bradshaw of the future

native English epicene pronouns

2012-01-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

There have been many attempts to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun into English. I can't see the point; we already have one that serves the purpose: they. Anyway, one of the suggestions is Middle English ou.

But did this Middle English epicene pronoun ou really exist?

Dennis Baron, in Grammar and Gender (1986), page 197, says

In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular ou: "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces ou to Middle English epicene a, used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of a for he, she, it, they, and even I.

William Marshall, in Provincialisms of the vale of Gloucester, writes:

Beside these and various other misapplications (as they for them - I for me, &c.), an extra pronoun is here in use - ou : a pronoun of the singular number; - analogous with the plural they ; - being applied either in a masculine, a feminine, or a neuter sense. Thus "ou will" expresses either he will, she will, or it will.

So there is an epicene pronoun ou, but it's not Middle English; it's part of the Gloucester dialect. It derives from Middle English a, which in turn derives from Old English he "he" and heo "she". Baron goes on to say that by the 12th and 13th centuries, he and heo were "almost or wholly indistinguishable in pronunciation" (he is quoting the OED's etymological entry for she). It is for this reason that she appeared: in order to distinguish the masculine and feminine third person pronouns.

So was Middle English a really an epicene pronoun? Well, we have examples of it from Trevisa standing for both "he" and "she", as in these cites from the OED:

1387 J. Trevisa MS. Cott. Vesp. D. vii. 29 b, He ran home to uore & prayede hys wyf þat hue wolde helpe for to saue hym,‥bote a dude þe contrary.
- from the OED's entry heo ε. ME ha, a.

"He ran home in advance and prayed that his wife would help save him… but she did the opposite."

c1400 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (Tiber. D. vii) vi. xxix, in R. Morris & W. W. Skeat Specim. Early Eng. (1884) II. 243 Kynge Edward hadde byhote duc William þat a [a1387 St. John's Cambr. he] scholde be kynge after hym ef he dyede wyþoute chyldern.
- from the OED's entry he ζ. ME e, ME–18 (dial.) a.

"King Edward had promised duke William that he should be king after him if he died without children."

It's in Shakespeare too. Here Hamlet is talking about Polonius.

1604 Shakespeare Hamlet iii. iii. 73 Now might I doe it, but now a is a praying, And now Ile doo't, and so a goes to heauen.

Modern versions have

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;

But there seems to be a difference between a and singular they. In the examples above, the antecedents have known genders. Singular they is usually not used when the gender of the antecedent is known. What I'd like to know is: can Middle English a (or Gloucester ou) be used when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or irrelevant?

Consider these sentences with they/their:

Everyone loves their mothers, but they don't care for their fathers.
Do not speak to the driver or distract their attention without good cause.

Can Middle English a or Gloucester ou be used in this way?

yeast and eczema

2012-01-21T16:05:00.001-05:00

yeast is from Old English ġist from Proto-Germanic *jest- from Proto-Indo-European *yes- "to boil, bubble".

*yes- became Greek ζέω (zeō) "ferment, boil, bubble". Combined with ἐκ "out" gave ἐκζέω (ekzeō) "boil out or over, break out (in disease)" and ἔκζεμα (ekzema) "a cutaneous eruption, eczema".

khapra and phthisis

2011-12-19T16:21:00.002-05:00

This is a khapra beetle.

The name is from Hindi खप्रा khaprā "destroyer" from खपना khapanā "to destroy". This is cognate with Sanskrit क्षापयति kṣāpayati, the causative of kṣiyate "to destroy". This is from Proto-Indo-European *dhgʷhi-yo-, the zero-grade suffixed form of *dhgʷhei- "to perish, destroy".

The zero-grade suffixed form *dhgʷhi-n-wo- became Greek φθίνειν "to decay" and φθίσις "wasting, consumption", borrowed as phthisis, an older word for tuberculosis.

*dhgʷhei- is found in the famous phrase *k̂leu̯os n̥dhgʷhitom, which some claim is an example of a reconstructed PIE phrase.

ciao and slave

2011-11-21T12:23:00.002-05:00

Who knew that Italian ciao was a variation of schiavo "(I am your) servant" from medieval Latin sclavus "slave".

slave was borrowed from Old French esclave, which is related to the Latin sclavus. The Latin word was borrowed into English as Slav.

Further etymology of sclavus is uncertain. In my previous post I write that Slav and slave seem to be derived from Proto-Slavic *slovo "word" or *slava "fame, glory" but I think I was wrong. The OED says Old Slavic Slovēne is supposed to be derived from slovo, but is it really? The whole thing is a bit of a muddle.

etiquette and stigma

2011-11-15T16:51:00.000-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *steig- "to stick" became Proto-Germanic *stikkēn "to be stuck" (AHD) and Old Low German stekan. This was borrowed into Old French as estiquer "to stick, fix", becoming estiquette then etiquet, borrowed into English as ticket. The French word was for ‘a little note, breuiate, bill, or ticket; especially such a one, as is stucke vp on the gate of a Court, signifying the seisure &c of an inheritance by order of iustice’ (Cotgrave).

The same Old French estiquette is also the source of English etiquette, which was first used to mean "The prescribed ceremonial of a court; the formalities required by usage in diplomatic intercourse." The semantic shift from "ticket, label" to "prescribed routine" presents no difficulty, the OED tells us.

In Greek the suffixed from *stig-yo- became στίζω stizō "to prick, puncture", and στίγμα stigma "mark".

*steig- is also found in raita and possibly tiger.

etymology at dawn

2011-10-08T12:35:00.003-04:00

Friends have been raving about Sex at Dawn: the Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, a book that questions widely held notions about the origins of human sexuality. I don't know much about anthropology, however at least one anthropologist has big problems with this book. But here on page 83, Ryan and Jethá talk about a subject I am familiar with:

Robert Farris Thompson, American's most prominent historian of African art, says that funky is derived from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, meaning "positive sweat" of the sort you get from dancing or having sex, but not working. One's mojo, which has to be "working" to attract a lover, is Ki-Kongo for "soul". Boogie comes from mbugi, meaning "devilishly good." And both jazz and jism likely derive from dinza, the Ki-Kongo word for "to ejaculate."

Have questions about etymology? Ask an art historian!

The fact is that the origin of all these words is unknown, except for funky, which is probably from French.

The reference is Flash of the spirit: African and Afro-American art and philosophy by Robert Farris Thompson. This is what he writes:

Many a Ki-Kongo-derived word has been described by etymologists as "origin unknown." The word "jazz" is probably creolized Ki-Kongo: it is similar in sound and original meaning to "jizz," the American vernacular for semen. And "jizz," suggestive of vitality, appears to derive from the Ki-Kongo verb dinza, "to discharge one's semen, to come." Dinza was creolized in New Orleans and elsewhere in black United States into "jizz" and "jism."

The slang term "funky" in black communities originally referred to strong body oder, and not to "funk," meaning fear or panic. The black nuance seems to derive from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, "bad body odor," and is perhaps reinforced by contact with fumet, "aroma of food and wine," in French Louisiana.

He goes on; you can read the whole thing.

This is pure speculation, as far as I can see, and in fairness Thompson qualifies his claims with "seems" and "probably" and "appears". It is not etymology; etymology requires evidence. As Grant Barrett says in his review of Daniel Cassidy's book How the Irish Invented Slang:

Evidence. Above all, Cassidy needs to support his claims with published evidence that shows the etymological path. Dated, continuous, in-context quotations from any written source will always be superior evidence over phonetic speculation based upon national, linguistic, or ethnic pride.

I am bothered that the authors of Sex at Dawn would simply repeat Thompson's claims, without bothering to consult an expert.

Sanskrit and hetero

2011-09-30T11:06:00.002-04:00

Sanskrit was borrowed from संस्कृत saṃskr̥ta "put together, well-formed", from sam "together" and kr̥ "to make".

kr̥ is from Proto-Indo-European *kʷer- "to make".

sam is from Proto-Indo-European *sem- "one, together with". The zero-grade form *sm̥- combined with the adjectival suffix of comparative *-tero- to form *sm̥-tero-, becoming Greek ἕτερος heteros (earlier hateros) "one of two, other". This was borrowed as the English suffix hetero- as in heterogeneous, heterosexual.

And the o-grade form *som- became Greek ὁμός homos "one and the same", borrowed as English homo- as in homogeneous, homosexual.

Embassytown

2011-09-19T23:00:00.000-04:00

I don't know how China Miéville does it. He takes what could be a really silly idea, treats it seriously, and sustains it for a whole novel. In The City & The City it was the idea of two cities occupying the same space. In his latest excellent book, Embassytown, it's a race of aliens whose language is impossible.

The Ariekei's language, simply called Language, has a phonological and grammatical structure that was easily learned by the first human linguists who studied it (using a science-fictiony methodology called Accelerated Contact Linguistics). But they discovered that in order for the Ariekei to understand an utterance in Language, the utterance must have a single sentient mind behind it.

There's an additional complication: the Ariekei have two vocal tracts, which produce different words simultaneously. So an utterance in Language consists of two voices, both of which must be present. This means that a single human can't speak Language. But two humans speaking simultaneously can't speak Language either, because there is no unified thought behind each word. The only people who can communicate with the Ariekei are the Ambassadors: pairs of identical clones, trained and modified since birth to present a unified mind.

For the Ariekei, Language and thought are the same, and furthermore Language constrains their thought. It's the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to the extreme. This means they can't lie:

For Hosts [Ariekei], speech was thought. It was as nonsensical to them that a speaker could say, could claim, something it knew to be untrue as, to me, that I could believe something I knew to be untrue. Without Language for things that didn't exist, they could hardly think them; they were vaguer by far than dreams. What imaginaries any of them could conjure at ll must be misty and trapped in their heads.

They can make similes, but in order to speak a simile, they must first enact it. The main character takes part in a ritual so that the Ariekei would have the simile like the girl who ate what was given her. They can't make metaphors, since a metaphor is a lie. They can say I am like the girl who ate what was given her but not I am the girl who ate what was given her.

The main character's husband, Scile, is a linguist. He makes this meta-observation:

"Does it every occur to you that this language is impossible, Avice?" he said. "Im, poss, ih, bul. It makes no sense. They don't have polysemy. Words don't signify: they are the referents. How can they be sentient and not have symbolic language? How do their numbers work? It makes no sense.

I agree. I think he means signify in a Saussurian sense: words are signifiers which represent things or concepts, the signified. In Language, words aren't signifiers, they are doors to thought itself.

Scile says about how the Ariekei perceive the Ambassadors:

The Ariekei think they're hearing one mind but they're not… It's like we can only talk to them because of a mutual misunderstanding. What we call their words aren't words: they don't, you know, signify. And what they call our minds aren't minds at all."

But if their words don't signify, what about this:

"They shift tense," he said. "When they mentioned the negotiations they - the Ariekei, I mean - were in present discontinuous, but then they shifted into the elided past-present.

So Language has tense, apparently. But what is the point of tense, if not to signify? Either Language has tense and signifies, or it doesn't signify, therefore it doesn't have tense. But if it doesn't signify, how can humans understand it?

Scile answers this question: we don't understand it.

We can't learn it, Scile said. All we can do's teach ourselves something with the same noises, which works quite differently. We jury-rigged a methodology, as we had to. Our minds aren't like theirs. We had to misunderstand Language to learn it.

So at its heart it's a silly idea (but you could say that about a lot of science fiction). But Miéville makes it real.

People who believe that language constrains thought - for example, that English speakers couldn't conceive of Schadenfreude until we borrowed the word from German, or that Inuit words for snow causes Inuits to perceive the world differently, or that using lifeless, imitative phrases will force you to stop thinking - those people should read this book. This book asks "What would a language that constrained thought really look like?" And the answer is "Completely alien."

geas, bid, infest

2011-09-08T14:16:00.003-04:00

From Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith (the sequel to the sequel to Wee Free Men):

'We is under one o' them big birds,' said Daft Wullie, keeping his eyes averted from the witch's blind stare.
'He means a geas, miss,' said Rob Anybody, glaring at his brother. 'It's like a - '
'- a tremendous obligation that you cannot disobey,' said Miss Treason. 'I ken what a geas is.

In Irish folklore, a geis/geas, pronounced [gɛʃ], can be a taboo, or a positive obligation, or a curse. It's from Irish Gaelic geis, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷhedh- "to beg, wish for".

In English *gʷhedh- became bid "to ask, pray" (bid "to proclaim", as in forbid, is from a different source).

The affixed form *n̥-gʷhedh-to- meaning something like "unwished for" perhaps? (the AHD says "inexorable") became Latin infestus "hostile" and infestāre "to assail, molest", borrowed into English as infest.

