Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2020/December

@Justinrleung There's a theory that suggests 舢板 was originally 三板 because a sampan consisted of only three planks. This looks like folk etymology to me as in standard Cantonese it's pronounced saan1 baan2. Any comments on this? RcAlex36 (talk) 05:15, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

With assimilation, the Cantonese would still be saam1 baan2 as expected. The bigger issue is whether this is actually 三板 or if it's Austronesian as pointed out in the English Wikipedia article. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:14, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

This word Magizh (மகிழ் in Tamil) has been found in literatures. As Verb it means "be happy". The noun is மகிழ்ச்சி (Magizhchi). — This unsigned comment was added by 69.142.144.207 (talk) at 21:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC).

The Tamil Lexicon of the University of Madras lists மகிழ் (makiḻ) also as two nouns, one glossed as “1. Joy, exhilaration; 2. Intoxication from liquor; 3. Toddy”, the other as “Pointed-leaved ape-flower, Mimusaps elangi (sic).” There is a tree species Mimusops elengi, which according to Wikipedia is named “Magizhampoo” in Tamil Nadu; the latter seems to refer specifically to the flower, though, or to a type of sari.  --Lambiam 16:19, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The countries around the Black Sea have a common word for the bottlenose dolphin that lives there: Bulgarian афала (afala), Russian афалина (afalina), Turkish afalina, and Ukrainian афаліна (afalina). A source also gives in Latin script the words afalina in Georgia and afalin in Romania. What is the original word and who borrowed from whom? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:16, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

They are from φάλλαινα (phállaina). This may be interesting to you. Of course the etymologies probably aren't that straightforward and there is probably more to say between the modern forms and Ancient Greek. DTLHS (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like the aspirated p from Ancient Greek evolved in two directions, into b in the baleen group of descendants and f in the afalina group of descendants. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

According to de Vaan, the Latin borrowing from Greek (with an unexplained ph- > b-), proposed by Leumann (Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre), is uncertain, while a joint (substrate?) source of Ancient Greek φάλλαινα (phállaina) and Latin ballaena, hypothesized by the Etymologicum Magnum, is unknown. The change ph- > f occurred, as was to be expected, in the transition from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek φάλαινα (fálaina) – which, however, strictly means “whale”.  --Lambiam 17:15, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

But according to Russian dictionaries, from Ancient Greek ἄφαλος (áphalos, “without crest”). If one wants to derive from φάλλαινα (phállaina), then a- needs an explanation. Abkhaz can add it, but Abkhaz афалина (afalina) seems a scholarly Russian borrowing. --Vahag (talk) 16:54, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I thought it could be an adaptation of the Greek article ἡ (hē) or αἱ (hai). Arguments in favor of φάλλαινα are the meaning (dolphins are small whales) and presence of the -ina ending. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

These words seem literary inventions and borrowings. Such adaptations could happen in living dialects, but not in scholarly creations. --Vahag (talk) 17:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I doubt that the Ancient Greeks grouped dolphins (Delphinidae) taxonomically together with the large whales such as the Mysticeti.  --Lambiam 17:29, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I'll write about the Georgian word, since I like have 0 qualifications elsewhere. @Vox Sciurorum, so personally, I think in Georgian apalina is a scientific term for Black Sea dolphins borrowed from Russian. I doubt the word existed because Abuladze (Old Georgian dictionary) doesn't have an entry on it and neither does Sulkhan-Saba 17th century Middle Georgian dictionary. So I think it's safe to assume a Russian borrowing post 18th century. -Solarkoid (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Are these words known from before the 20th century? Possibly they all came from the Russian coinage mentioned above, spread in the Soviet era. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:42, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

With a better library I was able to more or less trace the spread of the word: see afalina and φάλαινα (fálaina). This is not a scholarly creation, as it is recorded in Turkish (Pontus and Smyrna) and Greek dialects. The only part that bothers me is the appearance of a- in Turkish. Perhaps it can be explained by some kind of rebracketing within Greek, like in οζ'μάριν (oz'márin). Vahag (talk) 20:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

The booing/jeering and middle-finger senses of "the bird" are covered under a separate etymology, Ety 3, though this is said to originate from the idea of “to hiss someone like a goose”, which is really the same word "bird" as Ety 1. Is it our policy to have a separate ety section here, or should they be merged? Mihia (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

If we did this with every word, every definition would always have its own etymology... They should definitely be merged. There's nothing wrong with explaining the origin of specific senses in the etymology. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:53, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I do tend to agree, so I have merged them. Mihia (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

On that note, shouldn’t the ‘woman’ and ‘girlfriend’ senses have a separate etymology, from Middle English burde? (as in ‘Ichot a burde in boure bryht / That sully semly is on syht …’) – Our entry at burd claims so, at any rate. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 19:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

At they say that this "bird" is "perhaps a variant of birth confused with burd and bride (q.q.v.), but felt by later writers as a figurative use of bird (n.1)" and also that "Modern slang meaning 'young woman' is from 1915, and probably arose independently of the older word". Mihia (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Ety 2 of bird, Cockney rhyming slang, shortened from bird-lime for "time", has the following definitions:

1. (slang, uncountable) A prison sentence.

   He’s doing bird.

2. A yardbird

However, yardbird makes no mention of any connection with Cockney rhyming slang. Clearly the "chicken" sense of yardbird has nothing to do with this, and I question whether the sense "A person who is imprisoned" does either, despite the coincidence of meaning. (If by any chance it does, then I suppose it should have a separate ety mention at yardbird.) Any ideas? Mihia (talk) 22:00, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

The term yardbird in the sense of a person doing prison time being US slang, I think the (imperfect) coincidence of meaning with a Cockney slang term is a coincidence. Rather than this sense of yardbird needing a separate etymology, this sense of bird as a shortening of yardbird – if properly attestable – would seem to need one. Is it also (chiefly} US slang? (Also, I think the sole lemma for the Cockney slang should be do bird – I doubt that the noun in the sense of “prison time” occurs in this sense without the verb.)  --Lambiam 10:20, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, if "bird = yardbird" has nothing to do with the Cockney rhyming slang, which we suspect it doesn't, then I suppose it should be moved to a separate ety section, "shortening of yardbird", or perhaps we could get away with listing it under the main sense with a label to that effect? I'm not completely certain which sense(s) of "yardbird" are supposed to be shortenable to "bird". I assume at least the sense "person who is imprisoned", possibly "soldier who is required to perform menial work on the grounds of a military base", but presumably not "chicken", as that seems a little pointless? (BTW, it's interesting that the "bird" idea also arises in the word jailbird.) On your second point, my feeling is that "bird" in the Cockney rhyming slang sense can exist outside the phrase "do bird". I haven't found any "proper" citations, but for example at someone writes "W can have committed the attempted murder after he'd finished his bird for the GBH", which to me reads fine. Mihia (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I have put it under the main ety on the basis that the "bird" of "yardbird" is just the ordinary word "bird", and a separate ety seems to me to be making slightly too much of a meal of it. Mihia (talk) 18:46, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Is burden or OE. "byrd" (see *burþī) found in any way used to mean penalty, guilt, something like that? Burden is a bit of an ambivalent term so I could imagine those examples were not from Rhyming Slang. 46.189.28.120 15:59, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I know very little about etymology, but "burden" is said to be related to "bear", and I would imagine that it is completely unrelated to the ordinary word "bird" and definitely has nothing to do with the Cockney rhyming slang sense of the word. Mihia (talk) 23:30, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Mihia: But *burþini and *burþī are different stems. It is of course unrelated to bird, though its origin is uncertain, but it appears possibly homophone, hence my wonderement if you can get "prison time" from OE byrd, in which case the Cockney rhyming slang could be secondary, perhaps after the word had largely disappeared. 109.40.240.134 14:02, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Could we please take Polish into consideration as the most likely candidate for the etymology of this word? It seems that the Polish word has been completely ignored with much more distant candidates being considered. Polish words in Romanian are rare, but they exist. These are some of them: 'pavăză' (Type of shield wielded by the Polish 'piechota'), 'radă' (council), 'șleahtă' (The elite members of society; the Polish bourgeoisie), 'pofidă' (Irony, trouble), 'șuștac' (Polish coin).

