discovered". --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: this seems like something you should ask at "w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities", as it's not etymology-related. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Apologies for my poor phrasing. The origin of the scientific sense is an etymology question, right? Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:07, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: actually I don’t really see how this is an etymology issue. It seems more like just trying to establish when a particular sense of the word came into use. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Be cause in 1891 they still had no clue about 60% of the coastlines, so many English maps from before 1900 are not using the name Antarctica at all (sadly, i cant find so many non-English maps from this time). Many maps (until 1890-s!) have ocean instead of land in the South Pole area, even when it is known about land around it. So your question is very fair. Tollef Salemann (talk) 13:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Is this an issue of the etymology of the term? The Spanish explorers who named the North-American peninsula California believed it was an island. But the indigenous people had known for ages that it is a peninsula. So when was California “discovered”? When Francisco de Ulloa found out it was not an island, did he “rediscover” California?  --Lambiam 19:37, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point! Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

According to Dubrovin (Территориальное деление Антарктиды), the Antarctic peninsula was thought as an island archpelago until some expedition in 1937, but still was shown on maps as an island in early 1940-s. Also, see Buache who divided the main land of Antarctica into two parts (the one of them is shown as part of Australia pr New Zealand). Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The term "Antarctica" as referring to the southernmost continent originates, as per the OED, in 1594. The earliest quote that establishes Antarctica as a sort-of-real-continent would be around or later than the 1850s, when ships when circling the new area. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Perhaps of interest: [5] [6]. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think those by Ioaxxere are a separate sense: a mythological southern continent. So maybe this is a tea riom discussion??? Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems like the same kinda story as with Anian strait, but if Anian strait has changed its name after its real discovering, the Antarctica is still named the same. Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

bull session

Etymology? PUC – 18:10, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

One is on the page, short for bull and/or bullsh*t session - a session where people sit around and (talk) bullsh*t...(?) Leasnam (talk) 01:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Are you perhaps alluding to the origin of bull (“frivolous talk”) (perhaps from Middle English boule) ? — This unsigned comment was added by Leasnam (talk • contribs) at 01:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC).

One could say that bull is {{combining form of}} of bullshit. Fay Freak (talk) 02:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)