भारत के रॉयल न्यायालयों की स्प्लेंडर महाराजा

2011-08-23T16:58:00.004-04:00

This is a T-shirt from the Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

It's a shame that the script couldn't be rendered more elegantly.

Devanagari script is an abugida: consonant letters are read with an accompanying vowel, so स is sa. Other vowels are represented by diacritics: सी sī, से se सु su, etc. To indicate that the consonant letter should not be read with an accompanying vowel, a diacritic called virama is used: स् is s.

And usually when two or more consonants are clustered, they are combined using halved forms of the letters called conjucts. So स् s plus प pa is combined as स्प spa.

Two words on this shirt use virama when they could have used conjuncts. These words
न् यायालयों
स् प् लेंदार
could have been written more elegantly as
न्यायालयों
स्प्लेंदार

Whatever software they used to render the script displayed it… not wrong, but it could have been better.

The text is भारत के रॉयल न्यायालयों की स्प्लेंडर महाराजा bhārat ke răyal nyāyālayoṃ kī spleṃḍar mahārājā, which is Hindi for "splendour maharaja of the royal courts of India". In my inexpert opinion, it might have been better with mahārājā at the front like it is in English.

Helpful advice to brow-beat your vocabulary into submission

2011-08-04T21:54:00.002-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen: The Proper English Foundation. "The Proper English Foundation is similar to the Queen’s English Society, but slightly more militant." Be sure to check out the extremely informative articles on the Académie Von Anglais, George Orwell, and How languages don't evolve. And of course, The English-Speaking World.

stomach and zawn

2011-07-14T23:51:00.001-04:00

The AHD gives the Proto-Indo-European root as *stom-en- "Denoting various body parts and orifices". In Greek it's στόμα "mouth", whence στόμαχος "throat, gullet" then "stomach", and then borrowed as Latin stomachus, Old French stomaque, borrowed as English stomach. The English word was first spelled stomak/stomack, it seems that it was later respelled stomach after the Latin spelling.

In Celtic it became Middle Breton staffn, modern Breton staoñ "palate", Welsh safn "mouth, jaws, palate", and Cornish sâwn "cleft, fissure, ravine". The Cornish word was borrowed as zawn, a fissure or cave in a coastal cliff.

celebrity Sanskrit tattoos

2011-06-21T18:13:00.005-04:00

Celebrity Tattoo Artists Urged to Get Their Sanskrit Right!

Just how wrong are these famous Sanskrit tattoos?

Beckham's tattoo is sometimes described as Sanskrit and sometimes described as misspelled, but it is neither.

Rihanna's Bhagavad Gita tattoo is reported to contain misspellings, but as far as I can see any mistakes are very small - although it is missing some words.

Gillian Anderson's wrist tattoo is the only serious mistake I've found. She says it means "every day", but it looks to me like प्रत्याहार pratyāhāra "Drawing back, marching back, retreat; Keeping back, withholding; Restraining the organs; Dissolution of the world" etc. I think it was meant to be प्रत्यह pratyaha "every day".

Jessica Alba's ink looks fine, altho it's upside down in all the pictures: पद्म padma "lotus".

Esha Deol has the gāyatrī mantra on her back - with added pluti.

Katy Perry and Russell Brand recently got the same Sanskrit tat on their right arms. Everyone is saying it's "Anuugacchati Pravaha", which apparently means "go with the flow".

However, the tattoo is actually अनुगच्छतु प्रवाहं anugacchatu pravāhaṃ. Let's look at the words separately.

The first word is the third person singular imperative of anugam "to follow" - etymologically "to go after" (anu is "after" and gam is "go"). anugacchatu might translate as "let one follow". I guess "let one follow the current" is a good translation of "go with the flow". This writer says the word should be अनुगच्छति anugacchati, but that's third person singular present - "he follows". It seems to me that anugacchatu "let one follow" is better.

It seems to me that the second word is a mistake, albeit a very small one. It should be प्रवाहम् pravāham, the accusative form of pravāha "stream, current". प्रवाहम् pravāham becomes प्रवाहं pravāhaṃ only if there is a following word that triggers sandhi. There is no following word, so I think the phrase should be अनुगच्छतु प्रवाहम्.

(anugam "to follow" is related to juggernaut, come, adventure, acrobat.)

newfangled and pagan

2011-06-02T23:25:00.010-04:00

newfangled first meant "caught up in a new experience". -fangled is from Middle English *fangel- maybe meaning "inclined to take", related to Old English fōn/fang "to grasp", cognate with German fangen "to ~~take~~ catch".

Closely related to the verb is the noun fang "plunder, spoils". It also meant "an instrument for capturing or holding", and this led to it being used to refer to canine teeth, or the dangerous teeth of any animal.

It's from a nasalized form of Proto-Indo-European *paḱ-/*paǵ- "to fasten". This root became Latin pāgus "of or belonging to a country community, civilian, inhabitant of a country community" (from "boundary staked out on the ground"). pāgānus initially referred to someone who lived in the country. This apparently became post-classical Latin paganus "heathen".

There are three possible reasons why the sense of paganus developed into "heathen".

1) Heathens lived in the country.
2) paganus also meant "civilian" as opposed to "soldier". Since Christians considered themselves soldiers of Christ, they used the term for "civilian" for non-Christians.
3) paganus had an intermediary sense "outsider", as in someone outside the city, and this came to be applied to people outside the community.

blasphemy and markhor

2011-05-06T17:30:00.003-04:00

blasphemy was originally blasfemie, respelled with ph by scholars who wanted to show off. It's borrowed from Old French blasfemie, from Latin blasphēmia, from Greek βλασϕημία "slander, blasphemy".

Greek -φημος is "speaking", from φημί "to speak, from *bheh₂-.

βλασ- might have meant "evil", as in βλάσϕημος "evil speaking". The AHD gives *ml̥s-bheh₂-mo- "speaking evil" as a possible etymon for βλάσϕημος. *ml̥s- is a form of *mel- "false, bad, wrong".

*mel- is found in Latin malus "bad" and male "ill", as in malevolence and malaria.

markhor, a wild goat found in central Asia, is borrowed from a Persian word that I think is spelled مارخور mārkhūr. It's thought to be a combination of مار mār "snake" and خوردن khūrdān "to eat" (as in manticore). The OED says this might be a folk etymology, but helpfully informs us that "A tradition that certain ungulates hate and consume snakes is well evidenced in medieval Persian and Arabic zoological literature."

Anyway, Persian mār "snake" is derived from *mel-.

pukka, cutcha, cook, pumpkin

2011-04-25T16:44:00.003-04:00

"It was a great shock to me when she became engaged to this man Fink-Nottle, but I accepted the situation because I thought that that was where her happiness lay. Though stunned, I kept silent."

"Very white."

"I said nothing that would give her a suspicion of how I felt."

"Very pukka."

- PG Wodehouse, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

In Indian English, pukka is "sure, certain, reliable" and in British slang, "excellent, suberb". It's borrowed from Hindi or Panjabi पक्का pakkā "cooked, ripe, mature, thorough, substantial, permanent". This is related to Sanskrit pakva "cooked, ripe", from pac "to cook". The Proto-Indo-European root is *pekʷ- "to cook".

In contrast to pakka, there is cutcha "imperfect, slight, temporary, makeshift", from Hindi कच्चा kaccā "raw, unripe, uncooked". This is derived from the negative prefix ka plus pac.

The assimilated form *kʷekʷ- became Latin coquō "to cook" and coquus "a cook". The noun was borrowed into Old English as cōc, becoming cook.

In Greek, *pekʷ- became πέπων "ripe". Borrowed into Latin as pepōn-, becoming French pompon, a word for a kind of melon, borrowed into English as pompion. pumpkin is a variant of pompion with the -kin diminutive suffix (also found in names like Watkins and words like firkin, napkin).

myna, musth, masti, meat, mate

2011-04-05T16:18:00.003-04:00

myna is borrowed from Hindi मैना mainā, derived from Sanskrit madana-śārikā a kind of bird, "with reference to the affectionate behaviour of kinds of birds" (OED). मदन madana is "love", from mad "to be drunk" from Proto-Indo-European *mad- "wet", also referring to various qualities of food.

*mad- also became Sanskrit matta "excited with joy... intoxicated" and Persian مست mast "drunk, intoxicated". The Persian word was borrowed into English as musth, a word referring to heightened agression in male elephants and camels due to elevated testosterone. The related Persian noun مستي mastī "intoxication" is used in modern Hindi to mean "mischief" or "fun". At least I assume that all the Hindi films entitled Masti and festivals like this one aren't meant to inspire you to get drunk.

In Germanic, *mad-i- became English meat. And Middle Low German mat "comrade" or the person one shares ones food with, which was borrowed into English as mate.

dekko and tarragon

2011-03-24T16:31:00.001-04:00

But now there was a listlessness about her, not the listlessness of the cat Augustus but more that of the female in the picture in the Louvre, of whom Jeeves, on the occasion when he lugged me there to take a dekko at her, said that here was the head upon which all the ends of the world are come.
- PG Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing

A dekko/dekho/decko is a look. It was borrowed as army slang in the late 1800s from Hindi देखो dekho, the imperative of देखना dekhanā "to look". This is derived in some fashion from Sanskrit द्रक्ष्यति drakṣyati, the future of दृश् dr̥ś "to see". And dr̥ś is from Proto-Indo-European *derḱ- "to look".

I've written about this root before. It's thought that it gives us tarragon thru a convoluted series of borrowings - Greek δράκων "dragon" to Arabic طرخون ṭarẖwn then back to Greek as ταρχών, then Latin as tragonia/tarchon, then English tarragon. Tarragon is also known as dragonwort, and its Latin name is dracunculus.

qindarka and decussate

2011-03-15T18:11:00.001-04:00

qindarka is a unit of Albanian currency.

Albanian qindarka (the q represents the palatal stop /c/) is the definite form of qindarkë, which is qindar plus a diminutive suffix. qind is "hundred", from Proto-Indo-European *dḱm̥-tom "hundred". This is the source of Latin centum, Sanskrit śatam, and English hund-red.

*dḱm̥-tom is a zero-grade suffixed form of *deḱm̥- "ten". This became English ten, Latin decem, Sanskrit dasa, etc. Latin decussis was the number ten, hence X, and a kind of coin.

decussate means "To cross, intersect, lie across, so as to form a figure like the letter X".

geezer and twit

2011-03-03T22:26:00.000-05:00

The OED tells us that geezer is a dialectical pronunciation of guiser "one who guises, a masquerader, a mummer".

1893 R. O. Heslop Northumberland Words, Geezer, a mummer; and hence any grotesque or queer character.

guise "to go about in disguise, or masquerade dress" was derived from the noun guise "manner, method, way, fashion, style", borrowed from Old French guise, which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic *wīsōn- "appearance, form, manner" from Proto-Indo-European *weid- "to see" (AHD).

Old French guise plus the des-/de- prefix became desguisier, borrowed into English as disgisen/disguise "to alter the guise or fashion of dress and appearance" (OED).

*weid- became Old English wītan "to blame, reproach". This plus the prefix æt- became atwite "to cast an imputation upon, reproach". This became twite thru aphesis, then twit "a (light) censure or reproach; a taunt; a fool; a stupid or ineffectual person" (OED).

etymology woo

2011-02-22T19:12:00.005-05:00

I'm a big fan of comic book writer Grant Morrison. Ever since I read Doom Patrol twenty years ago (!) I've been hooked on his chaotic, eclectic style. I love his superheroes-fighting-in-the-sky-like-fireworks version of the JLA, and The Invisibles is the greatest thing ever. So I was interested in the talk he did with Deepak Chopra at Comic-con 2006, on "the seven spiritual laws of superheroes". Unfortunately, I only made it about three minutes in before Chopra said something that annoyed me:

The word myth in English comes from or is related to the word mother. Myth, mother, mater, meter, matter, time, music, mata, matrika, measurement, they're all the same word. They refer to the womb of creation.

He says the same thing on the twitter. It's completely untrue, but what bugs me more is that it's so easily checked. Take the Online Etymology Dictionary, a free online reference - it isn't authoritative but it's a very good place to start if you want to check things like this. The words mother, Latin māter "mother", Sanskrit māta and mātr̥kā "mother", and possibly matter are related to each other, from Proto-Indo-European *māter-. The words measure and meter are related to each other, from Proto-Indo-European *meh₁-. music is from *men- to think". time is from *deh₂- "to divide". The origin of myth is unknown.