The Polish word 'strój' means 'garment, clothing, attire' and is a very common, frequently used word in daily language as well as literature.

Vxern (talk) 21:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there a connection between Portuguese -oco and Gothic *-𐌿𐌺𐍃 (*-uks) ? Leasnam (talk) 08:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

User:ClearCorrectCC added the following note: "The origin of the word ultimately comes from Arabic "الأبيض". I reverted it for now, since a native Latin etymology looks more likely, but is there any truth to this? — surjection ⟨??⟩ 10:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

What are the vowels of the Arabic? If it's "al-ʾabyaḍ" it seems very unlikely to be the source or even an influence since the /l/ and the /b/ aren't adjacent in Arabic. But if the Arabic source were claimed to be, say, الْبَيَاض (al-bayāḍ), then since the Latin word doesn't appear until Late Latin it is at least conceivable that albēdō started out as an Arabic loanword that got modified by folk etymology to appear to be albus + -ēdō. But I'd want to see some very convincing evidence of that, as it is a priori far more likely to be a native formation and the similarity to the Arabic pure coincidence. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:45, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The Arabic Wikipedia uses الوضاءة (alwaḍāʾa) but gives الْبَيَاض (albayāḍ) as a synonym.  --Lambiam 18:03, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that the proposed etymology is worth a discussion as long as serious research hasn't been presented. The arrogant edit summary would IMO justify a short term block. --Akletos (talk) 10:08, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The proposed derivation from Arabic الأبيض (alʾabyaḍ) seems wrong. But is the phonetic similarity between albedo and albayāḍ really one of these curious coincidences, or does it stem from an etymological commonality (like borrowing in one direction or the other), made somewhat opaque by a remarkably apt folk-etymological adaptation? I for one think that the question is worth some consideration. There are accepted examples where the phonetic similarity is less convincing (e.g. German Hängematte from Spanish hamaca, or English eyelet from (Middle) French œillet).  --Lambiam 14:55, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Why should Latin borrow a term for whiteness? Why should Latin borrow a term for whiteness from Arabic? Why should Latin borrow a term for whiteness from Arabic and inflect it that way? I don't say it's impossible (Perhaps it described qualities of frankincense?), but it's so improbable a scenario that I don't think it's worth considering until we get more information from the person that brought it forth. --Akletos (talk) 17:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Late Latin, but still too early to be from Arabic. Arabic words, barring trade items like gossypium where we cannot exclude exotic paths, should only start with the sudden expansion of the Arabs with Islam, so masca is at the very edge with its Arabic suggestion and I was much inclined to remove it as uninformed. And Latin being purist, a borrowing from Arabic is unlikely at any time for such a basic meaning, since it means just “whiteness” and not something in astronomy, in which area we are used to Arabic borrowings, which is probably why the editor who added the Arabic origin was confused, having the English meanings in mind. Logical his derivation is not: as noticed the words are not all that similar either. Tip, @Lambiam: Words with ض (ḍ) are never borrowed (short of one rare exception, more southern Semitic languages with equivalent phonemes); and it’s all a coincidence since what we have to compare is the Arabic root ب ي ض (b-y-ḍ) to the stem alb-. Fay Freak (talk) 15:33, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there any proof that this is from Proto-Indo-Aryan? Because the lists here and here suggest otherwise. 72.76.95.136 14:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

There's a link in the entry to a reference that says it is. Proto-languages are theoretical constructs, so "proof" is probably not the best way to describe it.

I don't read Hindi, so I can't comment on the pages you linked to. I will say in general that PIA is the reconstructed ancestor of all the Indic languages. The language it represents would have been spoken at a specific time and place (or places), and it would have had both inherited and borrowed words, just like modern languages.

The process of adding words through borrowing has been going on from the beginning, so with borrowed vocabulary it's just a matter of at what stage of the history of the Indic languages the borrowing occurred- there's no difference of kind between words that were already borrowed by the PIA period and those that were borrowed later.

In English, we have words that were borrowed in modern times, we have words that were borrowed into Middle English, and we have words that were borrowed into Old English. We also know of words that were borrowed into Proto-West-Germanic and Proto-Germanic, and even a few that were probably borrowed into Proto-Indo-European.

In other words, something reconstructable to PIA can still be either a native or a non-native word, so there may be no contradiction in saying this might be of other origin and inherited from PIA. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:17, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The proto-form *cūha- is explicitly given in {{R:CDIAL}} (#4899). --Tropylium (talk) 16:26, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It seems likely that the three noun senses of fairing all have different etymologies, yet this entry doesn't even have one etymology section. 2001:8000:1588:B800:55BC:C459:7CAF:669A 03:54, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Senses 2 and 3 share an origin; one of the quotations on sense 3 belongs to a sense that we don't have yet: "To get his fairing: to get his deserts" (quoting original OED). The food sense is because food was sold at fairs. I don't know the origin of the first sense. Compare fair (“free from obstacles or hindrances”). Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:33, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

No, it's more likely from the gerund of fair (“To smoothen or even a surface”). I will split etymologies. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

We have tusker as "(Britain, Orkney, Shetland) a tool used in peat cutting" from "Old Norse torfskeri, from torf (“turf”) + skera (“to cut”)", and then tushker as "(Scotland, Shetland) a type of spade, similar to a cascrom, used for cutting peat" from "Scottish Gaelic tairsgear, toirsgear". Both list tuskar as an alt form. Are we really dealing with two very similar words in the same dialect which refer to very similar things, or is this one single word, in which case which etymology is right? - -sche (discuss) 23:10, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

• Original OED (reference added at tusker) gives the Norse origin and says "Hence also Sc. Gael. toirsgein (-sgian, assimilated to sgian knife), tairisgein, tairisgil (cf. Turskill)." Wright (EDD) says the implement is of Scandinavian origin. So the Gaelic word is not an ancestor but a cognate. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The Guifan Cidian claims this term comes from Russian трактор (presumably not English tractor). Any thoughts? @Atitarev, @Justinrleung. ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tooironic: It's quite possible but I don't know. China may have interacted with the USSR much more than with the rest of the world in that period, so it makes sense. If you want to change, pls include the reference. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Or we could add something to the effect of "from Russian or English". ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:18, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tooironic: 汉语外来词词典 also claims it to be from Russian. I think we can just change it to Russian. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 23:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Changed to Russian. @Justinrleung, Tooironic, Suzukaze-c: I have added a number of descendants at тра́ктор (tráktor), which is also seen at tractor#Descendants. Pls fix if you see anything imperfect or incorrect. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I can already see that Dungan is imperfect (it has two different paths for туәлаҗи (tuəlaži) (from Mandarin) and трактор (traktor) (directly from Russian). It appears twice тра́ктор (tráktor) but only once at tractor#Descendants. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:51, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: It seems really confusing that we have arrows for each variety of Chinese. I also don't think it's necessary to have the other Dungan word трактор (traktor) be wrapped under Chinese. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Thanks for fixing. Formatting nested descendants is confusing and I don't have 100% understanding how something works when you also have to include various levels languages and scripts. For example, заповѣдь#Descendants shows Cyrillic and Latin automatically (although we normally use "Roman", not "Latin") when nesting Serbo-Croatian translations.

Is туәлаҗи (tuəlaži) now OK? It's apparently borrowed from Mandarin and is nested deeper than other Chinese varieties? I wasn't sure about this. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: The current structure would show that the Dungan word is borrowed from Chinese without specifying that it's from Mandarin. I don't think there's a way around this unless we say the other Chinese varieties borrowed independently of Mandarin (so no nesting under Chinese). Another way to do it is to assume that the other Chinese varieties got the word from Mandarin as well (which is probably likely, but I'm not sure if we have any proof of it). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Thanks. I've rearranged the Sinitic Dungan borrowing and made equal with other varieties.