I guess I know how this guy feels when Chopra says something silly about genetics or medicine.

chukker and palindrome

2011-02-22T17:42:00.003-05:00

Gussie, you see, wasn't like some of my pals--the name of Bingo Little is one that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would simply say, "Well, bung-oh!" and toddle off quite happily to find another. He was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the first chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life brooding over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of those chaps you read about in novels, who live in the great white house you can just see over there through the trees and shut themselves off from the world and have pained faces.
- PG Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

chukker/chucker/chukka is given in the OED as a polo term - it's like a period in hockey. But it seems it was first applied to the circular discus used for quoits. The word was borrowed from Hindi चक्कर cakkar "potter's wheel, catherine wheel, discus or sharp circular missile weapon". This is cognate with Sanskrit चक्र cakra "wheel", from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel(H)- "to turn".

It is from this word that the chukka boot comes.

*kʷel(H)- is the source of cycle from Greek (but not circle and circus). If the AHD is to be believed, the suffixed zero-grade *kʷl̥H-i- became Greek πάλιν "again" from the sense of "revolving". palindrome is from Hellenistic Greek παλίνδρομος "running back again" (δρόμος "running, course, racecourse").

My favourite palindrome is "Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas".

funky and thyme

2011-02-11T22:52:00.007-05:00

The words funky "mouldy, old, musty; smelling strong or bad" and funk "a strong smell" were used in the 30s to refer to things that were satisfying or approved of - in other words "swinging, hip". Then in the 50s they came to be applied to a musical genre.

funk "a strong smell" is from funk "to blow smoke upon (a person)", which was probably borrowed in the late 1600s from Old French funkier/fungier "to smoke". This is from Latin fūmigāre "to smoke (of a candle)", from fūmus "smoke" (OED). fūmus is from Proto-Indo-European *dhuh₂-mo-, the zero-grade of *dheuh₂-, a root meaning "to rise in a cloud, as dust, vapour, or smoke", among other meanings (AHD). (Altho the AHD equivocates about the laryngeal, Fortson in Indo-European Language and Culture says it's *h₂.)

According to the AHD, *dhuh₂-mo- became Greek θύμον "thyme", from the sense "plant having a strong smell". This was borrowed into Latin as thymum and English as thyme. However, the OED says θύμον is from θύω "to burn sacrifice" - which could still be from *dheuh₂- maybe.

holistic and whole

2011-02-10T12:58:00.000-05:00

… are wholly unrelated.

holistic is borrowed from Greek ὅλος "whole" (as in catholic) from Proto-Indo-European *solh₂- "whole".

whole is from Old English hāl from PIE *kailo- "whole, uninjured, of good omen". Also from this root are German Heil "health" and Irish Gaelic cel "omen".

whole began to be spelled with wh in the fifteenth century, apparently due to a dialectical pronunciation with /w/. It also happened with whore.

geyser and fondue

2011-02-01T17:38:00.003-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *ǵheu- "to pour, pour a libation". The extended form *ǵheus- became Old Norse geysa "to gush". Geysir is the name of a particular Icelandic hot spring, which is where the English word comes from.

In Latin the nasalized zero-grade *ǵhu-n-d- became fundō/fundere "to pour", becoming French fondre "to melt". The past participle fondue was applied to a dish of melted cheese.

In Greek the suffixed zero-grade *ǵhus-mo- became χῡμός "juice", borrowed into English as chyme.

Watkins in The American Heritage Dictionary of Proto-Indo-European Roots suggests that the verbal adjective *ǵhu-to- "poured" might be the source of Proto-Germanic *ǥuđam and English god. *ǵhu-to- is found in Greek χυτη γαια "poured earth", referring to a burial mound. Perhaps the Proto-Germanic use of *ǥuđam was also in connection with a burial mound, in which case it could plausibly come to mean god. god is usually supposed to come from *gheu(H)- "to call, invoke".

Upanishad and Eisteddfod

2011-01-18T16:49:00.007-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *sed- "to sit" became Vedic ni-ṣad "to sit or lie down" (ni- "down" from PIE *ni as in English beneath). This combined with upa "near to" to form उपनिषद् upaniṣád "to sit down near to; to approach, set about" hence "the sitting down at the feet of another to listen to his words" (Monier-Williams). The Upanishads are prose writings that are important to understanding the Vedas.

In Proto-Celtic, *sed- became the typically over-prefixed *eks-dī-sedo- (*eks- "out" and *dī- "out") "sitting". This became Welsh eistedd "to sit", which combined with bod "to be" to form eisteddfod "session". An Eisteddfod is a congress of Welsh bards.

physics and भौतिक

2011-01-18T16:30:00.002-05:00

The episode "The Pirate Solution" from the third season of The Big Bang Theory has a linguistically interesting exchange… Sheldon and Raj are arguing about the dark matter problem:

Raj: Do you understand we're talking about dark matter colliding in outer space?

Sheldon: Of course I understand. And who are you to tell me about outer space?

Raj: I'm the astrophysicist! "Astro" means "space"!

Sheldon: "Astro" means "star".

Raj: OK, well let me just tell you, if we were having this argument in my native language, I'd be kicking your butt!

Sheldon: English is your native language.

The Hindi for "astrophysics" is खगोल भौतिकी khagol bhautikī - composed of khagol "the vault or sphere of the heavens" and bhautik "existing, material, real, of this world" (according to my Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary).

So Raj is right that the Hindi word for "astrophysics" contains the word for "space". The writers have done their research. (But he's wrong that the etymology of the word, in any language, is relevant to his argument.)

Hindi भौतिक bhautik is of course related to English physics. It's borrowed from Sanskrit bhautika "anything elemental or material", from bhū "to be" - from Proto-Indo-European *bheuH- "to be, exist, grow". This is the source of Greek φυσικός phusikos "natural, physical" (English physics), Latin futūrus "that is to be" (English future), and Welsh bod "to be" (combining with eistedd "to sit" to form Eisteddfod).

Concerning Sheldon's comment about Raj's native language, I suppose it's possible that Raj, who comes from an educated family in Delhi - has two native languages - Hindi and English.

arsenic and zloty

2011-01-11T16:22:00.003-05:00

Skeat, in his Dictionary of English Etymology, writes that arsenic is borrowed from Latin arsenicum, borrowed from Greek ἀρσενικόν "arsenic", from ἄρσην "male", so arsenic etymologically means "a male principle" - "the alchemists had the strange fancy that metals were of different sexes" writes Skeat. But the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology calls this a folk etymology on the part of the Greeks. According to the ODEE, ἀρσενικόν means "yellow orpiment" and is actually borrowed from Arabic الزرنيخ azzernykh (the AHD says Syriac zarnīkā). This was borrowed from Middle Iranian *zarnīk- from Old Iranian *zarna- "golden" (AHD). And *zarna- is from Proto-Indo-European *ǵhel- "to shine".

The suffixed o-grade form *ǵhol-to- became Polish złoto "gold" (cognate with Russian золотой), and złoty "golden" (OED).

capillary and disheveled

2011-01-04T12:06:00.002-05:00

Latin capillus "hair" beget capillāris "pertaining to hair", borrowed into English as capillary which first meant "Of, pertaining to, consisting of, or concerned with hair", then "Having a very minute or hair-like internal diameter; as a capillary tube or capillary vessel".

discapillātus/dēcapillātus meant "stripped of hair, shaven" (with the negative prefix dis-), becoming Old French deschevelé. This was borrowed into English as dishevelled/disheveled. It first meant "Without coif or head-dress; hence, with the hair unconfined and flung about in disorder" and then later "Disordered, ruffled, disorderly, untidy" (OED).

Is capillus perhaps a diminutive of caput "head"? I have no idea.

sweet and hedonism

2010-12-30T17:23:00.006-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *sweh₂d- "sweet, pleasant" became Proto-Germanic *swōtja then English sweet.

The suffixed form *swād-onā became ancient Greek ἡδονή "lust", borrowed into English as hedonism.

The suffixed form *swād-wi- became Latin suāuis "sweet" then French suave "agreeable", then English suave.

The form *swād-es- became ancient Greek ἡδύς or ϝἁδύς "sweet". This combined with α "not" to form ἁηδης "unpleasant", giving us a word that is new to me: aedes, a yellow-fever mosquito of the genus Aëdes.

Calvary

2010-12-23T11:53:00.002-05:00

The place where Christ was crucified was called in Aramaic gogulþō or gogolþā meaning "skull" (OED) - in Hebrew גולגולת gulgolet. Presumably this was because the hill was rounded like a skull.

In Latin it was called Caluāria "skull", which was borrowed into Engish as Calvary. Latin caluāria is from caluus "bald", from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥h₂-wo- "bald" (AHD).

English callow and German kahl "bald" are both from Proto-Germanic *kalwo-, which is thought to be borrowed from Latin caluus (OED). Although others think it's from another Proto-Indo-European root, *gal- "bald" (AHD).

In Old English the hill was called hēafod-pannan stōw "head-pan place", that is, "skull place".

mullered and amaranth

2010-12-02T12:50:00.003-05:00

mullered is a British English word meaning "smashed, wrecked, hammered"… that is, "drunk". muller means "ruin, wreck, destroy". It was probably borrowed from Angloromani mul-, the preterite stem of mer- "to die" (OED). This is cognate with Sanskrit mr̥ "to die", as in mara and amrita.

The Proto-Indo-European root *mer- "to rub away, harm" became Greek μαραίνειν "to whither, decay". The adjective *-μαραντος "fading, corruptible" combined with ἀ "not" became ἀμάραντος, "everlasting". This was borrowed into Latin as amarantus. It was also written amaranthus due to the assumption that it was related to Greek ἄνθος "flower" (OED). An amarant(h) is a flower that never fades.

paan and fern

2010-11-25T12:37:00.003-05:00

Paan or pan is a preparation of betel leaves and other ingredients which is chewed as a stimulant. It's quite buzzy. It also stains your mouth red.

Hindi पान pān is from Sanskrit पर्ण parṇa "feather, leaf" (OED) from PIE *por-no- "that which carries a bird in flight" (possibly). From the same PIE form is English fern, so called because it has feathery fronds.

*por-no- is a suffixed o-grade form of *per- "lead, pass over".

hoosegow and judge

2010-11-11T18:33:00.000-05:00

Hoosegow, an American word for prison, is borrowed from South American or Mexican Spanish juzgao, from Spanish juzgado "tribunal". This is from Latin iūdicātum/iūdicāre "to judge". This and the related iūdex/iūdicem "right, law" are from PIE *i̯eu̯es-deiḱ- - from *i̯eu̯es- "law" and *deiḱ- "to show".

iūdicem became French juge, borrowed into English as judge.

shinen, shined, shone

2010-10-20T09:31:00.001-04:00

Gabe's excellent post on shined and shone prompted me to investigate the claim in the Huffington Post article:

Shine is one of those “strong verbs” that had an irregular past tense and past participle (shone) but later acquired a regular form ending in -ed as well.

If they mean that the past participle was shone first and then shined later, then no. A quick look in the OED tells me that shone only came to be used as the past participle in the second half of the 16th century. Before that the past participle was shined.

In fact, the verb has had three past participles.

sinen, from earlier *scinen - presumably this is the earliest past participle, compare the German past participle geschienen and Dutch geschenen:

Ðe leun ne stireð he nout of slepe Til ðe sunne haueð sinen ðries him abuten. - Bestiary, c1220

shined - as Gabe says, this was the most common past participle between 1300 and 1700:

The mone is alway halfe shyned of the sonne. - Trevisa, Bartholomeus (de Glanvilla) De proprietatibus rerum, 1398

We are sure, the good-will of Him who dwelt in the Bush has shined upon us. - Oliver Cromwell, Letters and speeches, 1648

And shone, originally the strong preterite form, started to be used as the past participle in the mid-1500s:

The aultars where the sacred flames haue shone. - George Gascoigne, Jocasta, 1566

shine, squirrel, tinsel

2010-10-19T12:57:00.002-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *skeh₂i- "to gleam" in the suffixed zero-grade form *skeh₂i-no- became Proto-Germanic *skīnan and English shine.

It's thought the word also meant "shadow", or maybe its sense changed to "shadow" in some cases? Anyway the Greek derivative is apparently σκιά "shadow". This combined with οὐρά "tail" to form σκίουρος "shadow-tail, i.e. squirrel". This was borrowed into Latin as sciūrus, and diminutivized to scurellius, becoming Old French esquireul, escureul (whence modern French écureuil), becoming Anglo-French esquirel, borrowed into English as squirrel.