I've also made Uyghurjin the canonical name for the Mongolian script, "Mongolian" being the alias. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: Looks good, thanks! — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: Hey, your renaming of Mongolian script (Mong) to Uyghurjin is causing an error message in Category:Mongolian language, Category:Mongolian script languages, and Category:Mongolian script characters. Renamings of scripts should probably be discussed in WT:BEER or WT:RFM, but I have no strong opinion about this script in particular. I undid your renaming of Latin script (Latn) to "Roman" because I disagree with that change and more pages are involved that would have to be renamed. — Eru·tuon 06:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Erutuon: I took the liberty in doing this. Uyghurjin nesting for translations is proposed here: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#New_automated_nesting_proposal_for_translations. I have already moved some categories. The reason for Latin->Roman was the common (standard?) Serbo-Croatian translation nesting. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: I guess using "Roman" instead of "Latin" under "Serbo-Croatian" in translations is just to avoid ambiguity with Latin the language. In general we still want the script to be called Latin. — Eru·tuon 20:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Just pointing this out, the etymology on both entries is suspect.

The antichrist (small 'a') entry is clearly wrong, as this word is not an English coining but is attested in the bible itself (cf. 1 John 2:18).

The Antichrist (capital 'A') entry is correct except that it derives the name from the lowercase Latin and Greek forms rather than their uppercase forms. (Granted, I do not believe that the upper/lowercase distinction always existed in Latin and Greek, historically speaking. But check out the Middle English Antecrist entry: the Latin and Greek are capitalized there, which I think makes sense.) 2601:49:C301:D810:70E8:32B1:EDB1:1BD5 14:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The term attested in 1 John 2:18 is ἀντίχριστος (antíkhristos), not antichrist. But indeed, this is a borrowing, via the antichristus of the Vulgate, from the Koine Greek, and modified analogously with Christ < Christus. It is not clear from the original Greek text that the term is meant to be a proper noun; the singular form has no definite article, which suggests indefiniteness, as in “an antichrist is coming”, and the rest of the sentence speaks of “many antichrists”, which also clearly suggests a common noun. Wycliffe’s translation and the KJV have a lowercase a. In the original Greek, Christ is not a proper noun, and neither is the original Hebrew for Satan, but in modern English they are generally construed as proper nouns.  --Lambiam 16:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

With regard to capitalization, I was just thinking that it's probably more of an issue with orthography rather than meaning. Maybe I'm mixed up, but I thought ancient Greek (and biblical Greek in the manuscripts) was basically just written in all caps (e.g. you'd just see "ΑΝΤΙΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ"). Each noun has just a single orthographical form (all caps), which can be taken either as a common noun or a proper noun depending on context (unlike modern English, where we generally have a capital form for proper nouns and a lowercase form for common nouns). Not sure when the modern orthographical conventions were introduced into Latin and Greek, but I'm thinking it wasn't until the middle ages. (And even then, I see that in languages such as Middle English the orthography wasn't always consistent. Sometimes the proper noun "Antichrist" is lowercase, and other times the common noun "antichrist" is capitalized. See examples here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED1746 )

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what Wiktionary's rules are... but I see that for modern English and for all kinds of Greek and Latin, it appears that Wiktionary follows the more modern conventions (i.e. the (lowercase) common noun gets an entry, and the (uppercase) proper noun gets a separate entry), whereas for Middle English this doesn't seem to hold. So I personally would list the etymologies as follows:

antichrist entry - From Middle English Antecrist, ultimately from Latin antichrīstus, from Koine Greek ἀντίχριστος (antíkhristos). Analysable as anti- +‎ Christ.

Antichrist entry - From Middle English Antecrist, ultimately from Latin Antichrīstus, from Koine Greek Ἀντίχριστος (Antíkhristos). Analysable as anti- +‎ Christ.

2601:49:C301:D810:8159:83F3:D77C:C8FE 13:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

What about presenting Antichrist as an alternative spelling of antichrist, capitalized because it is being construed as a proper noun?  --Lambiam 22:07, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

RFV of etymology 1. I see no semantic relation between these two words, and don't know of any historical process in Swedish where b's changed to k's. Glades12 (talk) 11:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Svensk etymologisk ordbok also doesn't support this etymology. Glades12 (talk) 11:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Sense 2, as coming from Low German or Dutch, is supported here ] Leasnam (talk) 01:02, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

According to the same source, Etymology 1 is actually the same word. I've merged the 2 etymologies. Leasnam (talk) 16:58, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

It looks like the "Old English" referenced in the etymology section is actually Middle English. Tharthan (talk) 21:19, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I would tend to agree, yet I can find no ME word matching this. I do, however, find some support here ] (which admits the existence of the English word in the etymology at the bottom) and here ]. Leasnam (talk) 00:38, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

...and here ]. 1620 is EME. Leasnam (talk) 01:12, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I've updated the etymology at auf. Leasnam (talk) 01:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Is this tree + ent, as one would expect given that the concept of the ent came first, and treant appears at first glance to be an attempt to avoid potential copyright issues (whether or not there actually would be one with ent), given that halfling was opted for for Dungeons & Dragons over hobbit for that very reason.

Or would we argue that this is tree + giant, on the grounds of spelling, in spite of the history surrounding the creature in the fantasy genre?

Incidentally, what is the pronunciation of this word?

/tɹɛnt/? /tɹiːɛnt/? /tɹiːənt/?

Tharthan (talk) 18:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

To me, your first theory seems most plausible (tree + ent, with spelling modification to avoid treent or treeent). As for tree + giant, in my mind, a resultant triant would seem more appropriate than treant as it incorporates the /ˈaɪ.ənt/ sound of giant thus making a connection to that term. Leasnam (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

As to the pronunciation, I found this online ], but note, I have not always found these to be correct... Leasnam (talk) 21:02, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be a variety of pronunciations out there; see this forum thread. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 11:53, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

A user in that forum thread said that TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons and that was co-founded by Gary Gygax (co-creator of D&D, and the person who wrote the text in the very citation in our entry), had indicated that the pronunciation was /tɹiːɛnt/. Incidentally, that is what the majority of forum users in that thread indicate is the pronunciation that they use. I think that /tɹiːɛnt/ ought to be given as the primary pronunciation for our entry.

I personally have always pronounced the monster's name as /tɹɛnt/, though, and I see that plenty of others do as well. If no one objects, might I suggest that we give a few different pronunciations in our treant entry (though with /tɹiːɛnt/ as the primary one)? Tharthan (talk) 19:19, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

The etymology of this word appears to be quite under debate.

My 1990s Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the etymology as "Middle English: apparently imitative".

Lexico says that it is a variant of jag, pointing to the "stab, pierce" meaning as the core sense.

The Online Etymology Dictionary claims the "to shake" meaning to be the original sense, and suggests that it could possibly be from shog, though it states that that word (shog) is of uncertain origin.

The Century Dictionary claims that the word was derived during Middle English from Welsh gogi, though also suggests that there appears to be an "ultimate connection" with shake, shock and shog.

1913 Webster's simply points to Middle English joggen, and then says that it ought to be compared with Welsh gogi ("to shake") and English shog.

Merriam-Webster considers there to be two distinct "jog"s in English. The former centres around movement and shaking, whilst the latter focuses on something jutting out, or an abrupt shift in direction. It suggests that the former probably originated as an alteration of shog, whereas the latter probably originated as an alteration of jag.

Dictionary.com also claims that English has two distinct "jog"s. It says that the first jog is a blend of the supposed dialectal word "jot" (which it claims to mean "to jolt, jog", though it doesn't have a proper entry for the word) and shog, whilst it suggests that the latter is probably an alteration of jag.

Tharthan (talk) 19:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

"under debate" is such a strong term...I would say it is...uncertain. I've added an alternative etymology citing ME joggen, though I don't see how this word could originate from the ME jugge "jug". Perhaps a jugge₂ is absent from the MED (?) Leasnam (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Does this have an etymology beyond simply in- + debt + -ed? ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:10, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

OED suggests Old French endette (“involved in debt”) and that the spelling change was influenced by Medieval Latin indebitare (“to burden with debts”). DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 06:24, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

That's interesting. Any chance anyone could add the etymology? ---> Tooironic (talk) 20:37, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

According to this edit, it was coined on a forum in 2004. A comment on Talk:Commieblock left in 2006 says "several years ago", but refers to the same forum. This is certainly not impossible, but finding any sources for this might be tricky. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 10:16, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Our entry says it comes from "New Latin America, feminine latinized form of the Italian forename of Amerigo Vespucci", but it sounds bogus.

A semantically and phonologically much more convincing etymon would be Polabian emerikă; as we know, Protestant settlers of North America, such as Puritans, were hoping to create a kind of heaven on earth. 2A02:2788:A6:935:E034:216A:5CFC:8351 15:14, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

First of all, the name was already in existence long before the Puritans entered the picture, and Polabian seems like a very unlikely source for historical reasons. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:37, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in The Hiram Key (1996, edition →ISBN), page 77 and 291 seq. found the common explanation “easy to disprove” and argue for an another origin. According to them, the printer of the first attestation from 1507 mentioned at the page, Martin Waldseemüller, when compiling his work like he compiled his name, wondered about the etymology of the already existing name and erroneously etymologized it as from Amerigo Vespucci because he happened to have unutilized information about him.

Their theory is that the name of the continents is rebracketed from “La Merika” meaning an esoteric star in the west toward which the Templar Knights had to flee. They continue with alleged archaeological evidence of the prohibited Order having abidden some decades before in America already. Sadly, their claimed etymon is either esoteric or mendacious. But for their reproof of the old etymology, which haunted me ever since having read that conspiracy book – is such a learned origin likely and have lexicographers just failed to find the actual origin because of myriads of other etymologies easier to work out? –, thanks to IP we now have the complement. 🤣 👍🏻 Anon of course means that sectarians similar to the Puritans sensu stricto from Prussia must have sought to extend her colonial empire that early already and at that occasion spoke Polabian. Thanks, I’ll keep that etymology in mind to impose on prospective Panslavist congresses should I ever attend one, this will bare impress the ladies. Fay Freak (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Semantically and phonologically equally convincing is Spanish el Ama-rica – ”the Rich Lady”. :)  --Lambiam 15:49, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I recently expanded the etymology at for seitan and find it quite curious. The etymology as I currently understand it is that a term for the food was originally coined in Japanese and then brought into English, though the coined Japanese term that seitan is derived from remains unclear. Does this mean that セイタン itself is likely borrowed from seitan and is therefore a reborrowing? Another's thoughts on the subject would be appreciated. Best. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 06:34, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

If the memory of Mr. Mokutani as reported here is correct, the term arose in conversations between Japanese speakers, so it was coined in Japanese. As described there, Ohsawa himself spelled it usually in katakana, but occasionally wrote "生蛋 ". Thus, seitan is merely a Rōmaji transcription.  --Lambiam 18:09, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Nice find. I don't think there is any reason to doubt the information reported at the current moment so I'll go ahead and update the entries accordingly. Best. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 18:51, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

This came up earlier this year in a discussion that was for some reason in the Tea Room rather than here: the relationship of various Indo-European and also Uralic *maT-word for insects. I got busy with other work at the time, but I'd like to point out / reiterate a few problems that Victar's attempt at reworking these ended up with:

• Zero actual references support this analysis;
• The supposed derivation of *makáćas and *makátas from *mákš makes no sense. An *s-stem should give instead **makšá-ćas, **makšá-tas. At minimum they should be moved one step back to being derived from a root √mak-.
• The Pashto words remain misplaced: they cannot continue Iranian *makácaH (should be *makácah anyway) and should be rather from either *masyaka or *maxšyah. The former should probably be preferred, since (as, again, sources already state) it can be compared with Sanskrit and Baltic, which both reflect *mAḱ-.
• This also suggests that the Sanskrit word is not metathetic and is instead probably just formed with the common suffix *-kas.
• Even deriving *makáćas as suffixed with *-āčs is ad hoc, given that the suffix has a consistent long vowel. It also seems to derive mainly names of vertebrates, mostly medium-size: 'fox', 'eagle', 'lizard', 'peacock' (see de Vaan's article cited). Actually a better etymology might be Victar's footnote of a PIE *menk- (“to pester”), whose zero grade *mn̥k- could be used as a base for *maka-ća- 'pestering', with the adjective suffix *-ćás. This could mean that these are unrelated entirely to the words with *-ć-. This verb root, on the other hand, does not quite seem to have been established before. Per LIV, *menk- instead means 'to knead' (as in *mangijaną, *mękъkъ), which per Derksen is also the source of *mǫka.

So clearly there are a lot of problems here still. I do not think the current analysis should be given as if it were unproblematic and straightforward. Actually I would state this one step more strongly still: this kind of uncited winging-it analyses should not be added in the first place among Wiktionary's reconstructions, without at least accompanying discussion of the details (either in the entry itself or in some discussion page like this). --Tropylium (talk) 14:29, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Hungarian orosz is certainly of Mongolic origin - Mongolian doesn't allow initial r, as discussed at the entry for 俄羅斯 / 俄罗斯 (Éluósī).

This was discussed on Talk:orosz, brought up by @Dragonman9001, but @Panda10 insists that sources from established linguists be used. Such a source surely exists, and I'm wondering if anyone might have a good one readily available. I don't, but can search. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 12:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

It's an animal that lives in rocks or dry places — This unsigned comment was added by 41.115.65.124 (talk) at 20:11, 16 December 2020 (UTC).

We already have this (as imbila) for Swazi, Xhosa and Zulu.  --Lambiam 15:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

If anon is asking about the etymology rather than for the entry, at least names in various other Bantu languages like Chichewa and Shona mbira appear to be cognate too (many others listed on Wikispecies, e.g. Swahili pimbe). Given the range of the species, it's probably not from Proto-Bantu though but from one of the presumable earlier substrate languages. --Tropylium (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology, which @Djkcel added. Do you have source for it? It seems unlikely, as Irish words don't tend to go around losing t’s (unlike f’s, which are notoriously ephemeral in word-initial position). —Mahāgaja · talk 07:31, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah, right. From MacBain:

aice, proximity, Ir. aice; see taic.

He then lists taic itself as a word meaning proximity, support, which I see we have as Scottish Gaelic taic. - DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 07:54, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

@Djkcel: Well, MacBain is really unreliable, though. It isn't just that his dictionary is outdated; even at the time he was writing, some of his etymologies were quite fanciful. Zimmer's connection (which MacBain mentions) of aicce with ocus and oc (Scottish Gaelic agus and aig) is far more likely. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:55, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Roger that, I've adjusted it. Thanks. - DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 19:50, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Ety 3:

Unknown. The most prosaic theory derives it from muller¹ (“to grind into powder”). One theory derives the term from the surname of the murderer Franz Müller, while another theory derives it from the surname of German footballer Gerd Müller; both are phonologically improbable. The Oxford Guide to Etymology →ISBN, 2009) asserts that it is "very probably of Romani origin, from a verb ultimately related to Sanskrit mṛ-' 'to die')."

I am not claiming that either "Müller" theory is correct -- really I have no idea -- but can anyone explain why "both are phonologically improbable"? In British English (and this is about a British slang word), the word "muller" and the German surname "Müller" would normally be pronounced identically. Mihia (talk) 00:05, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• Sorry, on reflection actually that may not be correct. "mullered" may usually be /ʌ/, and "Müller" may be /ʊ/. If so, just ignore this. Mihia (talk) 01:57, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Are these implausible folk etymologies notable enough to even mention them? Does the OED give an earliest attestation date for this sense? (For deriving from Franz, this should be pretty soon after 1864; for Gerd, after 1970 or so, but not much later than 1981.)  --Lambiam 15:22, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if these are notable enough to mention, but generally speaking I suppose some event or circumstance or association could trigger such a coinage after the heyday of the relevant person, even long after? Mihia (talk) 17:36, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: OED just says "1990s: of unknown origin." DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 21:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

By that time, an unexplained reference to Franz Müller should have engendered the response, “Franz who?”. Association football afficionados might have recognized the name Gerd Müller in the 1990s, but he had then not been active for a decade, so his was certainly not a household name. I think we can simply discard these fanciful theories.  --Lambiam 23:06, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Victar, Rua, Mårtensås (Pinging possibly interested editors.) So it seems the current reconstruction of Proto-Germanic weekdays doesn't really make sense. Points below are a selection of arguments based on Dennis Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic World (Cambridge 1998) pp. 243-253 especially, and Philip Shaw, 'The origins of the theophoric week in the Germanic languages', Early Medieval Europe 15.4 (2007), pp. 386-401. The latter in particular is recommended reading, and can be found through various means online (mail if you need help).