Possibly there was a suffixed form *skeh₂i-nto- which became Latin scintillāre "to sparkle, glitter". This became *stincillāre by metathesis, becoming Old French estinceler "to sparke, to sparkle as fire; to twinkle as a starre or Dyamond; to set thicke with sparkles" (Cotgrave). The past participle estincelé "sparkled, sparked, also powdered or set with sparkles" found its way into English as tinsel, tincel.

fylfot

2010-10-03T17:19:00.005-04:00

I've trudged my way thru China Miéville's Kraken - I say trudged because altho I enjoyed it, I found his idiosyncratic prose style hard to get past. I don't remember having this problem with Perdido Street Station or The Scar. Anyway, the book's about a Neverwhere or King Rat-style magical London where various weird groups are fighting over a zombie squid. What's not to like? I learned a new word in this sentence about the Chaos Nazis:

Their symbol was the eight-pointed Chaos star altered to make a Moorcock weep, its diagonal arms bent fylfot, a swastika that pointed in all directions.

He's referring to the eight-armed symbol of Chaos used in the Elric novels. The fylfot or fylfot cross, tho, is a real thing, it's another word for swastika. The generally accepted etymology is simply fill-foot, as in a design to fill the foot of a painted window. The OED provides this citation from the Landsdowne manuscripts:

Let me stand in the medyll pane..a rolle abo[ve my hede] in the hyest..[pane] vpward, the fylfot in the nedermast pane vnder ther I knele

The OED notes that it might have been a nonce word in this citation, a word created for this particular purpose.

In French the design is cramponné "cramped", in German it's Hakenkreuz "hooked cross", and in Greek it's γαμμάτιον/γαμμάδιον (gammadion) because it's formed from the letter Γ gamma. In Sanskrit, svastika means "lucky or auspicious object".

national punctuation day

2010-09-24T15:29:00.005-04:00

Like Gabe, I can't get excited by National Punctuation Day. So here's something I mentioned last year that I think bears repeating (from The Oxford Companion to the English Language):

it appears from the evidence that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood, and followed by most educated people.

bridal

2010-09-16T16:51:00.001-04:00

To my surprise, bridal is not bride plus the suffix -al (as in, say, central).
Etymologically it's "bride-ale": Old English brȳdealo, "wedding ale" or "wedding feast", which is brȳd "bride" plus ealu "ale".

omelette

2010-09-14T14:07:00.000-04:00

Latin lāmina "thin plate, scale, later, or flake (of metal, etc.)" had the diminutive lāmella, which became Old French lemel(l)e "blade". La lemelle was reanalyzed as l'alemelle, meaning "thin plate, blade of a sword or knife". This was further diminutized to *alemette, which was metathesized to amelette. By this time it meant "omelette", perhaps because of the omelette's thin flat shape. The initial o perhaps came about by association with oeuf "egg".

I learned this from Word Origins and How We Know Them by Anatoly Liberman, a very entertaining and informative read.

orchid and orchestra

2010-09-07T18:55:00.002-04:00

English orchid was borrowed from the scientific name Orchideae, which is from Latin orchis "any of various kinds of orchid" - early botanists misinterpreted the Latin stem as ending in -d-. The Latin word was borrowed from Greek ὄρχις "testicle", from Proto-Indo-European *h₁erǵh- "to mount" (AHD).

Also according to the AHD, *h₁erǵh- in the suffixed o-grade form *h₁orǵh-eyo- became Greek ὀρχέομαι "to dance", and ὀρχήστρα "in the theatre the space on which the chorus danced" - which was the earliest meaning of orchestra in English.

Pokorny has two roots: *orĝhi-, *r̥ĝhi- "testicle" and *ergh- "to shake, tremble" - the latter is the source of orchestra. Connecting both roots with the meaning "to mount", as the AHD does, seems a stretch to me.

The OED says the etymology of ὀρχέομαι is uncertain, and says its derivation from Pokorny's "to shake, tremble" is "unsatisfactory".

escape

2010-09-07T14:35:00.002-04:00

escape was borrowed from Old Northern French escaper, from Late Latin *excappāre, from ex "out" and cappa "cloak". So escape is etymologically out of the cape.

coax

2010-08-19T22:03:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time there was cokes meaning "A silly fellow, fool, ninny; a simpleton, one easily ‘taken in’", possibly related to cockney. The phrase make a cokes of appeared to be shorted to cokes, later spelled coax. The OED:

f. COKES n. According to Johnson 1755-73, ‘a low word’, and probably in vulgar use long before it became usual in literature, which may account for want of literary evidence for the early history of the senses. The original meaning seems to have been ‘make a cokes of’: cf. to fool, to pet, to gull; and the transition from ‘make a fool of’ to ‘make a pet of’, is paralleled by the passage of fond from ‘befooled’ to its present sense.

holocaust and ink

2010-08-14T16:15:00.000-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *keh₂u- "to burn" became Greek καίω "to burn" and καυστός "burnt, burnable". ὁλόκαυστος meant "burnt whole", from ὅλος "whole". Borrowed into Latin as holocaustum, it originally meant "a whole burnt offering".

The related word ἐγκαίω meant "to brand, paint with encaustic" - encaustic being a process of painting with wax and fixing the colours with fire. ἕγκαυστον was the ink used in the signature of Greek and Roman emperors - this was borrowed into Latin as encaustum, which developed into Old French enque, borrowed into English as ink.

catholic and insouciant

2010-08-05T22:34:00.002-04:00

The OED on catholic:

[a. F. catholique (13th c. in Littré) ad. late L. catholic-us, a. Gr. καθολικός general, universal, f. καθόλου (i.e. καθ' ὅλου ) on the whole, in general, as a whole, generally, universally, f. κατά concerning, in respect of, according to + ὅλος whole. (If immed. derived from L. or Gr., the Eng. word would, according to the regular analogy of words in -IC, have been accented caˈtholic).]

In other words, a word used to mean "broad in sympathies, tastes or interests" is derived from a phrase meaning "in general, on the whole".

Greek ὅλος "whole" is from Proto-Indo-European *solh₂- "whole". This became Latin sollus "entire", which perhaps combined with citus "set in motion" (from *kei-) to form sollicitus "thoroughly moved, agitated, disturbed" and sollicitāre "to vex". sollicitāre became French soucier "to care" and insouciant "careless".

while and coy

2010-08-05T10:51:00.001-04:00

Both while and whilst are from Old English hwīl. The Proto-Indo-European root is *kʷiH- (in Fortson, the AHD has *kʷeih₁- "to rest, be quiet"), and hwīl is from the suffixed zero-grade form *kʷiH-lo-.

coy is from Old French coi "quiet, reserved, shy," from Latin quiētus, the past participle of quiēscere "to rest", from *kʷiH- plus the suffix *-sḱe-.

while is a shortening of Middle English þe while þat "during the time that". whilst is from Middle English whilest, from whiles, the being added perhaps by association with the superlative est (as in fastest). We also find it in amongst and amidst. whiles was while plus the adverbial suffix -s, as in "He works nights."

snails, snakes, and snarks

2010-08-03T21:47:00.010-04:00

Browsing other etymology books, I had a look at Anatoly Liberman's Word Origins and how we know them - and was struck by one of the covers, which shows the word snark formed from a snake and a shark. Liberman writes:

Snark is certainly, not probably, a blend of snake and shark, because Lewis Carroll explained his coinage.

I've written about snark in the past, and I found this curious. The Century Dictionary gives the snake/shark derivation. It's repeated in other places too. But as far as I know, the only real evidence we have is the fact that Beatrice Hatch wrote that Carroll told her that it was a portmanteau of snail and shark. Where and when did Carroll explain that he coined the word from snake and shark?

noise and argonaut

2010-07-30T09:05:00.002-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *neh₂u- "boat" became Greek ναῦς "ship" and Ionic Greek ναυσίη (Attic ναυτία) "seasickness". This was borrowed into Latin as nausea.

Latin nausea probably developed into Anglo-Norman noise, which found its way into English. The OED says the semantic development is probably from "malaise" to "disturbance, uproar", then "noise, din, quarrel" (OED).

Greek ναύτης "sailor" is the source of words ending in -naut like cosmonaut, astronaut, argonaut. An argonaut is a sailor in the ship Argo - but it's also a kind of octopus that inhabits a shell, a bit like the chambered nautilus.

either

2010-07-29T20:01:00.008-04:00

I'm sure anyone reading this blog is familiar with the Queen's English Society and their mission to protect English from the rampaging hordes of young people and Americans. I didn't write about it because Stan Carey at Sentence First said everything that needed to be said. But recently Gabe at Motivated Grammar addressed a specific complaint the QES makes, and I became interested in doing the same (or biting his style, as the kids say).

The QES objects to either pronounced with /i/ (the "ee" sound) instead of /aɪ/ (the "eye" sound). Their reasoning is twofold:

1. The /aɪ/ pronunciation is "upper-class" and "cultured", and changed to /i/ in the 50s "probably" under American influence.
2. "many words in English come from some form of Old German", and in German the letter combination ei is pronounced /aɪ/, so therefore in English words of Germanic origin, ei should be pronounced /aɪ/ as well.

Regarding point 1: I'm not sure how the QES knows how and when the pronunciation changed. For the record, both pronunciations of either are standard. The /i/ pronunciation is usual in American English, while /aɪ/ is more common in British English. However, /aɪ/ is found in the speech of "well-educated speakers in urban areas of the Northeast" US.^[1] I find it weird that pronouncing a word with a high front unrounded vowel as opposed to a falling diphthong is seen as a "regrettable" infiltration.

Regarding point 2: there are several problems with this. From one point of view it is true that many English words are derived from a form of "Old German", but this in turn means that many German words are derived from a form of Old English. The ancester of both languages is a putative language called Proto-Germanic, so Proto-Germanic is a very old form of German, but it's also a very old form of English. So why don't the Germans look to English to find out how to pronounce their words?

Next, the claim that ei should be /aɪ/ in English because that's how it's pronounced in German looks like a form of the etymological fallacy: the belief that we need to look to another language to determine what makes correct English.

Finally, the argument that the /aɪ/ pronunciation is correct because of the word's Germanic history doesn't make sense because historically, the /aɪ/ pronunciation is wrong. Either developed from Old English ǣġhwæðer, a combination of ā "always" plus ġehwæðer "each of two" (modern whether). It was contracted to ǣgðer, then later spelled either^[2] - so it's the development of the initial ǣ that concerns us here. Old English ǣ was usually pronounced /æː/, and this generally became Middle English /ɛː/ which became Modern English /i/. For instance, Old English tǣcan with /æː/ became Middle English teche which became Modern English teach with /i/.^[3] So it seems that the etymologically correct pronuncation of either is with /i/.

The OED notes that the /aɪ/ pronunciation is "not in accordance with the analogies of standard Eng[lish]" (I'm not even sure what that means, actually) but that it is "in London somewhat more prevalent in educated speech" than the /i/ pronunciation.

Summary: The /aɪ/ pronunciation still seems common in British English, but even if it isn't nothing important has been lost, and German spelling is irrelevant to English pronunciation.

Notes:
^[1]The American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996).
^[2] Oxford English Dictionary, either.
^[3]Millward, A Biography of the English Language (1988), p. 131.

narwhal and nudnik

2010-07-28T22:47:00.007-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *neh₂u- "death; to be exhausted" became Proto-Germanic *nāw-i- "corpse" and Old Norse nár "corpse" (AHD). Narwhal is borrowed from Danish narhval, from Old Norse náhvalr. It's thought that the Old Norse word is from nár plus hvalr "whale" with reference to the deathly colour of its skin. Or it could be from nál "needle". The presence of the r in the modern Scandinavian forms is unexplained (since the Old Norse word didn't have it), but it could have been added by folk etymological association with nár "corpse" (OED).

The Old Norse nár is cognate with the second element of Old English orcnēas "evil spirits, walking corpses". It's also cognate with need, but that's another story.

Nudnik "a pestering, nagging, or irritating person; a bore" is borrowed from Yiddish נודניק nudnik, which is from nudyen "to bore", borrowed from Polish nudzić "to bore" or Russian нудить "to wear out (with complaints)". Both of these are from Proto-Slavic *naud-ā- from *neh₂u- (AHD).

dacha and Pandora

2010-07-22T19:25:00.001-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *deh₃- "to give" became Russian дать "to give" and дача dacha "grant (of land)". A dacha is a summer villa.

In Greek, *deh₃- became δῶρον "gift", which combined with πᾶς/πᾶν "all" to form Πανδώρα "all-gifted", borrowed into Latin as Pandōra, the first woman that all the gods gave gifts to.

रुपया

2010-07-17T14:46:00.008-04:00

The Indian government has developed a new symbol for the rupee:

It's pretty cool, because it looks like both R and the Devanagari र ra. However, I think it would be better as a रु ru (for Hindi रुपया rupayā) or रू (for Sanskrit रूप्य rūpya).