Main reasoning for moving away from PG to PWG: 1) the planetary system with seven days (as opposed to the earlier 8-day nundinal cycle) was adopted during the 1st century AD in Italy and did not fully spread in the Western Roman Empire until the 3rd or 4th century AD, and remember that Gothic split off from Proto-Germanic sometime between the first and late second century AD by most accounts. 2) Gothic evidence for weekday names (and borrowings of weekday names from Gothic into Bavarian and Alemannic) corroborates this: it shows no trace of the theophoric/planetary weekday names known from West-Germanic.

There's a lot of debate on the exact date, but most views place the calques into West Germanic sometime between the 4th and 7th century, with the traditional view leaning towards a late Western Roman Empire date but Shaw arguing for a later, early medieval date (with the calquing happening not on the Roman frontier but perhaps in scholarly contexts). Whatever the case, this would mean we need to move the weekdays to Proto-West Germanic and away from Proto-Germanic.

My question to you guys, Victar and Rua particularly, is: how to reconstruct the PWG forms of these theophoric and planetary weekday names? I don't feel confident in moving them myself, I am not sure what the correct forms would be. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:56, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me. I want to note that the Old Norse terms appear to be calques of the west Germanic ones, probably done sometime in the 900s from Old English or OldSaxon. The reason for this is due to the nature of the compounds; they use the genitive of the first word, thus "Týsdagr" (gen. of Týr), "laugardagr" (gen. of laug) etc. This form of compounding is in Old Norse a younger one; if these were really Proto-Germanic compounds we'd expect something more like *Týdagr (< *Tíwadagaz), *laugdagr (< laugōdagaz) etc., with the special compound form used.

Another good pointer towards it being a calque are the days sunnudagr and mánudagr; the word sunna is not a common Old Norse word, and mánu is not the genitive of Old Norse máni; mána is. But; the Old Saxon forms of these two days are sunnundag and *mānundag. To me these are too close to be natural cognates, especially since the Old Norse words are not regular Old Norse. And anyways, the nature of the compounds shows that they do not date back even to the Migration Period, let alone to whenever Proto-Germanic was spoken. Mårtensås (talk) 15:06, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

This is assuming of course that there are no names in it which continue older names for days of the eight day week, but since during nundinal times the Romans didn’t have names for the days there is no reason to assume the Germans had, and at least some are calqued from the late names, so Support. Fay Freak (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

However, laugardagr seems to be a North German coinage; West Germanic languages never call Saturday "washing day", do they? This is why I nominated Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/laugōz dagaz for deletion here last August. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:03, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that one's not part of this discussion and is indeed best handled at RFD. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 20:47, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Laugardagr and Saturday might be out of the question, not to mention that Lauge "ley" hardly even compares, and Läuterung ("cleansing") reflects a slightly different root. I think it is a fools errand anyway to reconstruct anything unless you can quote a reliable source for West-Germanic ("between the 4th and 7th century" we would have to speak of North-Sea Germanic already).

Waschtag (de.WT) serves to illustrate another point. It is not exactly Saturdays, but it may be on a fixed day or two requiring to lay-off work. German Wikipedia is rather wishy-washy about it. Similarly, Thing was held on a monthly basis or as needed (cf. Saxenspiegel). These and moon-day (cp. month) do not need any mythic Latin influence, to say the least. Finally, even if any such day were observed once in an eight or nine day turnus, you would not expect it to fall on a fixed day in a seven day week. You should consider day-names a problem of epic proportions, not the least because *dagaz is uncertain to begin with. By the way, Roman sources recount that Germanic folks counted the days starting at evening.

For what it's worth, despite a very different meaning of wash-day, it appears surprisingly compatible with Turkish pazar (Sunday, bazaar), which is from PIE *wes-. The etymology of *wa(t)skana (wash) is no less difficult to derive from *wed-, after all. Naturally, it might also compare to Wednesday, if this "rather continues Proto-Germanic *Wōdinaz, pre-Germanic *Wātenos" (cf. *Wōdanaz; the long vowel is hardly compatible with *wa(t)sk- though). Even in *lewH- a w-aorist may be supposed. *westraz from "sunset" is relevant as well, opposite to Easter, cp. Norse vatni ausa (cf. Jürgen Udolf, Ostern, 2011). The possibilities are endless. Therefore caution is advised.

It could, however unlikely, belong as well to *wihaz "sacred, holy", PIE *weyk- "to choose, separate out, set aside as holy, consecrate, sacrifice".

In that sense, I wish you all frohe Weihnachten!, Merry Christmas Eve, Happy Saturnalia. 109.40.240.134 13:27, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja, Mårtensås See {{list:days_of_the_week/gmw-pro}}. Move should be all done, thoughts? We don't have an etymon for Saturday yet, by the way, might do that later (if it is indeed reconstructible). — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

The Swedish and Danish Wikipedias both trace this to English Faroffistan, first used by Carl Fallberg in a 1958 comic (the Dutch Wikipedia doesn't have the same date, but supports the basic facts). "Faroffistan" seems quite a rare beast both in uses and mentions though, even in the Disney universe. Could anybody verify that it was used in English-language Disney stories? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:30, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

It occurs on page 7 of the 1952 story “A Real Goat Getter” by Carl Barks: “Reward offered by the Sultan of Faroffistan for missing goat” (image).  --Lambiam 15:02, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Strange, this gives a later date of 1962 and mentions Fallberg as a creator. But thanks for confirming its use in English. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I copied "1952" and the name of the alleged writer from the web page where I found the story, but indeed, the title page of the issue has "1962". The 1958 story referred to is probably “Kidnapped”, which appeared in the Disneyland Birthday Party “giant comic” book, but I cannot view the images unless I pay $$$.  --Lambiam 10:58, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm back on Wiktionary from a long, long break. I'm looking at a question someone left on my talk page a while ago, and notice that even though I gave a sort of answer, the entry is still missing etymological information. It definitely has an Eskimo-Aleut root, but which branch it specifically came from I can't say. I just know that ogac either came directly from Inuktitut ᐆᒐᖅ (uugaq), "Arctic cod", or its derivation is cognate with it. Compare also the Greenlandic form uuaq or uugaq for the tomcod. I wouldn't know how to phrase this as an etymological entry! —Jakeybean^TALK

• Updated to

  From an {{der|en|esx-inu}} language.  Compare {{cog|iu|ᐆᒐᖅ}}.

  I did not find the Greenlandic words in the only dictionary I have virtually at hand (the 1804 Den Grønlandske Ordbog). Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Found another dictionary of unknown quality with the Greenlandic words so I added them as cognates. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 21:08, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

  Thanks for that. The Language Secretariat of Greenland have this entry for "uugaq". Seems to be a very reliable source, as it is essentially a branch of the Parliament of Greenland and run by linguists from the University of Greenland. --—Jakeybean^TALK

The name Podunk is derived from the Podunk Indians of Connecticut, and/or from the locale Podunk, referring to the region of East Hartford and South Windsor north of the Hockanum River in East Hartford.

See the article: https://en.wikipedia.orghttps://dictious.com/en/East_Hartford%2C_Connecticut

However, the use of the name Podunk to refer to a small town is probably from a later source which I do not know. — This unsigned comment was added by 2600:1700:67a0:30e0:a416:f2fc:89bd:9405 (talk).