This is because Devanagari is an abugida: the vowels are respresented as diacritics attached to the consonant letters. When you abbreviate a word that begins with a consonant in Devanagari, you don't abbreviate to the first consonant, you abbreviate to the first consonant and vowel. So the usual abbreviation for rupee in Hindi is रु॰. (The circle is an abbreviation sign.)

On the back of one of my Hindi children's books is the name of the publisher:

Pitambar Publishing Company ~~Productions~~ Private Limited. The last two words are प्रा॰ लि॰ prā li - an abbreviation for "~~productions~~ private limited" (I think).

sloe, livid, lavender

2010-07-13T21:52:00.002-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *sleiH- "bluish" became Serbo-Croatian šljìva "plum" and šljivovica "plum brandy", borrowed as slivovitz. *sleiH- also became Old English slāh and English sloe, blackthorn fruit.

According to the AHD, *sleiH- became Latin līuēre "to be bluish" and līuidus "bluish", borrowed thru French as livid.

Lavender is from Anglo-French lavendre from medieval Latin lauendula. It was thought to be connected to lauare "to wash", either because the plant was used in perfuming baths or laid among linen. But the OED notes that "on the ground of sense-development this does not seem plausible; a word literally meaning 'washing' would hardly without change of form come to denote a non-essential adjunct to washing". Another suggestion is that lauendula is from *līuendula, from līuidus. Lavender is bluish.

ʻokina

2010-07-09T11:58:00.007-04:00

I just got back from a vacation in Hawaiʻi, and while I was there, surrounded by dolphins, sea turtles and squid, I of course got to thinking about the ʻokina, the symbol used to represent the Hawaiian glottal stop. At first I thought it was an apostrophe, but closer inspection revealed that it usually resembled a single left quote:
ʻ
According to the prescriptive and citation-free wikipedia page, it should only look like a single left quote, and any other rendering is wrong. However, in some places, like on signs in the ʻIolani Palace museum, it's rendered as a backquote, and on some street signs it's an acute accent:

On other street signs, it's a straight apostrophe:

And once with a double left quote:

This article has a lot of detail on the different ways the ʻokina is rendered.

In other news, I spotted this awesome multilingual sign in a restaurant (click for bigger image).

Can you guess them all? Here's the answer.

Pakistan and Puritan

2010-06-18T09:20:00.002-04:00

The creation of the name of Pakistan is usually credited to activist Chaudhary Rahmat Ali in 1933. The OED states that he derived the name from Urdu پاك pāk "pure" plus the suffix -stan "place", but that he additionally explained it as an acronym formed from Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan. Other sources imply that he came up with the acronym first.

Urdu pāk is related to Sanskrit पावक pāvaka "pure" and the verb punāti "to clean", from Proto-Indo-European *peuh₂- "to purify". In Latin the zero-grade adjectival form *puh₂-ro- became pūrus "pure". Puritan is probably borrowed from the related pūritās "purity".

diagramming

2010-06-16T21:10:00.002-04:00

from Y: The Last Man

The Oxford Guide to Etymology

2010-06-15T10:43:00.005-04:00

A while ago I asked about good etymology books. After thinking about it for… a year, I've got Philip Durkin's The Oxford Guide to Etymology (thanks _duif). This book promises to investigate "every aspect of where words come from and how they change."

Dr Durkin investigates folk etymology and other changes which words undergo in everyday use. He shows how language families are established, how words in different languages can have a common ancester, and the ways in which the latter can be distinguished from words introduced through language contact. He examines the etymologies of the names of people and places. His focus is on English but he draws many examples from languages such as French, German, and Latin which cast light on the pre-histories of English words.

Quite a tall order, and I'm looking forward to it. I've just read the section on the etymological fallacy, where he talks about objections to the modern meaning of meticulous ("painstakingly careful"). Because the word is derived from Latin metus "fear", it was thought that meticulous should convey some sense of fearfulness. (Bill Bryson, in Troublesome Words, still seems to believe this).

To show how silly this idea is, Durkin uses the example of deer, which used to refer to any animal (and still does in German and Dutch), and was narrowed to refer only to Cervidæ in Early Modern English. If you're using etymology to define meticulous, why not deer as well?

samosa and bagel

2010-06-11T10:23:00.004-04:00

Two of my favourite foods, together at last.

Samosa is from Hindi समोसा samosā, probably from a Persian form equivalent to Sanskrit sam plus bhuja and meaning "having equal sides". Samosas do have somewhat equal sides, if you make them right.

Sanskrit bhuja means "the side of any geometrical figure", but also "arm, branch, bough, bending, curve". The latter meanings let us trace it Proto-Indo-European *bheug- "to bend".

In Germanic, the variant form *bheugh- is found in Yiddish בייגל beygl, a diminutive formed from Old High German boug "ring". Bagels are vaguely ring-shaped, if you make them right.

organic and boulevard

2010-06-07T13:59:00.001-04:00

I have a friend who complains about the term organic food. Isn't all food organic, he says. My response is yes, but that's the neat thing about language - a word can have more than one meaning. Organic has been used in connection with farming without chemicals since 1861, so it's here to stay. Interestingly, the earliest use of organic in English was "designating the jugular vein", and if the meaning can change from that to "relating to organs", then to "having the characteristics of a living organism", there's no reason why it can't change further to "of, relating to, or derived from living matter" then to "of food: produced without the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals" (OED).

The Proto-Indo-European root is *werǵ- "to do". The o-grade *worǵ- became Greek ὄργανον "tool", and English organ. And also ὄργια "secret rites, secret worship", and English orgy.

The suffixed form *werǵ-o- became English work. Boulevard seems to be a French borrowing of a Germanic word akin to English bulwark, the second element of which is related to work. The first element is either bole or something like the Middle High German boln "to throw". So a bulwark, and a boulevard, is etymologically either a "work constructed from tree trunks", or "catapult".

shamefaced

2010-06-02T11:10:00.001-04:00

shamefaced is a folk etymology. The Old English word was sceamfæst, a combination of sceamu "shame" and fæst, which was a common suffix similar to ful. Sceamfæst meant "bashful, modest".

Ther nas no lak, but that he was agast
To love, and for to speke shamefast.
- Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women

Since this use of fast fell out of use, the second element in this word was reanalyzed as faced.

fast meant and still means "firm, fixed" and was from Proto-Germanic *fastuz, from Proto-Indo-European *past- "solid, firm". The verb fast "to abstain from food" is from the same PIE root, by way of Old English fæstan from Proto-Germanic *fastējan "to hold fast, observe abstinence". Breakfast is from break plus the Old Norse verb fasta "to fast", also from *fastējan.

The adverb fast shifted from meaning "firmly", as in stand fast, to "stoutly, strongly vigorously"

Tristrem as aman, Fast he gan to fiȝt
- Sir Tristrem, c1320

And then to "quickly".

Takens, war-thurgh he may understande, þat þe day of dome es fast comande.
- Hampole, The pricke of conscience, c1340

phlogiston and beluga

2010-05-18T10:51:00.001-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *bhel- "to shine" extended to *bhleg- became Greek φλόξ "flame" and phlogiston, the substance thought, in the 18th century, to exist in combustible substances and to explain why some substances burned and others didn't.

*bhel- became Russian белый belyj "white" and beluga. The suffix -уга/уха is, I think, an embiggening suffix.

Two more interesting derivatives are black, possibly from Proto-Germanic *ƀlakaz "burned", and bleach, from Proto-Germanic *ƀlaikjan "to make white" from *ƀlaikoz "white". This survived in Old English blāc "pale" and an obsolete word blake meaning "pale" or "yellow".

Captain Nemo speaks Punjabi

2010-05-13T16:40:00.010-04:00

Having just finished 2000 Leagues Under the Sea, I naturally turn to wikipedia, which claims that Nemo comes close to revealing his Indian ancestry in that book, but that it's only obvious in retrospect. This suprised me; I thought Nemo outright says he's from India. My copy has

"That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same land!"

The original is

<< Cet Indien, monsieur le professeur, c'est un habitant du pays des opprimes, et je suis encore, et, jusqu'a mon dernier souffle, je serai de ce pays-la ! >>

I guess it is ambiguous - ce pays-là ("that country") could refer to India, or to oppressed nations generally.

In the sequel, The Mysterious Island, which I haven't read, it is revealed that Nemo was Prince Armitage Ranjit Dakkar, a descendent of both Hindus and Muslims. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill make Nemo a Sikh, and fit out the Nautilus with Indian design and iconography.

And in the latest book, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century, Nemo speaks Punjabi with his daughter Janni.

I can't translate it, but I'm pretty sure it's real dialogue, as opposed to random Punjabi copied and pasted from another source. Of course, understanding the conversation isn't necessary to enjoy the story - the gist of it is repeated later. But I include the Punjabi below the fold in case someone wants to have a go at translating it.

I found a translation.

page 4
panel 2
Janni:
ਪ੍ਰਣਾਮ ਬਾਪੂ

ਤੁਹਾਡਾ ਕੀ ਹਾਲ ਐ?

panel 3
Nemo:
ਮੇਂ ਉਂਜ ਈ ਆਂ, ਨਾ ਅੱਗੇ ਤੋਂ ਭੈੜਾ ਨਾ ਚੰਗਾ।

ਮੈਂ ਪੁੱਛਦੀ ਆਂ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਅਪਣਾ ਇਰਾਦਾ ਬਦਲਿਆ ਐ ਜਾਂ ਨਹੀਂ?

panel 4
Janni:
ਝੱਲੀ ਨਾ ਹੋ

ਮੈਂ ਹਰਗਿਜ਼ ਨਹੀਂ ਬਦਲਿਆ

page 5
panel 1
Nemo:
ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰੀ ਨਾਫ਼ਰਮਾਨੀ ਕੀਤੀ

ਤੂੰ ਆਪਣੇ ਪਿਓ ਦੀ ਨਾਫ਼ਰਮਾਨੀ ਕੀਤੀ

ਇਹ ਨਾ ਭੁਲ ਕਿ ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰੀ ਪੀ ਏਂ

panel 2
Janni:
ਨਹੀਂ

ਮੈਂ ਵੀ ਉਹ ਸਾਰੇ ਵਰੇ ਨਹੀਂ ਭੁੱਲੀ ਜਦੋਂ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਉੱਕਾ ਮੇਰੇ ਵੱਲ ਧਿਆਨ ਨਹੀਂ ਕੀਤਾ

ਤੁਸੀਂ ਮੇਰੇ ਵੱਲ ਧਿਆਨ ਇਸ ਲਈ ਨਹੀਂ ਕੀਤਾ ਕਿ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਪੁੱਤਰ ਚਾਹੀਦਾ ਸੀ

panel 3
Nemo:
ਆਹੋ, ਮੈਨੂੰ ਪੁੱਤਰ ਚਾਹੀਦਾ ਸੀ ਪਰ, ਸਨੂੰ ਤੂੰ ਹੀ ਲੱਭੀ

ਤੇ ਕੀ ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰਾ ਕੰਮ ਤੇ ਮੇਰਾ ਨਾਂ ਅੱਗੇ ਟੋਰੇਂ ਗੀ?

panel 4
Janni:
ਵਾਹ, ਉਹ ਨਾਂ ਕੀ ਜਿਹਦੀ ਕੋਈ ਪਛਾਣ ਨਹੀਂ, ਤੇ ਉਹ ਕੰਮ ਕੀ ਜਿਹੜਾ ਜਆਦੀ ਐ?

ਮੈਂ ਤੇਰੇ ਵਾਂਗ ਜਨੂਨੀ ਨਹੀਂ

ਮੇਰੇ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਤੋਂ ਜਹੰਨਮ ਵਿਚ ਜਾ

panel 5
Nemo:
ਤੇਰੀ ਇਹ ਹਿੰਮਤ ਕਿ ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰੇ ਨਾਲ ਇੰਜ ਬੋਕੀਂ? ਤੈਨੂੰ ਫੈਂਟੀ ਲਵਾਉਣੀ ਚਾਹੀਦੀ ਐ।

page 20
panel 1
Nemo:
ਇਸਮਾਈਲ

panel 2
Nemo:
ਮੇਰੀ ਕਿਸ਼ਤੀ ਨੂੰ ਕਾਲਾ ਪੇਂਟ ਕਰ ਦੇ

ਤੇ ਮੇਰੀ ਬੋਪੜੀ ਨੂੰ ਇਹਦੇ ਅੱਗੇ ਵਿੱਲ ਲਾ ਕੇ ਜੋੜ ਦੇ

ਤੇ ਇਹ ਮੇਰੀ ਧੀ ਨੂੰ ਦੇ ਦੇ।

ayurvedic and gallowglass

2010-05-11T22:42:00.003-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *h₂oi̯u- "life force" became Vedic ā́yus "life force" and आयुर्वेद āyur-veda - veda meaning "knowledge".

The AHD claims that *h₂oi̯u- was a variant of *h₂i̯eu- "youth, vigor" altho I haven't seen anyone else make this claim. *h₂i̯eu- is the source of Old Irish óac "young" which combined with the abstract noun-making suffix -lach to become Irish Gaelic óglách "youth, servant, warrior".

Óglách is the second part of the Irish Gaelic gallóglách, the first part being from gall "foreigner, stranger" - borrowed from Latin Gallus "Gaul" (according to MacBain's). A gallowglass was a mercenary class in Scotland and Ireland, but its etymological meaning is apparently "foreign warrior, possibly Gaulish".

The mercilesse Macdonwald
… from the Westerne Isles
Of Kernes and Gallowgrosses is supply'd

- Macbeth I, ii

(A kerne is an Irish foot-soldier, from Irish Gaelic ceithern.)

giddy and god

2010-04-30T10:12:00.004-04:00

Here's another example of how etymologies are not definitions. Those people who complain when decimate is used to mean something other than "destroy ten percent", or when unique is used to mean something other than "one of a kind", should complain whenever giddy is used to mean something other than "possessed by god".

It's from Old English gidiġ "mad, insane, foolish, stupid", from *gydiġ, an ablauted version of Proto-Germanic *ǥuđīǥo-, which is composed of *ǥuđo- "god" and the suffix *-īǥo-. The OED says the primary meaning is "possessed by a god". If *-īǥo- is English -y as in icy, rainy, dusty etc. then giddy is "goddy" or "full of god".

There is a similar etymology in enthusiasm.

The further etymology of god is disputed. Both the OED and the AHD offer two theories. It might be derived from PIE *ǵhu-tom, the neuter verbal adjective of *ǵheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (Sanskrit hu "to sacrifice", Greek χέω "to pour", Latin fundō "to pour"). Or it could be from *ǵheu(H)- "to call, invoke" (Sanskrit hū "to call"). So it could have the etymological meaning of "what is worshipped by sacrifice" or "what is invoked".

queasy and Jain

2010-04-26T16:05:00.005-04:00

The origin of queasy is uncertain - according to the OED, a possibility is that it is a borrowing from early Scandinavian, cf. Old Icelandic kveisa "boil" and Norwegian Nynorsk kveis "hangover". These words might be from PIE *gʷeiH- "to prevail, be mighty" ("to press down, conquer" in the AHD). Cf. Old English cwysan "to crush".

*gʷeiH- is the source of Sanskrit ji "conquer, overcome" and जिन jina, "victor", a Buddha. From this comes the word जैन jaina "a worshiper of the Jinas" and Jain. The Sanskrit is also the source of Hindi जय jay "victory" as in Jai Ho.

numskull and nemesis

2010-04-22T09:57:00.001-04:00

The num in numskull and numb are both from nomme - the past participle of nim "to take" (as in German nehmen). The earliest meaning of nomme was "deprived of physical sensation", ie "taken". Nim fell out of use around the 15th century. It's from Proto-Indo-European *nem- "to assign, allot" (not this *nem-).

The OED says the semantic development from "allot" to "take" is difficult to account for, but to me it seems like auto-antonymy, similar to how bad is used to mean "good".

The Greek derivative νέμω "to allot" became νέμεσις "distribution of what is due, retribution", and Nemesis, the goddess of retribution.

There's a similar connection between distributing things and deities with *bhag-.

How to Do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European

2010-04-21T14:07:00.000-04:00

An informative article from the Speculative Grammarian.

sewer and island

2010-04-19T09:26:00.003-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *akʷ-ā- "water" became Latin aqua. Combined with ex- "out", it became *exaquāria, becoming Old French sewiere "channel to carry off overflow from a fishpond".

*akʷ-ā- became Proto-Germanic *aǥwiō (AHD) or *ahwiō- (OED) then *aujō- "thing on the water". This became Old English īeġ "island". This combined with land to form īeġland - the s was added to the word sometime after the 15th century because it was thought to be related to isle.

*akʷ-ā- is also found in the name of the glacier covering the troublesome Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull. Ey is "island", from Proto-Germanic *aujō-. Fjöll is "mountain", from PIE *peli-s- and cognate with English fell "mountain". Jökull means "glacier" and is from PIE *i̯eg- "ice", and I think is exactly cognate with Old English ġicel "ice", which became the -icle in icicle.

Richard and cancer

2010-04-09T15:18:00.004-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *kar-/*ker- "hard" in the o-grade suffixed form *kor-tu- became Old High German hard "hard, bold, stern". Combined with rīhhi "rule" (from *h₃reǵ-) we get Rīcohard "strong in rule", and Richard.

*kar- was possibly extended to refer to things with hard shells, like crabs, as in Greek καρκίνος (from *kar-k-ino-) and the Latin cancer (dissimilated from the reduplicated form *kar-kr-o-) - both meaning "crab, sign of the Zodiac, cancer".

How do we get from "crab" to "tumour"? According to medieval writers, it was because the swollen veins around a tumour resembled the legs of a crab.

kirpan and bias

2010-04-08T00:40:00.003-04:00

The kirpan, the Sikh ceremonial dagger, is back in the news in Toronto because someone was recently attacked with one.

Hindi and Punjabi किरपन/ਕਿਰਪਾਣ kirapan/kirapāṇ is derived from a source akin to Sanskrit कृपाण kr̥pāṇa "sword". According to IEW 938 this is from *(s)kerp-, an extended form of the root *(s)ker- "to cut". (I've discussed this root before.)

One of the more surprising derivatives of *(s)ker-, according to the AHD, is bias. The zero-grade suffixed form *kr̥s-yo- became Greek κάρσιος "cross-wise", combining with ἐπί "upon" to form ἐπικάρσιος "cross-wise, at an angle". This was supposedly borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *(e)bigassius, becoming Old French biais "oblique". I'm skeptical; the OED makes no mention of this. The theory actually mentioned and rejected by the OED is more interesting: Diez's theory that it is from Latin bifax "two-faced".

pretzel and mirth

2010-04-06T18:13:00.006-04:00

I love pretzels.

Pretzel was borrowed from German Bretzel, borrowed from 12th century Latin bracellus "kind of cake or biscuit", from Latin brāchiātus "having arms" plus the suffix -ellus. According to the OED, the biscuit was so named "on account of the resemblance to folded arms".

The OED also notes "The English form with initial p- probably represents a perception of the unaspirated pronunciation of b- in regional German (south.)." But that doesn't explain how we get the aspirated /p/ from an unaspirated /b/.

Latin brāchium "arm" was borrowed from Greek βραχίων "arm", the comparative of βραχύς "short", also "upper arm" as opposed to the longer forearm.

βραχύς is from Proto-Indo-European *mreǵʰ-u- "short".

The zero-grade form *mr̥ǵʰ-u- became Old English myrge and English merry, altho the semantic development is obscure to me. With the Proto-Germanic *-þō suffix it became Old English myrgð "joy", and English mirth. So the pair merry/mirth was formed the same way as foul/filth, heal/health, strong/strength, slow/sloth, etc.

pajamas and peccadillo

2010-03-29T13:34:00.004-04:00

The Proto-Indo-European root *ped- "foot" became Persian پای pāy "foot". This combined with جامه jāmah "garment" to form پای جامه pāy-jāmah "drawers, trousers", borrowed thru Hindi-Urdu into English as pajamas.

In Latin *ped- became ped- "foot", and perhaps peccāre "to do wrong", as in "stumble". (Ped- plus the adjective-forming suffix -cus.) Peccātum was "error, moral lapse", becoming Spanish peccadillo "minor sin".

In English the lengthened o-grade form *pōd- became foot.

loot and rouble

2010-03-27T16:18:00.004-04:00

loot is from Hindi लूट lūṭ, related to Sanskrit लोप्त्र loptra "stolen property, plunder" from lup "to seize" from Proto-Indo-European *reup- "to snatch".

According to the AHD, the root became Old Russian rupiti "to chop, hew", then rublĭ "cut, piece (probably originally a piece cut from a silver bar)", then Russian рубль rubl' "rouble".

torpedo and starve

2010-03-14T14:42:00.005-04:00

Proto-Indo-European *(s)ter- "stiff" in the extended zero-grade stative form *tr̥-p-eh₁-i̯e- became Latin torpēre "to be stiff". Torpēdo "stiffness, numbness" was applied to the electric ray, genus Torpedo, family Torpedinidae, because

Torpido is a fisshe, but who-so handeleth hym shalbe lame & defe of lymmes that he shall fele no thyng.
- Lawrens Andrewe, The noble lyfe & natures of man

In the 18th century, torpedo was used for an underwater bullet, and then later for a self-propelled underwater missile.

The extended form *ster-bʰ- became Old English steorfan "to die", as in "become stiff", becoming English starve.

arabik

2010-03-09T14:22:00.002-05:00

The Canadian government has new posters in Toronto advertising English classes. The poster shows the phrase "English classes" in a few different languages, but tragically the Arabic script is badly rendered.

Not only are the letters disconnected, but they're printed in the wrong direction (left to right instead of right to left).

Reverse the direction, and you get كلاساى زبان انگليسى klāsāī zabān ānglīsī. I'm guessing this is Persian for "English language classes".

The associated website has an unfortunate problem as well. The list of languages on the left includes Arabic:

This is اربيك ārabīk - it seems to be just a translisteration of the English word "Arabic" into Arabic script. Why did they use this and not العربية al-ʿarabīyah? Either it's a mistake or I'm missing something; there are a lot of google hits for اربيك.

grammar and crayfish

2010-03-04T09:21:00.006-05:00

The Proto-Indo-European root is *gerbʰ- "to scratch". The zero-grade form *gr̥bʰ- became Greek γράφω "to write" and the zero-grade suffixed form *gr̥bʰ-mn̥- became γράμμα "written letter". Γραμματική τέχνη (grammatikē tekhnē) meant "the art of letters" (τέχνη "art, craft, skill" from *teḱs- "to weave, fabricate"), and this was borrowed into Latin as grammatica, which became Old French grammaire "learning, especially Latin and philology". This was borrowed into English as grammar.

The OED tells us that

In the Middle Ages, grammatica and its Rom[ance] forms chiefly meant the knowledge or study of Latin, and were hence often used as synonymous with learning in general, the knowledge peculiar to the learned class. As this was popularly supposed to include magic and astrology, the OF. gramaire was sometimes used as a name for these occult sciences. In these applications it still survives in certain corrupt forms, F. grimoire, Eng. GLAMOUR

So both glamour, which originally meant "magic, enchantment, spell", and grimoire, a manual for summoning demons, used to be the same word as grammar.

There seems to be a similar language/magic association with the word spell.

In Proto-Germanic *gerbʰ- became *kraƀiz-, then Old High German kerbiz "edible crustacean". The "scratch" meaning was extended to crustaceans, because they move by scratching the ground. This was borrowed into Old French as crevice, then borrowed into Middle English as crevise, which was folk etymologized to crayfish and crawfish. Crab is probably from the same Proto-Germanic word.

Some older posts on grammar:

Last year I asked what is grammar, anyway?

The grammar of the Maple Leafs.

What's up with between you and I?

Using that or which in relative clauses.

Conditional clauses: if it was or if it were.

And check out Motivated Grammar's Ten More Common Grammar Myths, Debunked.

despot and timber

2010-03-01T17:53:00.001-05:00

The Proto-Indo-European root is *dem- which meant "house" and also "to build" according to Fortson. Fortson talks about the phrase *dems potes "master of the house, lord, master", found in Vedic dám-patis and Greek δεσπότης des-pótēs - whence English despot.

In Proto-Germanic, *dem-ro- became *timram, and German Zimmer "room", and English timber.

'li ch 'o' 'uy' 'ul'?

2010-02-24T17:22:00.005-05:00

The coolest part of the Olympics opening ceremonies for me was seeing members of four west coast First Nations saying a welcome in their respective languages. The nations and languages were the Squamish Nation (Squamish or Sḵwx̱wú7mesh), Musqueam Indian Band (Hun'qumi'num' or Downriver dialect of Halkomelem), Lil'wat First Nation (Lillooet or St'at'imcets), and Tsleil-Waututh First Nation (Downriver dialect of Halkomelem). This map shows where these languages are spoken. These are all Salishan languages, related to Nuxálk, the language that freaked out Mattitiahu, because of its profusion of consonants and the difficulty of syllabifying them.