• I've driven through or near Podunk, Massachusetts, north of the end of I-84. I updated Podunk to note the Eastern Algonquian origin. Maybe we can be more specific but I'd rather not cite Wikipedia. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 11:54, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
• I added what I could find. There were a number of similar words in Long Island and central Connecticut and Massachusetts. They may have been mangled or blended in the transfer to English. The region with the most likely original word is said by Wikipedia to have been dominated by the Loup A language at the time of European contact. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm somewhat unsure of the details of the etymology of this word. It can be attested in more or less this meaning from the early 1930s (first in advertisements, so it is hard to tell whether the snacks were deep-fried at the time but they were certainly savoury). But I am not 100% of the meaning of bitter in this compound, I think the meaning "spirits" is the most likely because I see no evidence of the adjective having been used with a sense approximating "savoury" (also compare bitterbal, besides an adjective-noun compound of this type isn't particularly common in Dutch), and the use of garnituur ("ornamental set of items") is certainly perplexing for food. It would make this a very unusual exocentric compound. One interestering piece of information is that there is an advertisement from 1921 where the word means "ornamental dishware for cocktails", that in my opinion makes perfect sense as an endocentric compound. If that barely attested meaning was current in some circles before the current meaning became widespread, this could have developed as a transferred sense. Does anyone have any ideas on whether the etymology should be expanded and on what to include? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The connection with the spirits seems rather obvious to me. In German, Garnitur can be used for sidedishes (someone should enter a def2 to the entry), perhaps garnituur was/is used the same way. (But this kind of humour reminds me of German "jocular" expressions such as Herrengedeck; I don't know which alternative would be more disturbing: that this German kind of humour exists also in the Netherlands or that it spreads from Germany to other countries...). --Akletos (talk) 13:18, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

French garniture too can refer to edible stuff that accompanies a menu item – usually served together with the main item on the same plate, such as the veggies (snow peas, carrot tops, onions, young potatoes) seen here accompanying a serving of veal chop.  --Lambiam 21:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Dutch garnituur also appears to have that sense.  --Lambiam 21:49, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

In this text from 1948 some hartige hapjes constituting a bittergarnituur are identified as an ondergrondje (basis – a piece of toast? a slice of bread?) covered with meat, fish, cheese. Obviously not deep-fried. The deluxe bittergarnituur snacks seen here on a page from this year are also not deep-fried.  --Lambiam 22:04, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the ety as it stands sounds about right. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:48, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. It does not sound alright as it stands in the entries. It can't, because garnituur has no entry yet and it is not glossed. It is conceivable with your additional information at least.

Leaning on multiple analogies, I want to suggest "serving of..." instead. This will be very superficial. Please see what you can add to it. The question is if garnituur could possibly have meant ensemble or something else.

nl.WT has the mentioned side-dish sense for garnituur, but it is at least ambiguous. Garnitur for "sidedishes" is rare in German. The verb garnieren is commonly known in this sense, equivalent to Dutch garneren "to garnish", in line with the suggested primary sense of garnituur. Garnitur in today's German means primarily an ensemble of furniture or clohing, all through French, cp. garnir. At this point preference should be given to the Dutch interpretation, of course, if any German comparison were too distant, also thanks to Lambi for confirming the side-dish sense in French. Garniture does however offer another tangential perspective.

garniture would parallel Gedeck in the sense of an assamblage, which is hardly funny except perhaps in the compound "Herrengedeck" if this implies a contrasting Women's Gedeck. The most common Gedeck is a tray for coffee in a can with cups and other assorted equipment which is ordered in a restaurant e.g. by the name Kaffegedeck. The name is a transparent construction, wherein Kaffee is equivalent to British tea. Deck- is incidently related to "bedekking".

For reference, a set of cutlery is eponymously called Service, in English as well as in German, where it is evidently taken directly from French on account of the pronunciation. A dish is just as ambiguous: food or cutlery. Gedeck translates more specifically: "place setting; cover (a person’s setting of cutlery etc. at a set table)."

In all those cases there is a corresponding verb: French garnir, English to serve, to set up, to cover, German eindecken. All are polysemous. Except, the verbs derived from garnir are oddly specific. Why?

To top it off, if the root is PIE *wer, there is the cognate Old Irish feraid (“to grant, provide”). The Old French intermediate is also glossed "approvision" amongst others.

Last but not least, if provisions in the army regularly involved clothing, it might be conceivable that somewhere in the bilingual communities between France and Germany, e.g. with the Flamish-French speakers, it might retain a sense that is very close to Dekk-. Compare perhaps Wärmedecke (warm blanket), noting that *warmaz (warm) has no certain etymology. Very heart-warming all that.

It is very telling however that nl.WT has exactly one meaning for French garniture, which is quite surprising in face of at least six definitions in fr.WT, none of which so specific as: "... bedekking van een boterham" (spread, topping on bread and butter).

Which is to say nothing about "bitter". 109.40.240.134 12:12, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

To complicate things, there also appears to be the German idiom erste Garnitur (of some field), the French idiom premiére garniture and the Dutch idiom eerste garnituur; the people (or works) belonging to it form the top-class in their field. If you don’t quite make the cut, not all hope is lost; you can still be of the second garniture. The origin may be Garnitur in the sense of a (military) outfit, where the new “first” one was reserved for special occasions while the second was for daily use.  --Lambiam 15:11, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

The switching from m>f is present in the English, Dutch and German branches of West Germanic; perhaps the instability can be projected back to gmw-pro. Many i-stems are feminine, therefore saiwi would be a natural starting point for this gender change. --Akletos (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Why do many of those descendants in the list have gender parameters? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo I've added them to get an overview. I hope there's no problem with that. --Akletos (talk) 19:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The etymology for English bairn (“child”) describes it as borrowed from Scots. How can this path be distinguished from inheritance in the North of the regional forms of Middle English barn, or a borrowing from the Scottish dialect of English rather than the ill-differentiated Scots language? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:25, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: It is probably the graphocentrist view some Wiktionarians have and what is meant is this is a case of {{orthographic borrowing}}, which we can deploy to be safe. Fay Freak (talk) 22:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

{{orthographic borrowing}} is meant for situations where a word becomes a much different word with the same spelling, not for spelling influenced by a cognate (as often happened in English and French c. 17th to 19th centuries). Bairn appears to be a word that died out in the South and survived in the North. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:19, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: What? What is a “situation where a word becomes a much different word with the same spelling”? {{orthographic borrowing}} is for spellings influenced by cognates. As it often happened in English and French it should be used more. Fay Freak (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

See the examples on the template page. The borrowings sound much different and the difference is discrete, in contrast to northern Britain where you have a dialect continuum with similar sounds at both ends. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: The description of the examples tells me I used the template correctly. I do not understand the CJK examples given and I do not think you understand either. It must be something about the visual form of the characters or their choice, it’s not about the sounds, so it seems to me that your sentence “the borrowings sound much different and the difference is discrete” is incomprehensible nonsense. Also I see that you apply the examples as if case law which I disrecommend as a confusing method, in favour of “abstractions, general principles” under which one subsumes; which is also the method that is employed in comprehensive documentations of programming languages rather than “examples”; the latter here tell us little about Latin script languages. Fay Freak (talk) 16:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Ety 2, for sense "Pornographic or profane":

"From the color of the envelopes used to contain missives of the censors and managers to vaudevillian performers on objectionable material from their acts that needed to be excised."

Tagged as needing sourcing. We present this etymology as a known fact, yet there seem to be various theories, and little certainty, about this etymology. Could be a candidate for qualification with "possibly", or to be listed amongst various theories, or for removal and replacement with "ety unknown/uncertain". Mihia (talk) 00:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Furthermore, if this is the normal word "blue", just with some special connotation arising somehow, should it be in a separate ety section at all? Cf. bird, above. Mihia (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Given that green is used in the Philippines in more or less the same way (see sense 14 at green) and Spanish uses verde in a somewhat similar way as well, I think that your supposition that this might not actually be the standard word blue is pretty baseless. Tharthan (talk) 01:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Hu? I think you may have misread what I wrote. Mihia (talk) 01:37, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I apologise if you were not intending to suggest that blue (etymology 2) might not in fact be a derivative usage of blue. But in the example that you gave above, bird, your last comment mentioned that there was a chance that it originally was a variant of burde, which later became conflated with and interpreted as bird. I had thought that it was possible that you might be attempting to suggest something of the sort happened with blue (etymology 2) as well, since you alluded to the discussion re: bird. Tharthan (talk) 03:49, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I was referring to the mention above of the booing/jeering and middle-finger senses of "the bird" being ultimately the ordinary word "bird", only with a special connotation, and the probable desirability of those senses being listed under the main etymology, which has now been done. I was suggesting that this sense of "blue" is a similar case of "the same word with a special connotation", and therefore that we should similarly merge it to the main etymology rather than list it in a separate etymology section. Mihia (talk) 11:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I was looking up the etymology of the name Gwendolen, which Wiktionary says is from gwen + dolen; while every source agrees the first part is from Proto-Celtic *windos, no source I can find lists an etymology for dolen. Some digging through Matasovic found me *doklos > Irish dual; is this also the origin of dolen? 2A02:C7F:6C58:7A00:D04B:FB41:EA4D:FD7 08:34, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

No, that wouldn't work phonologically. GPC says it's derived from dôl (“valley; loop”), which is from Proto-Celtic *dolā and is thus related to English dale and Russian дол (dol). —Mahāgaja · talk 10:53, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Verb sense:

1. (transitive, slang, dated) To spend (money) extravagantly; to blow.