Linguistically, these are very interesting languages. Halkomelem and St'at'imcets have glottalised sonorants, which are extremely rare sounds, and St'at'imcets has glottalised voiced pharyngeals. How cool is that?

St'at'imcets uses reduplication for various purposes, for instance kl'axʷ "muskrat", and kə-kl'axʷ "muskrats"; and qʷal'út "to talk", and qʷə-qʷal'út "to talk loudly, to bawl out".

Halkomelem has a suffix to express an action done accidentally or with limited control, as opposed to an action done on purpose. For instance, the sentence "The child accidentally clubbed the woman with the paddle" contains the limited control suffix, and the sentence "The child clubbed the woman with the paddle (on purpose)" contains the general transitive suffix; otherwise the sentences are identical. (I don't know why linguistic examples are always so violent.)

Here are some lessons in Halkomelem, including sound files and grammar points. I like the word stl'itl'qulh [stɬʼitɬʼqəɬ] "child", which I might be able to say after a few years of practice.

Here are some useful phrases. The phonetic transcriptions are mine, so they're probably wrong. (Wikipedia was helpful, altho they use the wrong symbol for glottalisation.)

'li ch 'o' 'uy' 'ul'?
[ʔiːtʃʔuʔəjʔəlˀ]
How are you?

'I tsun. 'li ch tl'o' 'uy' 'ul'?
[ʔitʃən ʔiːtʃtɬʼuʔəjʔəlˀ]
I'm fine. And how are you?

Huy ch q'u.
[həjtʃqʼə]
Thank you.

Namut kwu.
[namətkʷə]
You're welcome.

Qw'aqw'ul'ux.
[qʷʼaqʷʼəlˀəx]
Excuse me.

enthusiasm and fanatic

2010-02-23T15:43:00.001-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁s- was used in words for religious concepts, and was possibly an extension of *dʰeh₁- "to set, put". In Greek it became θεός theos (from earlier *thes-os) as in theology. ἔνθεος or ἔνθους was "inspired by god", and ἐνθουσιασμός was "inspiration, frenzy", whence enthusiasm.

The suffixed zero-grade form *dʰh₁s-no- became Latin fānum "temple" and fānāticus "belonging to a temple, inspired by a divinity" (Skeat).

The suffixed form *dʰeh₁s-to- became Latin fēstus "festive" and festa "festal ceremonies", and Italian festone, borrowed into English as festoon, as in "decoration for a feast".

Khan from the epiglottis

2010-02-17T16:56:00.003-05:00

I haven't seen My Name is Khan, but I'm told that Shah Rukh Khan's character makes a big deal out of the pronunciation of his name. "Khan, from the epiglottis," he keeps saying.

He's confusing epiglottis with uvula; at the end of the trailer (2:49) he pronounces the name with a uvular fricative. The uvula is the thing hanging at the back of the throat that cartoon characters grab when they get eaten by bigger cartoon characters.

Altho the Hindi-Urdu sound (written ख़/ﺥ) is sometimes pronounced as a uvular, most sources I've looked at say that it is not uvular, but velar. The velum is the soft palate. At the beginning of this promo (0:14), Khan pronounces the name with a velar fricative.

So what is the epiglottis? It is a bit of cartilage located just above the larynx that is thought to protect the trachea when we swallow. Speech sounds made with the epiglottis are extremely rare. They can be found in the Caucasian language Agul.

khan and asana

2010-02-16T11:13:00.009-05:00

Not khan the lord or prince, but khan a building for the accomodation of travellers, as in gymkhana "place of public resort at a station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games of sorts are provided." According to the OED, gymkhana is a refashioning of Hindi gend-khāna "ball house", from गेंद gend "ball" plus ख़ाना ḵẖānā "house", borrowed from the Persian word below.

Proto-Indo-European *h₁ēs- "to sit" (a lengthened-grade form of *h₁es- "to be") in the suffixed form *h₁ēs-en-o- became Iranian *āhanam "seat" then Middle Persian خان ḵẖān "house".

In Sanskrit *h₁ēs- became ās "to sit" and आसन āsana "sitting", used as a term for yoga positions.

khan meaning "lord" or "prince", and probably also the source of Shahrukh Khan's name, is from Turkish.

spelling reform

2010-02-11T16:02:00.002-05:00

In the 16th century, some words were respelled to clearly show their Latin origin. det became debt (Latin dēbitum), scol became school (Latin schola), and etik became hectic (Latin hecticus). But sometimes the spelling reformers got it wrong. They changed iland to island, in the belief that the word was related to isle from Latin insula - but in fact it's from Old English īeġland, a combination of īeġ "island" and land.

The same thing happened in France. Letters were added to reflect the words' Latin origins, even tho the sounds had long been lost. doi became doigt "finger" (Latin digitum), pié became pied "foot" (Latin pedem), and set became sept "seven" (Latin septem). Mistakes were made: pois became poids "weight" in the belief that the word was derived from pondum "weight", but in fact it is from pensum, neuter past participle of pendo "to weigh".

banal and fairy

2010-02-05T10:26:00.003-05:00

The Proto-Indo-European root *bʰeh₂- "to speak" became Proto-Germanic *ƀannan "proclaim" (as in English ban), and this was thought (according to the AHD) to have been borrowed into Old French as ban "proclamation, publication, summons". This became Old French banal. According to the OED, banal in English first meant "Of or belonging to compulsory feudal service", then "Open to the use of all the community", which then came to mean "Commonplace, common, trite; trivial, petty".

*bʰeh₂- became Latin fārī "to speak", the past participle of which is fātum, literally meaning "that which has been spoken". It was used to mean "prophecy", similar to Greek προφήτης (prophētēs) "prophet", from φημί "to speak", also from *bʰeh₂-.

The Latin plural of fātum, fāta, was used in the singular to mean "fairy, Fate", and this became Old French faerie and English fairy.

lady, dough, dairy, fiction, paradise

2010-02-02T14:13:00.001-05:00

Our Proto-Indo-European root today is *dʰeiǵʰ- "to build, to form". In Old English it became daȝ "dough", *diȝ "knead", and dǣȝe "bread kneader, female (farm) servant, dairy-woman". Hlāf "bread, loaf" plus *diȝ equals hlǣfdiȝe "mistress of a household", becoming Middle English lafdi, then lady. dǣȝe became Modern English dairy.

The zero-grade form with a nasal infix *dʰi-n-ǵʰ- became Latin fingere "to shape", past participle fictus, which gives us fiction.

In Avestan, the suffixed o-grade from *dʰoiǵʰ-o- became daēzō "wall", as in "something that is built". This combined with pairi "around" (from *per- "forward, through") to form pairidaēza "enclosure". This was borrowed into Greek as παράδεισος "enclosed park, pleasure ground", then into Latin as paradisus, and then thru Old French into English as paradise.

sitar and testicle

2010-01-22T10:42:00.003-05:00

sitar is borrowed from Hindi-Urdu, from Persian ستار sitār, composed of sih "three" and tār "string". sih is from Proto-Indo-European *trei- "three". I'd always assumed that sitar was related to guitar and zither in some way; apparently not.

In Italic, *trei- combined with *steh₂- "stand" to form the compound *tri-stis or *trito-stis meaning "third person standing by", that is, "witness". This became Latin testis "witness". This gives us words like testimony, testify, contest, and maybe also testicle, from Latin testiculus, a diminutive of testis. How the meaning of Latin testis changed from "witness" to "male reproductive gland" is unclear. One hypothesis is that Romans would put one hand over their testicles when giving testimony, so the word came to be associated with the body part. Skeat says the testis was "probably considered as a witness of manhood". However Walde considers a connection between testis "witness" and testis "testicle" unlikely.

heaven and vinegar

2010-01-18T09:34:00.003-05:00

I finally got my hands on Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction second edition by Benjamin Fortson, an engaging and accessible textbook on Indo-European linguistics. I'll start with this quote from the section on religion:

…the PIE word for 'stone' secondarily refers to 'heaven' in Indo-Iranian and Germanic; while we are not entirely certain of the underlying association, it may rest on a conception of the heaven as a stony vault, from which fragments might fall in the form of meteorites; or it may be connected with the stony missiles thought to be hurled by the god of thunder.

The Proto-Indo-European root is *h₂eḱ-men- "stone", a suffixed form of *h₂eḱ- "sharp". In Proto-Germanic, *h₂eḱ-men- metathesized to something like *ke-men- then *himin, dissimilated to *hiƀin-. This became Old English heofon, then heaven. Presumably German Himmel is from the undissimilated form.

The Indo-Iranian word that Fortson mentions is Sanskrit aśman- "stone, heaven", and Persian āsmān "heaven". It's worth noting that, according to the OED, the connection between the Indo-Iranian and Germanic words is "rejected by many" on both semantic and phonological grounds.

A suffixed form of *h₂eḱ-, *h₂eḱ-ri-, became Latin ācer "sharp, bitter", becoming Old French aigre "sour", which combined with vin "wine" to form vinaigre and English vinegar.

smorgasbord and gonzo

2010-01-06T17:38:00.001-05:00

smorgasbord is borrowed from Swedish smörgåsbord: smörgås "(slice of) bread and butter" plus bord "table" (cognate with board). smörgås is composed of smör "butter" (cognate with smear) and gås "goose, lump of butter".

gås is from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰans- "goose", as in English goose, Latin ānser, Greek χήν. The Old High German word was gans, and the AHD tells us that this word or a closely related word was borrowed into Spanish as ganso "goose, fool". The OED tells us that this is a possible source of gonzo. It could also be from Italian gonzo "foolish"; I don't know if this is related to the Spanish word.

This quote from the OED gives some clues to gonzo's origin:

1972 in R. Pollack Stop Presses (1975) 184, I ask Hunter to explain... Just what is Gonzo Journalism?.. ‘Gonzo all started with Bill Cardosa,..after I wrote the Kentucky Derby piece for Scanlan's..the first time I realized you could write different. And..I got this note from Cardosa saying, ‘That was pure Gonzo journalism!’.. Some Boston word for weird, bizarre.’

cleave and glyph

2010-01-04T22:09:00.003-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *gleubʰ- "to cleave" became Proto-Germanic *kleuƀ-, then Old English clēofan "to separate, split", then English cleave.

In Greek, *gleubʰ- became γλύφω "to carve", and this was borrowed into English as glyph. Hieroglyph is from Greek ἱερος "holy" plus glyph.

cleave "to stick fast, adhere" is derived from a wholly unrelated verb: Old English clīfan "to adhere". This verb is now regular, with the past tense/past participle cleaved. Cleave "to separate" kept the strong verb forms clove and cloven, and also the form cleft, which is now differentiated from cloven in some words, like cloven hoof vs cleft palate.

The City & The City

2009-12-17T18:07:00.001-05:00

I've just finished China Miéville's new novel, The City & The City. It's not as good as Perdido Street Station or The Scar, but it's very enjoyable. I'm impressed at how he manages to make the central conceit last for a whole novel without it seeming silly.

There are a few paragraphs of linguistic interest which I quote for your amusement. It concerns the two languages, Illitan and Besź.

If you do not know much about them, Illitan and Besź sound very different. They are written, of course, in distinct alphabets. Besź is in Besź: thirty-four letters, left to right, all sounds rendered clear and phonetic, consonants, vowels and demivowels decorated with diacritics - it looks, one often hears, like Cyrillic (though that is a comparison likely to annoy a citizen of Besźel, true or not). Illitan uses Roman script. That is recent.

Read the travelogues of the last-but-one century and those older, and the strange and beautiful right-to-left Illitan calligraphy - and its jarring phonetics - is constantly remarked on. At some point everyone has heard Sterne, from his travelogue: "In the Land of Alphabets Arabic caught Dame Sanskrit's eye (drunk he was despite Muhamed's injunction, else her age would have dissuaded). Nine months later a disowned child was put out. The feral babe is Illitan, Hermes-Aphrodite not without beauty. He has something of both his parents in his form, but the voice of those who raised him - the birds."

The script was lost in 1923, overnight, a culmination of Ya Ilsa's relorms: it was Atatürk who imitated him, not, as is usually claimed, the other way around. Even in Ul Qoma, no one can read Illitan script now but archivist and activists.

Anway whether in its original or later written form, Illitan bears no resemblance to Besź. Nor does it sound similar. But these distintion are not as deep as they appear. Despite careful cultural differentiation, in the shape of their grammars and the relations of their phonemes (in not the base sounds themselves), the languages are closely related - they share a common ancestor, after all. It feels almost seditious to say so. Still.

yoga and syzygy

2009-12-09T18:00:00.003-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *yeug- "to join" became Sanskrit योग yoga "union". Yoga philosophy teaches "self-concentration, abstract meditation and mental abstraction practised as a system… its chief aim being to teach the means by which the human spirit may attain complete union with Īśvara or the Supreme Spirit" (Monier-Williams). The English cognate is yoke.