Presently listed under the same ety as the normal word "blue", but possibly different. Mihia (talk) 01:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/December.

This article "THE ETYMOLOGY OF İSTANBUL: MAKING OPTIMAL USE OF THE EVIDENCE" gives it as coming from Middle Greek "στὴν­ πόλιν" (still meaning 'in the city', where Polis/City became a fixed phrase used to refer to Istanbul, so the article itself gives the direct translation as 'in Constantinope' rather than 'in the city') as the source phrase from which "Istanbul" comes, not the more commonly cited Classical Greek phrase "εἰς­ τὴν­ πόλιν". It's worth mentioning it I think, but I'm not familiar with wiki syntax, and can't think of how to properly summarise all that for the etymology section. (I know neither Turkish nor Greek, much less their ancestors, so can't comment on the veracity, but it seems solidly written). If you skip to section 7 you can see a summary of the argument:

https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/item/15924/stachowski_woodhouse_the_etymology_of_istanbul_2015.pdf

(with a note that I speak none of the languages relevant to this article, so I can't attest to its correctness)

2A01:C22:AC16:8B00:D4B6:A68D:DF71:2055 14:00, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Here is a bibliographic reference to the article:

Marek Stachowski, Robert Woodhouse (2015) “The etymology of İstanbul: making optimal use of the evidence”, in Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, volume 20, number 4, →DOI, pages 221–245.

The authors appear to have a beef in particular with (those who advance) the theory that stan in İstanbul can be traced to the stan of Kōnstantinoúpolis. I am not familiar with Byzantine Greek, but it seems to me that the question whether the etymon is the “puristic literary” εἰς­ τὴν­ Πόλιν or the colloquial στην Πόλι is, in comparison, a minor issue. The same Medieval Greek who wrote the former may well have said the latter. It seems plausible, though, to me, that the Turkish name came indeed from what was heard and not from any written form.  --Lambiam 23:24, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm one of the ones who privately holds the theory that the stan is from Constantinopolis, because I just don't see how /(i)stinˈpoli(n)/ would have become İstanbul and not *İstinbül. I used to think it was also implausible that a city name would derive from the prepositional phrase "into the city" at all, until I learned about İznik from εἰς Νίκαιαν, which really can't be explained any other way. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:26, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

There are many more examples of city names derived from such prepositional phrases, such as İstanköy, İzmit, Samsun. The latter univerbation arose in a population speaking (Pontic) Greek. Even in contemporary Greek, the Medieval designation ἡ Πόλις (hē Pólis) for Constantinople/Istanbul survives in the proper noun η Πόλη (i Póli), from which the adjective πολίτικος (polítikos), not to be confused with πολιτικός (politikós). While the vowel change in the penult of İstanbul is problematic – the article linked to makes a valiant effort to explain it away – it is much less dramatic than the contortions needed to move from /kons.tan.diˈnu.po.lis/ to /isˈtan.buɫ/. (Not only do the phonotactics of Turkish disallow word-initial /st/, but this combination is equally impossible as a syllabic onset, so /stan/ is not a preserved syllabic component.) The same vowel change is seen in İstanköy /isˈtan.kœj/ < (by folk etymology) /isˈtan.ko/ < στὴν Κῶ /stin ˈko/. I see no reason why, when harmonizing, /tin.bül/ should be preferred over /tan.buɫ/. Epenthetic vowels in Turkish often do not follow harmony (e.g. Turkish kulüp < French club), so the prothetic /i/ is not informative in this regard.  --Lambiam 11:10, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Proto-Altaic was banned almost two years ago, yet there are some remnants of it in the reconstruction space, largely because the proto-forms are mostly taken from the Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages. There are as of now 10 lemmas with an initial /*d-/ and 5 lemmas with an initial /*g-/ in Category:Proto-Turkic lemmas. If the Altaic theory is disregarded, there is no room for voiced alveolar and velar stops in Proto-Turkic.

Take the reconstruction for eye, *göŕ, for instance: it is clear that the initial /*g-/ is only found in the Oghuz branch, which makes it plausible to assume that voicing is an Oghuz innovation. The Altaists, however, reconstruct a /*g-/ in order to reconcile it with the Proto-Altaic *gŏ̀re ('hope' (sic!)) and even "Nostratic" *gUrV 'to understand, see'. The situation is similar for /*t-/, compare *dǖp. Outside of Oghuz, the voicing is chiefly found in Tuvan, where it is completely phonologically predictable and equally secondary. The Oghuz voicing was scrutinized by Doerfer, who found that the voicing started around the Xth century and was complete by 1450; a number of words in Turkish and Azerbaijani were re-devoiced since due to regressive assimilation and language contact, like in tutmak, keçmək. Kumyk voicing is likely due to contact with Oghuz languages, too.

Therefore, I propose moving all concerned lemmas to an initial voiced stop and updating etymology sections in the mainspace accordingly. @Borovi4ok предлагаю вики-курултай считать открытым Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 01:46, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support. NişanyanSözlük also gives unvoiced etyma, e.g. kör- < *köri- and tǖp.  --Lambiam 17:31, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Note, however, that Nişanyan doesn't deal with Proto-Turkic (only Common Turkic) and obviously equals Old Turkic with Common Turkic, and views it as an ancestor of all modern Common Turkic languages, so that doesn't mean so much for us. He has also said in one of his streams (in a series of youtube-videos called Dilbilim ve etimoloji, if the memory serves) that "Old Turkic is the ancestor of all modern Turkic languages", a view that we of course cannot support. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 18:15, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

But if the Old Turkic etyma are unvoiced, the voicing seen in the Oğuz branch does not stem from Proto-Turkic, so this supports Doerfer’s findings.  --Lambiam 09:40, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Only if you view Old Turkic as an ancestor of the Oghuz. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 19:18, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Allahverdi Verdizade, thank you for raising this issue.

I couldn't agree more. Moreover, I could make a couple of more propositions along this vein.

There is only one problem I see with this. Questionable as it is, the Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages is an orderly system developed by acknowledged Turkologists that we at wiktionary can cite as some sort of solid external reference, albeit dated. Unfortunately, there is no convincing and reputable alternative to it that I am aware of. If we now decide we can tweak it, we (this community) tomorrow may want to continue in that direction, so the next question will be: how far are ready to stretch it? Some may want to go further, and some may not, and this discussion and finding the concensus may get increasingly difficult. This is just a concern. Borovi4ok (talk) 19:43, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

We aim to seek truth, not follow whatever is most orderly. We know that Altaic is more than questionable, and have therefore banned it from Wiktionary. I see no reason for our Proto-Turkic to follow this problematic path. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:46, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Actually, if one knows how to read it, EDAL can still be useful source to quickly check up cognates, a role that will hopefully be replaced by Wiktionary as the time progresses. But EDAL may not be used to blindly import proto-forms, as one sometimes sees being done.

The alternative source would be, I suppose, ESTJa. It is hard to navigate around if you don't read Russian, especially the older volumes, and it often doesn't reconstruct Proto-Turkic, lemmatizing terms around the Common Turkic form, but all information needed to reconstruct the proto-lemma is often discussed in the article as well (vowel length, whether the proto-word ended in a consonant or vowel and of course a nearly complete sets of cognates.) It is the most serious work and it currently covers all onsets except for /*č-/.