In Greek *yeug- became ζυγόν "yoke", which combined with συν "with" to form συζυγία "union, conjunction". This was borrowed as syzygy thru Latin. A syzygy, by the way, is an astronomical term for a conjunction or opposition of two heavenly bodies.

Another Sanskrit reflex is युग yuga a term for an age of the world. I quote the complete definition from Monier-Williams here because it's so interesting:

an age of the world, long mundane period of years (of which there are four, viz. 1. Krita or Satya, 2. Treta, 3. Dvapara, 4. Kali, of which the first three have already elapsed, while the Kali, which began at midnight between the 17th and 18th of Feb. 3102 B.C. [O. S.], is that in which we live ; the duration of each is said to be respectively 1,728 ,000, 1,296,000, 864,000, and 432,000 years of men, the descending numbers representing a similar physical and moral deterioration of men in each age; the four Yugas comprise an aggregate of 4,320,000 years and constitute a "great Yuga" or Maha-yuga

The Kali of the Kali Yuga, the yuga we are currently in, is the male demon named Kali, not the goddess Kālī.

lox, lakh, shellac

2009-12-04T12:34:00.003-05:00

lox is a kind of smoked salmon, from Yiddish לאַקס laks, from Old High German lahs "salmon". The Proto-Indo-European root is *laḱs- "salmon". The IEW has laḱ- 653 "to be spotted, salmon".

lakh/lac/lack is Anglo-Indian for "one hundred thousand", from Hindi लाख lākh, related to Sanskrit लक्ष lakṣa "one hundred thousand", also "mark, sign, token". Hobson-Jobson says the word has been borrowed into Southeast Asian languages like Malay and Javanese.

Pokorny derives Sanskrit lakṣa from *laḱ-; the sense development is presumably something like "spotted > lots of marks > a vast amount like one hundred thousand".

There is a homophonous Hindi word लाख lākh "gum-lac, a kind of wax formed by the Coccus lacca" (a scale insect that feeds on certain trees in south Asia). This is related to Sanskrit लाक्ष lākṣa "a kind of red dye", which is also possibly from *laḱs- (because salmon are red?). The Hindi word found its way to French as laque en écailles, which was calqued into English as shellac, that is, "shell-lac" - lac that has been melted and run into thin plates (OED).

host and guest

2009-12-03T09:26:00.002-05:00

Via Motivated Grammar, I have found the very entertaining blog the ragbag, entertaining for its wide-ranging and whimsical discussions on literary topics, including etymology.

A recent post on words wholly related or words wholly unrelated states that host "bread consecrated in the Eucharist", host "army", and host "one who entertains guests" are wholly unrelated. This is true up to a point, but if you go further back it turns out that the second and third hosts are both derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʰos-ti- "stranger, guest, host". Host the army is from Latin hostis "enemy", from the "stranger" sense. Host as in someone who receives guests is from Old French hoste from Latin hospitem, hospes "host, guest, stranger, foreigner". Latin hospitem is from the form *gʰos-pot- (*poti- "master").

However, the ecclesiastical host is wholly unrelated.

guest is from the same root via Old Norse gestr. According to Watkins in the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, the PIE root meant "someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality", which explains how it could come to mean both "guest" and "host".

the grammar gravy train

2009-12-01T10:31:00.010-05:00

Geoffrey Pullum says

When you set yourself up as a grammar expert it's better than being an expert on plastics. To be an expert on plastics you actually have to know something about plastics. With grammar the analogous thing doesn't hold. Nobody asks, nobody checks, nobody knows enough to get suspicious. You are free as a bird to publish any garbage you might want to type out.

I discovered this myself while in my favourite used bookstore a few days ago. I was in the language section as usual, and I found The Wordsworth Dictionary of Modern English Grammar by Ned Halley. Says the back cover, "Is there a right way to speak and write English? This unique new guide to the language is dedicated to answering the question - in Plain English. Compiled for readers from school age onwards, this is a book of easy reference."

Well it turns out this book contains a few errors. Here are some:

active and passive In grammar a verb is in the 'active voice' when it describes an action by the subject of the phrase; as, "he gave her the flowers." When the verb describes an action affecting the object of the phrase, it is in the passive voice; as, "she received the flowers from him."

Both these sentences are active. The passive voice is formed by a form of be plus the past participle, for instance The flowers were given to her.

ablative In grammar, the 'case' of a noun or pronoun expressed in the context of location, direction, time or other influences. In the sentence "She sat next to him", the pronoun "him" is in the ablative case. As a determinant of word forms, ablative is not a distinct case in English. In Latin, where nouns, pronouns and adjectives are 'declined' into cases, ablative is the final case in the sequence nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative.

If English has no ablative, how can him be ablative?

combat Once a mere noun, combat is now in common use as a verb...

The noun and verb are attested at about the same time.

imperfect tense In grammar the tense of a verb describing the progress of an action in the past. In "he was laughing" the verb 'was' is the imperfect tense of 'be'.

was is the past tense. The past imperfect is was laughing.

mood In grammar, the way a verb is used can always be identified with a 'mood.' There are five distinct ones:
1. Indicative mood expressing a fact: 'He is going'
2. Optative mood expressing a wish: 'Let's go'
3. Imperative mood expressing a command: 'Go!'
4. Interrogative mood expressing a question: 'Is he going?'
5. Subjunctive mood expressing a condition: 'Were he to go…'

Optative mood is at least a mood used by some languages (not English). But interrogative mood? It is to weep.

But that's nowhere near the worst of it. The book covers "the curiosities of current slang" as well. Here is the beginning of the entry for Goth:

Goth A worldwide youth 'counterculture' launched, according to some popular historians, by British pop singer Ziggy Stardust - known for his black clothing and eyeliner, white face and piercings - in 1979.

A black-clad, pierced Ziggy Stardust (scientific name: David Bowie) in its natural environment

[It seems that some languages really have an interrogative mood, including Koasati, Yupik and Cubeo.]

niddering and lilac

2009-11-26T10:25:00.009-05:00

A niddering is a coward, villain, outlaw. It's an alternation of niðing/nithing: according to the OED, in the 16th century "the letter ð (in niðing) was apparently taken to represent the letter d followed by a mark of suspension, thus giving rise to the form nidering."

Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Tiber. B.i) anno 1049, se cing þa ⁊ eall here cwædon Swegen for niðing. (Then the king and all the army proclaimed Sweyne an outlaw.)

1956 R. SUTCLIFF Shield Ring iv. 39 You know how hard it goes with me to play the nything.

1999 Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune (Nexis) 27 May A2 On the perjury and obstruction of justice articles, five and 10 niddering Republican senators, respectively, conspired to obstruct honest judicial closure.

It's borrowed from "early Scandinavian", as in Old Norse níðingr "villain" (OED), from Proto-Germanic *nīþa- "animosity", from Proto-Indo-European *nei- "to be excited, shine" (AHD).

*nei- perhaps became Persian نیل nīl "blue, indigo", altered to līl and līlak "bluish". This was borrowed into Arabic as ليلك līlak, then Spanish as lilac, a shrub with bluish flowers.

It's tempting to connect Persian nīl or the Sanskrit cognate nīla- "dark blue" with Greek Νεῖλος, English Nile, but as far as I can tell no connection has been found.

meiosis and minestrone

2009-11-20T14:04:00.001-05:00

In a striking example of how etymologies are not definitions, miniature and the adjective mini as in iPod mini, mini-me, etc., are from Italian miniatura "small brightly coloured image used to decorate books, manuscripts, etc." from Latin miniāre "to make red". The OED explains:

Italian miniatura originally denoted the painting of small images to decorate the initial letters of chapters in manuscripts (compare the use of post-classical Latin miniare in the sense 'to rubricate'). As these images were necessarily small, the term came to be used for small portraits, probably reinforced by an association by folk etymology with (ultimately classical Latin) min- in minore MINOR adj., etc., which has probably also affected the development of the extended senses in English and in other languages.

So mini and miniature are unrelated to minor, minus, minuscule and minimum. The latter four words are from Proto-Indo-European *mei- "small".

*mei- also gives us meiosis from Greek μείωσις "lessening".

And minister from Latin minister "servant, subordinate" - as in "inferior". The Latin minister is also found in minestrone - from Italian minestra "dish" plus the -one suffix. Minestra is from Latin minestrāre "to provide, supply" from minister.

unfriend

2009-11-19T11:27:00.012-05:00

Oxford University Press has chosen unfriend, meaning "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook" as its word of the year for 2009.

The OUP word of the year announcement has nothing to do with whether the word is new or not; it's based on its "currency and potential longevity". But simply because I can, I looked into how old it is. And like so many other words the kids today are using to destroy our language, there's nothing new about unfriend, at least in the past participle:

Will you with those infirmities she owes,
Vnfriended, new adopted to our hate,
Dow'rd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath,
Take her or, leaue her.
- Shakespeare, King Lear I i

I hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Unfriended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.
- Thomas Fuller, The appeal of injured innocence III. xxxjb, 1659

All quotes I could find are of the past participle. It's possible that unfriended was derived from friended, the past participle of the verb friend (which dates from 1225). In that case, unfriend as a verb, as in "I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook", really is new.

As a noun it's even older:

We sollen wende and wid ham fihten, slean houre onfrendes
(We should go and fight with them, slay our unfriends [enemies])
Layamon's Brut, c1275

Thor, tornado, blunderbuss

2009-11-18T09:50:00.005-05:00

The Proto-Indo-European root is *(s)tenh₂- "to thunder". This became Proto-Germanic *þunaraz, which is found in Thor from Old Norse Þōrr "thunder god", and also Thursday from Old English þunres dæȝ "Thor's day".

The o-grade form *tonh₂- became Latin tonāre "to thunder", and Spanish tronar "to thunder" and tronada "thunderstorm". Tronada was borrowed as tornado. The change in spelling seems to partly be due to folk-etymology: the word is often explained as being from Spanish tornar "to turn" (OED).

The form *tn̥h₂- became German Donner "thunder" (as in Donner and Blitzen), Dutch donder, and of course English thunder. Blunderbuss is borrowed from Dutch donderbus, from donder plus bus "gun". It was influenced by the word blunder "perhaps with some allusion to its blind or random firing" (OED).

karma and tera-

2009-11-15T00:52:00.004-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *kʷer- "to make" became both Greek τέρας "monster, marvel" and Aeolian πέλωρ "portent, prodigy, monster" (as in peloria), perhaps from the sense "that which does harm" (AHD). Τέρας is found in terabit, terawatt, terahertz, meaning a unit times 10¹², the next prefix up from giga-. The two Greek reflexes p and t are due to dialect differences.

The suffixed form *kʷer-mn̥ became Sanskrit कर्म karma "act, deed". The form *kʷer- became kr̥ "to make", which combined with sam- "together" to form संस्कृत saṃskr̥ta "put together, well-formed", Sanskrit.

swallow and manticore

2009-11-04T14:21:00.001-05:00

Proto-Indo-European *swel- "to eat, drink" became Iranian *khvāra- "eating". This combined with Old Persian martiya- "mortal man" to form an unattested compound something like *martikhor, which was borrowed into Greek as μαρτιχόρας "man-eater", ie "tiger". This changed to μαντιχώρας and was borrowed into Latin as mantichoras. This was borrowed into English thru French as manticore.

In English, *swel- became swallow.

Old Persian martiya- "mortal man" is from *mer- "to rub away, harm". This root shows up in Persian مردم mardum "man" and مردم گیا mardum-giyā literally "man-plant". This is a possible source of Greek μανδραγόρας and Latin mandragora, the mandrake plant.

onion and union

2009-10-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

Phonologically this is straightforward, but what the heck happened semantically?

Latin ūniōn- meant "oneness, unity" - understandably, since it's derived from ūnus "one". But it also meant "a single large pearl", and "a kind of single onion". Onion is from Anglo-Norman vngeon, oignon, oinion etc, in the 12th-13th centuries, while union is borrowed from French union in the 15th century.

So what's the connection between "oneness" and "onion" and "pearl"? The OED says

According to the classical Latin agricultural writer Columella, the peasants used ūniō for a certain variety of onion because it put forth no shoots, i.e. it represented a single entity. The application of the word to a pearl may represent an independent derivation from ūnus one, alluding to the fact that it was worn alone, or it may be a transfer from the sense ‘onion’, with reference to the similarity in shape.