How far are we ready to stretch it? Sometimes we will end up at reconstructed forms that one won't be able to find anywhere else. For example: if a term is has cognates in all branches of Turkic including Chuvash, but lacks external cognates. In such a case, the authors of EDAL probably never dealt with it, because it doesn't support Proto-Altaic, and they're not interested in it. But we can still reconstruct one or several alternative forms. The important thing is to give a complete роспись of cognates and provide a good motivation. And, of course, be open to criticism :)

Anyway, I don't see why we should end up in going where no-one has gone yet anytime soon. We have around 150 entries as of now and it will take a long time before we have built up the main stock of Turkic entries, and by that time we will be more confident to maybe push the boundaries of the the unknown :) Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge, I don't think "truth" is a concept applicable to the realm of language reconstructions. We need to remember that language reconstructions are only the result of linguists' lines of reasoning and inherent assumptions. For example, the 'Proto-Turkic' might simply have not differentiated between voiced and voiceless stops at start of word.

Even if one day human kind invents a working time machine we can use for our purposes, I'm not entirely convinced such reconstructions can be meaningfully proved\disproved. Reality may (and often does) prove to be more complex than the models of it that people have in their minds. Borovi4ok (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Since I do not see any substantial opposition, I will start moving the lemmas and updating the etymology sections. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 19:55, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Everything is moved and updated. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 00:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Allahverdi Verdizade: Good. This brings us closer to the truth. And wards us off of further errors introduced from the Altaicists. “Good” is an understatement, actually, it’s great. I wouldn’t have had the guts to contend and execute the observation that the stops are precisely the opposite from the forms in which they are prominently shown, by many pages and the most available sources, and that what appeared as mainstream actually isn’t accepted or acceptable. The Moscow school barks very loud but you tamed the bear. Fay Freak (talk) 09:14, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

For future reference and completeness of references underpinning the decision:

"t-: WOT /t/ ocurred in word-intial position. It was preserved in H in 47 cases. We find a voiced /d/ in place of /t/ in the following words: dara, dél, dől, dug.

d-: WOT There are very few and dubious examples in WOT. Hungarian has /d/ in place of WOT /ǰ/ before /i/: dió, disznó; problematic is daksi, even more ? dúl (see § 8.1). In place of EOT /t/ in initial position we find /d/ in dara, dél, dől, dug. dara has to be a relatively late, maybe Cum lw. The vocalism of dél (cf. EOT tüš) is possible but not certain; the labialization in dug- (cf. EOT tïk-) is possible, while the voiced final is not without problems VBulg had /d/ only in a foreign word: dunya ‘world’. Chuv has only /t/ in initial position (ibid. p. 1078) Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 13:20, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

  0.  A. V. Dybo. (2005) Dentalʹnyje vzryvnyje v pratjurkskom - The Altaist view (in Russian)

 

Does someone have any information about the verb "skiff" meaning "pruning tea bushes"? My instincts lead me to believe it's related to Germanic words such as English skive, Old Norse skífa, Dutch schijf, German Scheibe meaning slice (n.), although I could be wrong on that part. Wakuran (talk) 22:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

• Likely from the sense NED (OED first edition) defines: "Skiff, v.2 Sc. 1. intr. To move lightly and quickly, esp. so as barely to touch a surface ... 2. trans. To touch lightly in passing over; to skim.". So it should be merged with the preceding sense. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:15, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there a suffix for forming Latin ordinal numbers? For example, septuāgēsimus (“seventieth”) from septuāgintā, centēsimus (“hundredth”) from centum, mīllēsimus (“thousandth”) from mīlle (all end in ēsimus). There is also New Latin milliōnēsimus (“millionth”) from milliō (and possibly larger ordinal numbers formed from cardinal numbers that have not been added yet). J3133 (talk) 15:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

(Pinging GuitarDudeness who added the etymology of vīcēsimus.) J3133 (talk) 12:44, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

@J3133: Did not quite understand what you want. Have you seen all Etymology sections for each word? From unus to decem suffixes are almost proper to each... Then multiples of ten are formed with "-c(g)esimus" with various corruptions... See Etymology of "centesimus"...instead of "ce(n)simus". And for example from "septuaginta" "septuagint-timus" > "septuagesimus"...and from "septingenti" (for "septem centi") "septingentesimus" (for "septem centesimus"). In Latin numbers happened this rare corruption of C to G... GuitarDudeness (talk) 21:43, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

@GuitarDudeness: What is the etymology of milliōnēsimus? It is, evidently, from milliō, however, why does it end in ēsimus? Does it use a suffix? J3133 (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

@J3133: Not understanding the etymology of much corrupted "-c/ge(n)simus" someone transferred its -c/g-less form (absurd...) to "mille" (i.e. "mill-e(n)simus")...and obviously to "millio" (i.e. "million-e(n)simus"). These could just be "millimus" and "millionimus". Noteworthy is the French making of "centime" (*cent-imus after dec-imus, which itself truly be decem-us...) beside "centesim" (centesimus)... GuitarDudeness (talk) 22:26, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I see that various people on the Internet are befuddled by this use of fall.

Some even object to it, and find it offensive, arguing that "The concept of "falling pregnant", as though it's something that occurs out of the blue, is intensely annoying". That's what our etymology section seems to be echoing, by saying that this expression is "now seen as turning pregnancy into an activity solely involving the woman and freeing the man from responsibility".

I don't think this belongs there, though. This looks clearly like a modern, folk-etymological reading of the expression (I think that's the stance of this newspaper article, which is mentioned in the etymology section but is hidden behind a paywall for me).

So, shouldn't that info be moved to a usage note instead? And maybe the definition line should get a label: "sometimes offensive/frowned upon"? @-sche, what do you think?

Now, setting this aside, I wonder what its etymology really is. In this reddit thread, someone wrote that "It's probably from the same family of meanings as "fall dead" (found in Chaucer and Shakespeare), "fall ill", and "fall sick". (I would add "fall in love" to this list. Are there others?)

This person goes on to explain that "The Oxford English Dictionary sees this as an extension of the sense "to lose the erect position"."

I don't have access to the OED right now, but what I know is that several collocations have direct parallels in French: tomber enceinte (“fall pregnant”), tomber amoureux (“fall in love”), tomber malade (“fall sick”). (And see also Spanish caer enfermo (“fall ill”), Sassarese cadí maraddu (“fall ill”).) Might one of the two languages have calqued it from the other?

PUC – 18:01, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

• Seems a straightforward use of one of several senses of fall, including one with "fallen ill" as a ux. The societal attitudes of early 21st century writers in the developed world belong to usage notes, not etymology. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:13, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

  It was originally a usage note, but @J3133 moved it because it started with a note about its origin, rather than just splitting off the etymological part. It was added 12 years ago by an IP that geolocates to Washington, DC. As for the sense of fall, it seems to imply a change of condition, though fall silent might be a counterexample. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@DCDuring, what do you think? PUC – 16:21, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Much to my surprise Google NGrams shows this expression to have dramatically increased in relative frequency since about 1980, by which time it had fallen more frequent(?) than any time since 1800. I was hoping that any usage controversy could be pushed into the past and handled by a label like "dated".

CGEL puts fall into a class of verbs that take predicative complements ("PCs"): complex-intransitives with resultative PCs. Others are become and get, which take an open set of PCs; and others that take a limited number of PCs: grow, turn, come, fall, go. CGEL asserts that fall mainly takes asleep, ill, pregnant, prey (to), sick, silent, and victim as PCs. In my own personal Wiktionary each of these fall + collocations would redirect to a sense of fall. But its easy to argue that some or all these are lexical items that each merit an entry. If fall pregnant has sufficient controversy, that would force the issue. Is the controversy sufficient?

I do think that the wide range of meanings of fall do have an influence on the interpretation of the phrase. I wouldn't dismiss it a 'folk etymology'.

It would be useful if we could link fall in the headword template to a sense of fall#Verb. I note that the appropriate subsense falls under a sense that claims the subsenses involve negative resultant states. The occurrence of fall pregnant in books on fertility treatments makes me doubt that fall should be limited in this way. DCDuring (talk) 18:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I think with a bit of persistence one can find attestation for other PCs with fall, eg, decrepit, casualty ("eleven Indians had fallen casualty on Reno Creek"), lame, crippled. (I am aware that many of the collocations could be subject to other interpretations, but some seem clear cases of PCs.) I think there may be no strict limit to PPs that can be complements of fall. DCDuring (talk) 18:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC)