Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2021/March

πίτα#Etymology does not (AFAICT) explain the etymology of πίτα: it explains the distribution of Italian words for pizza, and their Latin etyma and Albanian cognates, but not why that info is in πίτα and not in pizza. Are the Italian words ancestors of the Greek word, in which case, that should be stated? Is the Greek word ancestral to Italian, in which case, shouldn't the info about Italian words be in the Italian entry, and shouldn't the Greek entry say what the ety of the Greek word is? Italian pizza never mentions any connection to πίτα, but only to other Greek entries/words/spellings. The etymologies of our Italian, English, and Neapolitan entries for pizza appear inconsistent / out of sync. Anyone want to have a go at moving the info to more logical places and harmonizing and clarifying what the entries say about their possible derivation? - -sche (discuss) 07:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: It doesn’t because it is not known. There are multiple plausible suggestions, and after two years I think I have presented them very readable. It’s on the Greek page because the Italian dialectological data is relevant for the consideration of whether and how the Greek word is borrowed from Italian dialects or vice versa. It’s on the Greek page because of the working hypothesis of identity of the words for pita and pizza, two kinds of baked goods. I don’t see it as logical to have it at any Romance language, on the contrary, Greek appears a neutral third. Sometimes Arabic, see مُشْتَهَى (muštahā), cool? Glosses of the Italian words were seemingly deliberately omitted at πίτα (píta). The only hitch here I recognize is that the etymology at the Italian section does not link the Greek page where everything is – because I haven’t edited the Italian section; before I edited the page, everything looked much worse.

So the Italian section has to be cut down. It is probably accurate as well as easiest to say at the Italian simply that it is borrowed from the Neapolitan pizza, but this depends on the definition of “Italian”. We miss the Tuscan form pinza mentioned at πίτα (píta); also I am unsure whether πίττα (pítta) was used the same way as πίτα (píta) to mean a cake/pastry (does this wording work for pizza? If not then Backware is another candidate for Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English; the “bakery products” at baksturvøra and αρτοσκεύασμα (artoskévasma) does not sound very idiomatic, and people would dispute that pizza is a bakery product; to me it is all easy to subsume). Perhaps @Samubert96 can help. Fay Freak (talk) 15:23, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

The current consensus is that Romanian da ("yes") is derived from Slavic da (same meaning). You can find attempts trying to link it to Latin words like ita, but:

• this doesn't fit phonetically
• it does not have any cognates with the same meaning anywhere else in the Romance world
• it doesn't even have cognates in other Eastern Romance languages like Aromanian
• until 20th century, it was not even in use in isolated areas like some mountain villages

The real debate is whether it's a recent loan or a Proto-Slavic loan. This word has not been in use in any Romanian document before c. 1750, making some linguists to suggest it's a recent loan from modern Bulgarian or Russian rather than a Late Common Slavic loan (c. 900-1000 AD).

Anyway, I have removed the (Disputed) part in the, but I was reverted. This "disputed" part is false, as there is no controversy, the is the accepted consensus.

What should we do in such cases in which fringe opinions being pushed for nationalist reasons? Bogdan (talk) 08:01, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Generally, what you should do in any case of conflict is discuss it with the editor in question. You haven't even pinged @Robbie SWE, who, I might add, is not a nationalist troll. In this case, I agree that while it may be appropriate to mention a controversial hypothesis in the etymology section, we can effectively disregard it in other entries to avoid giving too much weight to a minority opinion. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:05, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I thought it was worth mentioning, regardless how plausible the sourced theories seem to be. But I'm not going to go to war on this. Since we're a descriptive and not prescriptive dictionary, I find it quite difficult at times to take a firm stance on controversial terms and their etymologies, provided that reliable sources are given. We suffer from a lack of older written sources to help us outline the evolution of thousands of Romanian words. Scholars are constantly debating their origins – everyone keeps pulling for their point of view and picking sides only gives rise to future edit wars. --Robbie SWE (talk) 17:54, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I think that descriptivism is entirely unrelated to etymological disputes. We want to describe language as it used — both according to prescriptive norms, and not. But when it comes to etymology, we want to present the truth, and there is a platonic ideal for this etymology (i.e., what really happened) that we should strive to reach. It's fine to include various sourced hypotheses, but one of them is right, and the other is wrong — that's not prescriptivism, just the scientific approach. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:01, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

In etymology, the Truth is of course very often unknown and unknowable. The best we can hope for is to present the most widely accepted hypotheses and exclude crackpottery, unless of course the crackpottery has in some way entered the public consciousness (like the bullshit about fuck being an acronym of "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge), in which case we should present it in order to debunk it. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Which is why we don't present the Truth, but the current scientific consensus. Consensus doesn't mean unanimity, but a wide majority. In science, you almost always can find dissenting views, the exception is when there are no such views. In this particular case, every major etymology dictionary and all important etymologists consider it Slavic. Bogdan (talk) 19:18, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you both. However, in this case, we're not talking about pure crackpottery but a real hypothesis being tested. I'm not saying that it is completely uncontroversial, but the published papers about it are actually basing the theory on empirical studies. The problem we're facing with Romanian (and other languages) is that we have Slavicists, Latinists, Albanianists and Dacianists all trying to prove their points using the same (inadequate) material. It's hard deciding which one is right when they're all shouting at the top of their lungs. I believe we've done a great job so far maintaining a kind of balance and Id' like to keep it that way. --Robbie SWE (talk) 19:13, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The whole "Latin" hypothesis is based on a publication of Keith Andrew Massey, a biblical scholar and Arabic instructor at the County College of Morris, in a minor Spanish journal (Ianua. Revista Philologica Romanica) that published almost no other articles on Romanian language. While not outright crackpottery, it is very close to it. Bogdan (talk) 19:30, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

In an attempt to repeat the amazing success with finding out the origin of the word Bashi Channel, I'd like to bring this word to your attention. Apparently it comes from an 1862 map (according to Wikipedia). I don't see anything before 1862 on Google Books/archive.org and I can't get access to page 79 of the book An "agreed" Frontier, which says that the word dates to 1862. So (1) is there any use of "Aksai Chin" anywhere before 1862? (2) Is the page 79 explanation actually correct? Thanks for any guidance. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:16, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is right, the name was coined in the last two hundred years by one person (rather than being an ancient or native name some nearby people long widely used), and the etymology/semantics / his basis for coining it are not unambiguous; this would, however, support the idea that there may not be uses before 1862. - -sche (discuss) 19:38, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology. The etymology for this entry says “Brand name, now genericized.” According to the Wiktionary entry for “Genercized trademark,” a genericized trademark is a “successful brand name or trademark that has come to refer to the generic class of objects rather than the specific brand type, with the exclusive rights to said product being lost by the parent company, either due to legal action or inappropriate following of trademark law”. Given this definition, the etymology for the Scotch tape entry (“Brand name, now genericized”) is inaccurate.

No authority (legal or otherwise) has ever held “Scotch” to be generic for adhesive tape and the term is still a registered trademark in the U.S. and abroad (see e.g., Reg. Nos. 503709, 522761, 568452, 587296, 688141, 805065, 852110, 2695951; UK Reg. No. UK00001557663; EU Reg. No. EU002900884). This establishes that the trademark owner (i.e., “parent company”) has not “lost” “exclusive rights to” the brand name, and as such, that the trademark is not genericized according to Wiktionary’s own definition. Additionally, the term SCOTCH has been recognized by multiple sources as a famous trademark (rather than a generic name). See Slater, Dashka (July 18, 2014). "Who Made That Scotch Tape?". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved February 5, 2018. . . . Scotch tape, the now-famous brand . . . .. "Scotch Tape (1930)". The Plastics Distributor & Fabricator Magazine. Plastics Distributor & Fabricator Magazine. Retrieved February 5, 2018. Marketed as Scotch Tape, this was the first in 3M’s line of famous Scotch Brand Adhesive Products. Gaughan, Patrick (2005). Mergers: What Can Go Wrong and How to Prevent It. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 93. →ISBN. . . .3M may be better known to consumers for its famous Scotch tape . . .. Savitz, Andrew (2014). The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies are Achieving Economic, Social, and Environmental Success – and How You Can Too. Jossey-Bass. The famous Scotch brand tape is now made using water-based . . .adhesives. Dollemore, Doug. "Scotch Transparent Tape – National Historic Chemical Landmark". American Chemical Society. American Chemical Society. I propose changing the etymology to remove “now genericized” so that it is accurate and complies with Wiktionary’s own definitions, as well as the external authority cited above. — This unsigned comment was added by AHBPB (talk • contribs) at 15:32, 4 March 2021 (UTC).

• In common use in America, scotch tape refers to the type of tape and not only to the brand, similar to kleenex for facial tissues. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I think the OP isn't denying that, he's denying the accuracy of the term genericized, which according to our definition means the company that formerly held the trademark has actually lost its trademark rights. Although Americans may use the term scotch tape generically, it isn't technically genericized by our definition, because the trademark itself is still legally valid. Either we should change our definition of genericized trademark or we should say something like "Brand name, now used generically" instead of "now genericized" for cases like this. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:36, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
    • Perhaps, although... the etymology says "Brand name, now genericized." with a link to genericized, which is defined just as "that has become generic" or as the past tense of genericize, "make generic", i.e .it's not wrong unless someone makes the leap to genericized trademark on their own. (Potentially more confusing/problematic is that we have a category Category:English genericized trademarks.) I suppose it's an understandable leap; I suppose it's confusing that "genericized" has both broad and narrow senses, and we're using the broad one. We probably don't want to get in the business of trying to track whether the narrow sense ever applies, for reasons like User:BD2412 raised when arguing against noting whether terms are (currently) trademarks (lots of words become trademarked or have trademarks lapse in lots of jurisdictions, more than is feasible to track, and we don't want to encourage complaints from companies that see other trademarks being described and want theirs described too). Would "now used generically" actually avoid the implications of the trademark no longer being valid, though, or does saying a trademark is "used generically" amount to the same thing as calling it "genericized"? - -sche (discuss) 03:44, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
    • I think the issue is with our definition of genericized trademark. Whether a term that is or was a trademark has become genericized depends on how it is actually used, not on its legal status. People may be surprised to hear that BOTOX is a life trademark in the US. The definition should not require that exclusive rights to the trademark have been lost – something that may hold in some jurisdictions but not in others; for example, "Aspirin" is still a valid and protected trademark of Bayer in Canada.  --Lambiam 11:31, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• I left the following comment on User talk:AHBPB:

  Wiktionary tracks actual usage of terms, including extra-legal usage, in accordance with our standards for attestation (See WT:ATTEST.). As a practical matter we cannot and do not take a position as to the legal validity of any trade name. We could possibly include one or two important dates in the history of a trademark or trade name in our etymology section for the term. An example might be when a trademark was first registered in the US or other country of first use. In most cases we would reference a Wikipedia article or section of an article that covered trade name matters.

Please correct any part of that comment, I think it summarizes where we stand, but IANAL. DCDuring (talk) 14:40, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@AHBPB: The hitch is contained by the definition of genericized trademark. The feared legal effect of something being considered a genericized trademark should not be portrayed as necessarily ensuing from any such qualification. Things only turn out like this when one plays the language game of a certain legal position. My legal system lacks the concept, thus the German translation at genericized trademark is not idiomatic and there is no German article for the en.Wikipedia Generic trademark, where it is better than here restricted that a trademark thus popularised has its legal protection at risk in some countries; and legal laypersons likewise do not make a claim towards that the trademark protection is invalid – for they lack legal knowledge, and so to this dictionary legal relations are naturally sadly peripheral, not aimed at in descriptions. Fay Freak (talk) 16:19, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Accordingly I have move that part out of the definition, as it is not generally enough meant by the usage.

Currently, in lack of different ideas respecting WT:EL, I put law facts into usage notes, since sometimes one needs to get to know the law to recognize why a term is used. So I did on forum selection clause, Rahmenrecht, Erziehungsberechtigter, for entropy. I am not averse to Wiktionary becoming a legal dictionary, containing sketches of legal systems, so one gets to know where one can locate terms; accordingly I assume that there are other relevant circumstances for the usage note of genericized trademark (low priority, as we are utterly far from a legal dictionary). Fay Freak (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@DCDuring:: I definitely understand that Wiktionary cannot take a position as to the legal validity of any trade name. I think part of the problem is that Wiktionary’s definition of “genericized trademark” (particularly when combined with its categorization of certain terms in the genericized trademarks category) does seem to suggest a position as to the legal validity of a mark, because it defines “genericized trademark” as one in which the trademark owner has “lost” “exclusive rights” in the mark, which can only be determined by a court. That said, I think your suggestion for resolving the etymology of “Scotch tape” is a good one. I suggest we change the etymology to: “From the brand name trademarked by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (now 3M) in 1950 based on use since 1926.” This follows your suggested convention, and matches the convention included in the Kleenex Wiktionary etymology (which was an example another editor mentioned here). — This unsigned comment was added by AHBPB (talk • contribs) at 2021/March 5 13:51.

Obviously, we are not practicing, let alone deciding, law here, so any use of terms is strictly a matter of linguistics. People are, to some extent, using trademarked terms generically. That seems to be a fact. It is not possible for us to make any determination about relative frequency of such use, let alone whether the authors or their publishers violated your trademark. We haven't seen any indication of someone using this, or any other trademark, to earn a profit. We discourage all kinds of commercial activity. As to the meaning of the term genericized trademark, I am unaware of any law that prescribes or proscribes any particular definitions. DCDuring (talk) 22:14, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

This topic has drawn my attention to the varied spellings that people use that represent homophones or near-homophones of Scotch tape. I created an entry for the noun (often used attributively) and verb scotchtape. Google Books and, to some extent, Google News, and UseNet, possibly even Google Scholar, provide abundant evidence of different orthography (capitalization, hyphenation, spacing). That said, I have not (yet) found anything to object to with the wording you suggest for the etymology. I don't know what others think about this. DCDuring (talk) 22:25, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Why do we have only a single definition for genericized trademark. At the very least, we need {{&lit|en|genericized|trademark}}. Should we have entries for generic trademark, genericized/generic brand name/trade name/servicemark? I wonder whether these are all SoP. DCDuring (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I note that, among OneLook references only we and WP cover this term. DCDuring (talk) 22:39, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

To the extent that the OP's concern was that calling this genericized was making a claim that it had definitively lost legal protection, I think Fay Freak's improvements to genericized trademark resolve the issue. I might even drop "successful" from the definition; in practice an unsuccessful one is unlikely to come to be used generically, but I'm not sure that's definitional. It seems like an accurate definition is an {{&lit}} definition. - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

The original poster was User:AHBPB, who did not sign. DCDuring (talk) 00:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the changes to the definition of “genericized trademark” helps somewhat. That said, I’d still propose changing the etymology to “From the brand name trademarked by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (now 3M) in 1950 based on use since 1926.” This etymology provides more information to the reader about the origin of the word, while not taking any stance on the frequency of any generic use of the term “Scotch tape” or whether legal protection still remains (which is, understandably, Wiktionary’s preference). And, it is consistent with the etymology for other brand names that may also sometimes be used generically (such as Kleenex Wiktionary etymology). AHBPB (talk) 16:29, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

@DCDuring: I considered your comment some more. I agree that “it is not possible for to make any determination about relative frequency of” the use of trademarked terms generically. However, by stating in the “Scotch tape” etymology that the brand name is “now genericized,” and then by defining genericized trademark to mean “a successful brand name or trademark that has come to refer to the generic class of objects rather than the specific brand type,” Wiktionary is actually making a statement about the “relative frequency” of the use of trademarked terms generically. This combination of definitions certainly suggests to the average user that the generic usage is more prevalent than the trademark use of the term (because that’s the only way the brand name would now be “genericized” such that it has “come to refer to the generic class of objects rather than the specific brand type.”). For these reasons, I don’t think the change to the definition of genericized trademark resolves the fact that the “Scotch tape” etymology is making a claim regarding frequency of generic use. Given these complexities, the proposed etymology ““From the brand name trademarked by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (now 3M) in 1950 based on use since 1926” is not only more accurate, but also more in line with Wiktionary’s own definitions and policies. No one here has suggested anything to object to the wording I’ve suggested for the etymology, so it seems that making the change would be acceptable. AHBPB (talk) 19:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@AHBPB: In many cases the wording in the etymology for such terms may well be an inaccurate reflection of what we can support. By our usual methods we only find that generic usage is attestable, which does not necessarily mean that the term "is" or "has become generic" or even that it is "becoming generic". The pro-genericization bias is to be expected given the growing anti-business bias in Western society and the particular hostility toward intellectual property, eg, medical patents, gross extensions of copyright, the latter being a sore subject for WMF projects such as Wiktionary and Wikipedia, not to mention Wikisource and Wikiquotes. DCDuring (talk) 15:38, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the Swedish etymology. I can barely see any semantic relation between the Latin word and this one; it seems more like this one was coined as larv +‎ -a, with larv being used in a general sense of someone or something immature. Glades12 (talk) 16:37, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

The 1922 Svensk etymologisk ordbok has two entries for a noun larv, where the first, from the Latin noun larva, means “(insect) larva” but is said to have had a now obsolete sense of “mask, disguise”. The second one is said to mean “little boy”, also dialectally “wretch”. In spite of the semantic proximity, there is no suggestion of a cognate relationship with the first entry. Instead, the second one is said to stem from Norwegian larv meaning “ragamuffin”, apparently(?) an alternative form of Norwegian slarv. The verb larva would then derive from this noun; note that Norwegian Bokmål slarv is also a verb meaning “to do shoddy work”. (Disclaimer: my Swedish skills are limited, and the exc. use of abbr. in the sv. ety. dict. is unh. to und.)  --Lambiam 15:31, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

(Straying off-topic) I try to always add entries for abbreviations that I find in dictionaries for this reason! If the abbreviations seem to be used in more books than just that dictionary. make a list somewhere and let's ping a Swede to explain them... - -sche (discuss) 19:31, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

"Slarv" for "shoddy work" is also a common noun in Swedish, although I think the most common form in current Norwegian Bokmål is "slurv". Bokmålsordboka lists both variants, though. Wakuran (talk) 00:26, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

But yes, both Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok and SAOB seem to favor a connection between "larv" and "slarv". That the Swedish word ends in -a doesn't mean a thing, since that's the standard ending for almost all Swedish verbs. Wakuran (talk) 00:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

This is Malayo-Polynesian, but does not look related at all to *lima. — This unsigned comment was added by 72.76.95.136 (talk) at 00:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC).

Looks like perhaps a reflex of a prefixed form like *ta-lima, *ka-lima, which are widely found thru Oceanic (*Talima > #Teli > #Tʲeɫe > *čeɣe?) These prefixes sometimes palatalize also elsewhere, going by Zompist e.g. Labo selme, Sie sukrim, Leharulu čiβilyem.

However Ghari tɔlu for '3' leaves me not very certain on suggesting that this gh would continues *l, and the southern Solomons still are within the area of Oceania where also non-Austronesian languages may have been once spoken. In the nearest known ones, w:Central Solomon languages, forms for '5' include Savosavo ara, Lavukaleve sie, Touo sodu, Bilua sike; not obviously related (either to Ghari or each other) but some are within plausible distance. --Tropylium (talk) 00:49, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Ghari is one of the phonologically quite conservative Southeast Solomonic languages, so *lima would have been retained as **lima (cf. Proto Oceanic *lima > lima- 'hand'). Ghari ɣ goes back to *k (e.g. POc *panako > vanaɣo 'steal', POc *kani(-a) > ɣani(a) 'eat'; cf. also the pronouns ɣami, ɣita, ɣoe). Ghari č seems to be the product of a split of POc *s into s and č, based on *susu > čuču 'breast' and *mamasa > mamača 'dry' (no idea about the conditioning factor of the split). So Ghari čeɣe reflects pre-Ghari *seke, and this is actually a good match with Bilua sike and (probably Lavukaleve sie, but the relations among the C. Solomon languages are still poorly understood). Borrowing from a pre-AN subtratum language related to Bilua is the most plausible explanation. –Austronesier (talk) 07:32, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier Oh yeah, that does make sense, now that I think of it. "Five" in Bilua is "sike", and "five" in Savosavo is... "ara"? Hang on, we got a problem here... 72.76.95.136 20:39, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Not really, considering that Bilua and Savosavo are at best only remotely related to each other, if at all (evidence from pronouns looks good, but that's about it). So Ghari might have picked up *seke from an extinct relative of Bilua (let's call it para-Bilua) which was apparently more closely related to the latter than present-day Savosavo is. The very low resemblance scores between Bilua and Savosavo (3-5%) give a rough indication that they were already well diversified at the time when SE Solomonic languages arrived there. Btw, apart from čeɣe ~ sike, there is no other evidence for Ghari/para-Bilua contact in the basic vocabulary, judging from the ABVD lists. –Austronesier (talk) 10:58, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

A first-time IP from Romania visits the website and reads for the first time the suggestion that întreba might be of Slavic origin. Covered in cold sweat, they purge the exsecrable words from the Latin word's descendant section and go drink a bottle of ţuică in hope of forgetting this fateful day. What does a poor wiktionary editor do? They can't very well hold a discussion with an IP, and even if they could, what would they say? It's indeed true that linguists prefer to postulate *interguāre and don't dare suggest Slavic influence. The closest I've seen is the dar această supoziție nu pare întemeiată from the Romanian DER, still not mentioning the S-word. I mean, would this wordreference thread (post #25 onwards) count as "linguists saying that"? In it, a Romanian can be seen swayed to consider a Slavic etymology for this word! Plis don't hate on my style. Brutal Russian (talk) 00:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

On actually reading translating properly for a change, the 'supoziție întemeiată' is că numai -gu- putea trece la b, "that only -gu- could have given a -b-", that is to say the writer believes that the word could go back to the attested Latin form directly, something I'd say requires a lot of elaboration (cf. the forum thread). Brutal Russian (talk) 01:55, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I guess there are two possible explanations for this word:

• it's a change within Vulgar Latin, before the split of Romanian; most phonetical inconsistencies (and in some cases, even changes in meaning) can be explained through this, especially through northern Italian dialects.
• we had an old word that followed the regular phonetical changes, but which was then influenced by treabă; it happened with other words like *sfent (< svętъ) + sânt (< sanctus) resulting sfânt.

Bogdan (talk) 07:28, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Bogdan: Thank you for replying, but could you elaborate? I don't see either any Northern Italian reflexes of this word, or which Lewd Latin form the reflexes I did list on the Latin page could all go back to. Forms in -rv-, as far as I remember reading, should all go back to Old French even in Occitan; the Asturian entrugar is the form closest to what you'd expect regularly for Romanian. Any way, I do believe the word's form was conflated with another word after the association with ruga had been lost. Brutal Russian (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

This is probably a loanblend of *vъterbati, or *vъzterbati or *vъsъterbati: at least in Serbo-Croatian ùstrebati is the perfective of trȅbati and, of frequent use, means “to come to need”, “to reckon necessary”, gereksemek, “to require”, also in a sense of ”to desire”, begehren, wünschen, hence also metonymically used for voicings of a need; also ustrebovati in the Middle Ages; equalling Old Church Slavonic въпросити (vŭprositi), Russian вопроси́ть (voprosítʹ) – or ustražiti, perfective of trážiti with its many senses. How does ⟨ea⟩ in întreabă originate anyway if not from ѣ (ě)? Fay Freak (talk) 19:53, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

The ⟨ea⟩ in the verb forms is exceedingly common in verbs belonging to this category: compare îneca, înzestra, încătușa, înconjura, etc. Even înota gets ⟨oa⟩ so this has more to do with phonology than anything else. --Robbie SWE (talk) 20:18, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian:, what I meant is that this is most often the case, not that I know any such word.

I think the main problem with deriving it from inter-roguare is that ruga was not derived from *roguare, as was the case in Old French (where we have rover from *roguare).

Anyway, I have modified the etymology a bit, to explain the problems of direct derivation. Bogdan (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Bogdan: I don't believe the Old French forms indicate a /gw/ - the /w>v/ is a common hiatus-filler already in Latin, and it can be seen in pouvoir < poeir. In addition, Romanian along with Sardinian and Sicilian doesn't overdo syncope, so the middle /o/ should have been preserved. That creates a conundrum: if Latin had /rg/, the /g/ had to be preserved (as it is in Asturian and Corsican); if Latin had /-roāre/, though, it's in principle possible that the result was /inter-vare/, with /rv > rb/ as in șerb, cerb, corb even without assuming a hiatus filler, but only consonantisation of /o/. Two questions arise: 1) why did Romanian, that has absolutely no lenition, lose the /g/ like French, when the much more lenition-prone varieties preserved it without even preserving the base verb rogāre? 2) if the word could not longer be analyzed as inter+rogāre, why the metathesis terb > treb? It's still difficult to get rid of the suspicion of a cross with Slavic. Brutal Russian (talk) 22:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the entry for vorbă, Aromanian seems to have an interchange corbu ~ corghi, barbã ~ barghi so /b/ before back vowels and /g/ before front ones... I don't know of examples of similar interchange in Romanian though. Brutal Russian (talk) 22:22, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian: Although it might sound arrogant because I have no insight into the history of Germanic speakers in and around the Balkans, I do have to notice that this sounds very similar to eintreiben (“collect”), which I only know in context of dues (Schulden eintreiben). The formation is similar to einholen which may be said of information; the connotated drive (implying a forceful agent, ie.) is nevertheless compatible with asking: nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!. I cherrish your literary introduction, by the way, but it does have too much overdrive and it is difficult to comprehend who's who. ApisAzuli (talk) 17:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@ApisAzuli: Thank you for your suggestion, but: 1) to my knowledge there was never any contact between speakers of Old/Middle High German and Daco-Rumanians; 2) the vowels are different (trīban in OHG, -treb- in Rum.); 3) there's no hint of a meaning such as "to ask" in German or to "to collect" in Rumanian - the meaning in the latter faithfully reflects the meaning in Latin while being very close to Slavic. The meaning you refer to is a metaphor for completion: "das Vieh in den Stall treiben" > "die Weidehaltung beenden" or "den Kauf von Rindern abschließen" > "eine Zahlung fordern und einkassieren" - this parallels the English expression "to drive home", which is synonymous with "to assert" and not with "to ask". Thus I don't think your theory holds water, unfortunately. —Thank you for appreciating my literary aspirations! "IP" conventionally designates an anonymous editor, in this case from Rumania, who is the main hero; the other "who" is an abstract Wiktionary editor who in this case happened to be me. Brutal Russian (talk) 15:16, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian: I'm sorry to 𐌳𐍂𐌰𐌹𐌱𐌾𐌰𐌽 (draibjan, “to badger”) you again, but I did not say that such a metaphor is actually in use in German, nor did I mean to implicate High German, nor did I mean to deny any other tangent in this thread, and I am not sure if it was "IP" that had confused me or much rather the "poor wiktionary editor". Indeed, what is one going to do? Although I couldn't rule out OHG (thx for the hint) I'd expect changes proportional to the distance and time passed. A vector in the opposite direction is imaginable as well as long as the Illyrians remain practically intangible, as Pfeifer finds our PIE root uncertain and without significant evidence (cf. only Lithuanian drìbti is a bit weak ). ApisAzuli (talk) 19:40, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

(Notifying Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji, Atitarev, Suzukaze-c, Poketalker, Cnilep, Marlin Setia1, Huhu9001, 荒巻モロゾフ, 片割れ靴下, Onionbar, Shen233, Alves9):

The following pages are relevant:

• Korean 부처 (bucheo, “Buddha”) < Middle Korean 부텨 (pwùthyè) (fifteenth century)
• Japanese 仏(ほとけ) (hotoke, “Buddha”) < Old Japanese 佛 (/⁠poto₂ke₂⁠/) (eighth century)
• Manchu ᡶᡠᠴᡳᡥᡳ (fucihi, “Buddha”) < Proto-Jurchenic */putiki/ (reconstructed from regular sound shifts)

Middle Korean in non-Sino-Korean words is really the cluster /th/ or /ht/, and Middle Korean /h/ is itself likely to have once been */-k-/ in intervocalic position. If we exclude a Sino-Korean etymology for Korean, we have the structure /putVkV/ for the word for Buddha in all three languages.

The argument given both Alexander Vovin and Thomas Pellard, discussed here, is that Korean */putəke/ or such was the donor to both Jurchen and Japanese. Besides the phonological reasons given, there are strong historical reasons to believe this:

• This is the only historical hypothesis that can explain the match between Manchu and Japanese, as Koreans were immediately responsible for the spread of Buddhism to both populations.
• The word for "Buddhist temple", Middle Korean 뎔 (tyèl) / Japanese 寺(てら) (tera) / Jurchen (taira(a)n), shows the same geographic spread and is understood to have been disseminated by Korean.

There is no traditional etymology for the Manchu word ᡶᡠᠴᡳᡥᡳ (fucihi) due to the language's relative lack of study, and recent analyses all consider it an ancient Koreanic borrowing into Jurchen. However, the Korean and Japanese forms have traditional Chinese-based etymologies that are given in monolingual dictionaries, which were probably formed before a proper understanding of Korean historical phonology (in the Japanese case) or without knowledge of the neighboring forms (in the Korean case):

• Korean: corrupted from 佛體 (MC bjut thejX, “body of the Buddha”)
• Japanese: from 佛陀 (MC bjut da, “Buddha”) + 氣 (MC khj+jH|xj+jH, “spirit”)

In my opinion, both are less satisfactory than the Vovin-Pellard hypothesis (in particular, both of them leave Manchu completely unexplained), and the etymologies of both the Korean 부처 (bucheo) page and the Japanese 仏(ほとけ) (hotoke) page should explicitly privilege the Vovin-Pellard hypothesis over the traditional Chinese etymologies.

Thoughts?--Tibidibi (talk) 11:38, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Our entry at Japanese 仏 for the hotoke reading currently includes the Pellard hypothesis, in addition to the Chinese derivation provided in monolingual JA sources. When last I looked at the hotoke etymology, that /k/ stood out as hard to explain from a Koreanic standpoint, but at that time, we didn't yet have the Proto-Koreanic *Pwutukye entry. Considering the known history that you mention, and the newer linguistic work, I'd agree with making the Pellard derivation our main etym, and note that JA sources say otherwise but likely due to older and now outdated phonologies. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:52, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Ety of adj sense:

From backward +‎ -s. See also -s (“used in the formation of certain adverbs: backwards, downwards, inwards, etc.”).

Ety of adv sense:

From back +‎ -wards

I can't make much sense of this. If there is to be a distinction, why would an etymology "used in the formation of certain adverbs" apply only to the adjective sense? Mihia (talk) 22:07, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I have little doubt that for both part-of-speech assignments the historical structure is (back + -ward) + -s. I furthermore think that, historically, the adjective backwards is the result of adjectivalizing the adverb.  --Lambiam 10:02, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

The etymology needs more information, which states it is from Dutch Nieuw-Zeeland. New Zealand is evidently at least a {{partial calque}} from the Dutch (as nieuw became English new). Zealand seems more complicated: is it also a calque (i.e., Zeeland became English Zealand, which Wiktionary states is from Danish), or was borrowed from Dutch (and possibly influenced by the Zealand from Danish), which would then have two etymologies (from Danish and Dutch)? J3133 (talk) 08:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I do think Zealand needs to have two etymologies, one Danish and one Dutch. Wikipedia suggests that English gets the name of the Danish island from German Seeland rather than directly from Danish. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:10, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

(ec) The two senses of Zealand, the Danish island Sjælland and the Dutch Province Zeeland, are both calques or partial calques, but of different etyma. It is not really possible in these cases to tell if it is a partial calque or a full loan, because there is no way to distinguish between -land < -land being a translation or a loan. I do not see that the etymology of New Zealand “needs” more information, but it is obviously a partial calque in precisely the same way that English New Amsterdam is a partial calque of Dutch Nieuw-Amsterdam. Or is it? One can argue that Amsterdam was already part of the English lexicon, making this adaptation of the name of the Dutch colonial settlement a full calque.  --Lambiam 10:23, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Why are we discussing -land < -land? As the etymology does not mention the relationship with English new, it is not a complete etymology, and thus “needs more information”, despite your disagreement. According to the current etymology, one would expect English Nieuw-Zea/eland, as any English modifications, which are a part of the etymology (one could say half of the term is English), are not mentioned. J3133 (talk) 10:31, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

The issue of the etymology of Zealand was raised, and in that context it makes a difference how that transition from the Dutch (or Danish) lexicon to the English is interpreted. Let a loan be indicated by a double arrow, and a translation by a dashed arrow. In the transformation of Zeeland into Zealand we can distinguish two possibilities:

Zeeland         Zee + land

      ⇓                ⇓   +   ⇣

Zealand         Zea + land

On the left we see a full loan; on the right a partial calque. For New Zealand we can distinguish these possible explanations:

Nieuw Zeeland         Nieuw Zeeland

     ⇣         ⇓                   ⇣         ⇣

 New  Zealand           New  Zealand

On the left we see a partial calque; on the right a full calque. I see no way to decide which is more appropriate, which makes the choice on how to classify this more specifically than “from Dutch” a matter of taste, although we could say “partial or full calque of ...”, leaving it to the reader to decide. The early scribes recording this adaptation of a Dutch proper noun to an English audience may have been unaware whether they were translating Zeeland, or merely recording what they heard. To complicate the issue, these spellings in what has become the established orthography are not the original spellings. In 17th-century Dutch texts we find the spelling Nieuw-Seelandt, whereas the spelling New Sealand can be found till the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, I think that it is not implausible that the English name is actually adapted from New Latin Nova Zeelandia, a name introduced by 17th-century cartographers.  --Lambiam 15:19, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: As in both of your “possible explanations” nieuw is calqued as new, I have mentioned it in the etymology. J3133 (talk) 10:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

OK. I am not certain, though, which of the following derivation directions among the triplet of attributes is historically correct:

         Nova                           Nova                           Nova

        ↗                               ↗     ↘                       ↙     ↘

  Nieuw  →  New          Nieuw      New            Nieuw      New

This issue had not yet occurred to me in my first response.  --Lambiam 11:58, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it is rather pointless to note that new is a calque of nieuw, it's just the usual integration into the borrowing language's phonology. There is no great difference between /nju(ː)/ and /niu̯/ anyway, I know plenty of Dutch people who say something like or when they mean to say English new with no risk of being misunderstood. The complication of a Latin intermediary mentioned by Lambiam is a more serious one, however, because atlases and globes were important medium through which 17th-century Dutch cartography was disseminated to other European cultures and these often used Latin names. If English new in New Zealand actually derives from Latin nova, that is something more relevant to mention. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:47, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

James Cook used the name New Zealand on his 1773 map of the coast. I have not found pre-1773 Dutch uses of “Nieuw-Zeeland” as geonym. (The name Nieuw-Seelandt referred to above was the name of a ship and predates Abel Tasman’s discovery of a “Staten Landt” in the southwestern Pacific; it may have been named with an early Dutch name for Taiwan.)
Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand  appears to be explicit about the direction having been Nova → New:

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand’s western coasts in 1642. Tasman did not circumnavigate the country and he called his discovery Staten Landt, thinking it might be linked to a Staten Landt in southern South America. This was soon discovered to be false.
On a 1646 world map Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company, conferred the name ‘Nova Zeelandia’ – the Latin equivalent of the Dutch ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ – on the land discovered by Tasman (the Dutch also named the western coasts of Australia as Nieuw Holland). It was by that name – ‘New Zealand’ in English – that the country came to be known. Intermittent dissatisfaction in the colonial era that the name was ‘foreign’ – in other words, not English – never led to a name change.

At least, the antecedent of “that name” can only be Nova Zeelandia. I am not entirely convinced, though, that the author of this paragraph truly meant to imply what the text on close reading appears to do.  --Lambiam 11:00, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Here is a use of Nieuw Zeeland in Witsen, so clearly before 1773. Elsewere he uses Zeelandia Nova, so it is safe to say that it refers to New Zealand. Here is a later mention, the referent is not clear. I have no idea at all what locale is meant here, in a 17th-century text; I have never heard of Isjekeep. I was able to find these on DBNL in mere minutes; this is in general a good source for having an overview of uses before 1800. Then again, more might be found in archives of the VOC. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:50, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I also found a use of Nieuw-Zeeland in a 1770 newspaper article about the 1769 expedition by Jean-François-Marie de Surville, commanding the French ship Le Saint Jean Baptiste to “discover” the coasts of New Zealand. But Isjekeep or Ysiekeep is unrelated; it was a Zeelandic colony, situated around the delta of Essequibo River and better known in Dutch as Essequebo.  --Lambiam 21:40, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I knew of Essequebo/Essequibo, but that old spelling was opaque to me. Anyway, it looks to me like the matter of whether New Zealand comes directly from Dutch or Latin cannot be satisfiably resolved, at least for now. Perhaps both should be mentioned (and I prefer to remove the note about new and nieuw). But it was striking that Witsen used the Latin name a lot more often in his book than the Dutch name; it does not seem that the Latin name is clearly more common later in the 18th century. Here are more 18th-century Dutch results for Nieuw Zeeland and variants before 1770: (first paragraph), , , ; several are from translated texts. This one refers to the fort on Taiwan: . These are less clear: Finally, here are late-17th-century attestations of the Latin name in Dutch in the works of Van Nierop: , , - it is described as a recently discovered body of land, a "terra Australis" near "New Holland", of which only one side is known, so the identification is not in doubt. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:06, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Some more snippets:

• Kenneth Morgan (2021). Navigating by the Southern Cross, p. 48: “As cartographer to Amsterdam’s VOC Chamber, Blaeu had access to charts generated by Dutch oceanic voyages. Blaeu’s map incorporating Tasman’s voyages was entitled Nova et Accurata Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula. It appeared in in 1645/6, and was copied by many other mapmakers. This was the earliest printed cartographical record of Tasman’s voyage. Information about Tasman’s voyages was also included on Blaeu’s two large globes of c. 1647 and on his world map of 1648 made on the occasion of the Peace of Westphalia that concluded the Thirty Years’ War.”
• An interesting passage discussing one of these globes, said to be dating from “about 1648”: “The Blaeu globe gives the name Hollandia Nova to the Australian mainland and Zeelandia Nova to New Zealand. Whether these names originated with officials of the East India Company or with the Blaeus is not clear. It is unlikely that one need look further afield than the Company or the firm of Blaeu for the origin of these names.”
• The earliest attested use in Dutch may be on Joan Blaeu’s 1663 map Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus, which, in its extensive marginal descriptions in French, Latin and Dutch, contains in the last lines the text “Nova Zeelandia oft Nieu-Zeelant in ’t jaer 1642 beseylt”.

So it is definite that the Dutch name had been published already more than a century before the earliest uses I know of of New Zealand.  --Lambiam 20:11, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Do Holy Joe and its coordinate term Holy Mary allude to Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus, or is Joe here nothing more than usage of the sense “a male; a guy; a fellow”, i.e., not from a specific Joe? J3133 (talk) 12:55, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I think they both are (at least literally) just names, though in derogatory usage the indirect allusion to the Biblical Joseph and Mary adds the implication that the referents might think of themselves as saints. Holy Joe has the added characteristic that it partially rhymes, and there are parallels in the syllable structures of "Holy" and "Mary". Euphony and prosody tend to factor into the form of set phrases and figures of speech quite a bit. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:32, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Should it be under the derived terms of the common noun or the proper noun? J3133 (talk) 15:52, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

One or two etymologies (as both are currently identical)? J3133 (talk) 05:31, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

In either case, the proximate etymon is the noun use of the neuter form of the Latin adjective rationalis. For the sense “underlying reason”, the literal translation “that which is rational” is an obvious explanation. For the sense of a liturgical vestment, already found in Latin, this is not so clear. It is the translation in the Vulgate of Ancient Greek λογεῖον (logeîon), used in the Septuagint to translate Hebrew חֹ֑שֶׁן (ḥō·šen), occurring in Exodus 25:7, 28, 35 and 39, and Leviticus 8:8. The meaning of λογεῖον is a dais, a platform to speak from, but some editions of the Septuagint have Ancient Greek λόγιον (lógion), meaning “oracle”, and LSJ give the meaning “oracular breastplate” for its use in the Septuagint. I do not know Jerome’s rationale for choosing the Latin term. The noun λόγιον is the neuter of the adjective λόγιος (lógios), meaning (among other things) “oracular”, related to the noun λόγος (lógos), whose primary meaning is “speech” but one of whose meanings is “reason”, in Latin ratio. Perhaps Jerome thought that λόγιος was an adjective corresponding to the latter sense. But this is speculation.  --Lambiam 11:03, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: What is our solution? J3133 (talk) 11:32, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I’m not sure what is the best approach here. There are recurring complaints that the etymology sections are too long, so perhaps, inasmuch as any of this is incorporated, it should be “hidden” at the Latin entry. There is, however, no Latin entry yet for the sense “underlying reason” as a nominal use of the neuter of rationalis, and I am not even certain this can be attested in Latin. Etymonline calls it “Late Latin”, but it is not in L&S, Gaffiot or du Cange, unlike the “breastplate” sense. I see some New Latin uses of an abstract noun sense, but I find the meaning of these passages rather obscure; where it is said that “the rationale is not born from knowledge but from the love of knowledge”, the sense “underlying reason” does not really fit – perhaps the sense here is more that of the faculty of reason.  --Lambiam 12:36, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the mention of an inheritance from Dutch at Afrikaans breekwater. (Previous discussion here.) The first appearance in Afrikaans (still with a rather archaic Dutch orthography) is in 1861, at a time when English was the sole administrative language and when breekwater was not yet established in Dutch. There are older Dutch attestations but these are not common and often clearly influenced by English (often Plymouth is mentioned); it only becomes a common word in Dutch in the 1870s. By contrast it is a common term in English throughout the nineteenth century. I think this is too implausible for mentioning. @Morgengave, Lambiam ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:10, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

The entry mentions a "potential" inheritance rather than an "unqualified certain" one. It's not possible to rule out Dutch descent, because 1) Dutch attestations start in the 1820s, so 30-40 years earlier than the first potential Afrikaans attestation. 2) it's unclear whether "Afrikaans as a language" existed in 1861 instead of there being the "Cape Dutch dialect" of Dutch. Speakers at that time in any case considered they spoke a Dutch dialect, not a separate language. The split-off of Afrikaans is mostly a political event, rather than a linguistic one. The 1861 attestation is any case also not Afrikaans pur sang from a retrospective pov, but a mix of 19th century Dutch and later standard Afrikaans. 3) the 1861 attestation is a rare one and also not a pure one - it's a proper noun (the specific breakwater at Cape Town), whereas the entry is about the noun. So in short, I do believe we should mention the "potential descent" from Dutch. Morgengave (talk) 21:31, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

More likely it's a calque from English, which means the parts are inherited, but plugged into a English framework. Given the similarity between the Dutch/Afrikaans and the English words for the components, it would be very easy for such a calque to be created more than once. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the distinction between a calque and a borrowing with adapted pronunciation becomes a bit blurry and immaterial when the elements are so similar, but I have no objections to changing this to a calque for either or both languages. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

To clarify, I didn't intend to claim that the mention gave an "unqualified certain" derivation. The morphology and syntax of the Zamenspraak are quite in line with slightly later nineteenth century Afrikaans, that some infinitives remain Dutch-like is not a mark of a mixed idiom, it's a more general if rare feature in Afrikaans texts from the second half of the nineteenth century. The Dutch-like spelling and the occurrence of plurals on -en is a mere orthographic convention, Afrikaans orthography is notoriously variable in the nineteenth century anyway. To this day the grammatical simplification and influence from English grammar are the main difference between Afrikaans and Dutch, lexical differences exist of course and there is different standard spelling but they aren't so serious that one would otherwise speak of two distinct languages. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology. A Korean IP removed this paragraph without explanation:

Possibly borrowed from Khitan (*irV), most likely (*iri, “name, title”) (Shimunek, 2007). Also loaned to Tangut as (jɨ²rjir²), the clan name of the inventor of the Tangut script. (András Róna Tas, Review of Kane 2009)

It had been added by @Michael D. Lawrence and the formatting was fixed up by @Eirikr. I have no clue about Korean etymology or Khitan, so I'm bringing it here just to be safe (Notifying TAKASUGI Shinji, Atitarev, HappyMidnight, LoutK, Tibidibi, B2V22BHARAT, Quadmix77): .

@Chuck Entz, the IP is correct in a roundabout way. The "to name" sense is not actually attested, but only reconstructed based on the noun for "name" and a compound verb. The etymology is valid, but it should be given at 이름 (ireum, “name”).--Tibidibi (talk) 01:19, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Since about 2018, I have been under the impression that the form 夏威夷 is derived from Cantonese, but this impression is based merely on the visual similarity of the spelling 'Hawaii' and the Cantonese pronunciation 'haa6 wai1 ji4' as well as the dissimiliarity with the Mandarin 'Xiàwēiyí'- there's no X in Hawaii, haha! I guess Hawaii could very well be from Mandarin too: using the same 'logic', the Wade-Giles for 夏威夷 is Hsia4-wei1-i2. I don't speak Cantonese and I don't have the capability prove where this Chinese character word comes from. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:12, 15 March 2021 (UTC) (modified)

The Chinese Wiktionary writes: ‘The character “夏” in the Chinese name “夏威夷” is derived from the transliteration in southern Chinese dialects, so that the pronunciation in Mandarin is not close to the English pronunciation.’ Cantonese is one of the southern dialects, Wu Chinese (and Hui Chinese), Gan Chinese, Xiang Chinese (and the Xiangnan dialect), Hokkien and Hakka being the others.  --Lambiam 22:13, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

(Good find! That is a claim made by a user back in 2016: ) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

What's the point in listing every southern Chinese language? Only Cantonese has a pronunciation of 威 (wēi) that makes any sense here, so it's an open-and-shut case. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:34, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I could assume 夏威夷 is from Cantonese but I came here to see if there are REAL answers from scholars, not just my assumptions. The evidence presented here included (1) me randomly speculating and (2) another user speculating in 2016 and coming to a similar but different conclusion. That's not enough for 'open-and-shut' in an academic sense but yeah, I guess it is good enough for now. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

The current etymology is a quite a mess, as it says it gives the first etymology as being derived from Latin verbum, whereas the most modern linguists say it's from Slavic (with some disagreeing over the exact etymology).

The Latin etymology doesn't fit phonetically, the Slavic etymology doesn't quite fit its meaning (*dvorьba, supposedly "gathering", from *dvorъ (“court”), cf. Romanian cuvânt (“word”), from conventus (“gathering”) and Aromanian zbor (“word”), from *sъborъ (“gathering”)). Some others say it's from vorovi, which may be from Ukrainian говорити (hovoryty, “to speak”)). Then there's also dvorbă (“service to the court”), which may be a distinct later borrowing from Church Slavonic.

I am not quite sure how to proceed with the rewriting. Bogdan (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Bogdan: Just asking out of curiosity, are drastic sound changes after Latin expected or would verba match the description? 88.128.88.178 20:01, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Latin "e" never turns into Romanian "o". Bogdan (talk) 20:06, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, it's sourced and balanced. Any changes will only give rise to edit warring since it's one of the most debated words in the Romanian language. Please take that into consideration and I'd advise you to move on. --Robbie SWE (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:50, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@Jyugulik —Suzukaze-c (talk) 01:10, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

廣州話方言詞典 by 饒秉才 et al. and 東莞方言詞典 by 詹伯慧 and 陳曉錦 suggest that it should be from English ketchup/catchup/catsup. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Changed to the ketchup/catsup etymology (per a third source). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:30, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Should Yiddish ליגן (lign) be at *luginu rather than at *lugiz ? I can't see how the Yiddish term can develop from Middle High German luc, lug-. Leasnam (talk) 10:02, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think it should. See what Grimm has to say about German Lüge here; standard German had a singular Lügen from *luginu into the 18th century, and Yiddish ליגן (lign) is obviously the equivalent (Grimm doesn't say what gender singular Lügen was though, and if *luginu is the direct ancestor of ליגן (lign) then it must have switched from feminine to masculine at some point – in modern German feminine singular nouns never end in unstressed -en, but I don't know if that was true in Early Modern German). I notice that *lugiz does not indicate Lüge as a descendant although Lüge does indicate *lugiz as an ancestor; that needs to be cleared up too. Kluge very unhelpfully does not go into the etymology of the noun at all, saying only that the verb lügen gets its ü (instead of the phonologically expected ie) from the noun in order to avoid homophony with liegen (a homophony English seems to live with). —Mahāgaja · talk 12:35, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thank you, this helps a great deal ! Lüge indicates Old High German lugī f as its ancestor, but lugī is a byform of Old High German lugīn/lugin (also fem), from Proto-Germanic *lugį̄ (“lie, falsehood”). To what degree all of these synonyms have conflated with one another is a matter that will probably take me some time to sort out Leasnam (talk)

Given that the one sense of to lie is frequently replaced by to tell a lie and the other sense notoriously commonly (perhaps universally in some spoken dialects) by to lay, the assertion "a homophony English seems to live with" is puzzling. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Grimm's entry is interesting. He himself uses both "die" and "das" in mentioning the word. Most of the quotes use feminine forms, some are ambiguous in oblique cases and rarely clearly not feminine in rectus. Which is expected if usage was shifting. Intuitively, neutre gender is explainable as a misunderstood uncountable neutre substantivation dein Lügen from the verb lügen after fem. or n. sg. (pl.) dein Lügen (deine Lügenen) while the other noun f. deine Lüge (deine Lügen) competed for attention sometimes in the same text, as Grimm shows, who was probably more puzzled by the two nouns which need not concern us (a once richer set of articles would allow it). The masculine Yiddish word does not stand out from other n-stems. High vowel /i/ is found eg. in *laugnijaną (“to conceal, gainsay, deny”) with Frisian and English, and Ingaevonic Middle Dutch dialects might allow it. *leuganą (“to lie”) has Dutch and Central Franconian forms as well (cp. lieje, maybe even Ger. immer die gleiche Leier, idiom. Anleihen). I recall reading that north and west saw sister dialects of Yiddish, hence my remark. Going from this verb to a noun adds extra difficulty to the existing confusion. Is i expected from MHG u, at all?

If all else fails, a derivation from ליגן (lign, “to lie (be in horizontal position”) works as well if "to hide, conceal" is understood, f. ex. lay low. ApisAzuli (talk) 09:30, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

A derivation from "to lie (be in a horizontal position)" seems the least likely of all. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:40, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: a pro pos *luhsiz, we have no good etymology for abluchsen unless you are desperate to accept derivation from the Luchs, but we do have a Tocharian "thieve" as cognate to lie (down), and schwindeln confirms the semantic association from telling a lie to robbing somebody (in the broadest sense), and there's jmd. belagern forbtalking somebody's ears off, possibly boasting and exagerating. Anyway, jüdisch ~ yiddish makes this vowel-change rather painfully obvious, never mind. ApisAzuli (talk)

many linguists through the ages have acknowledged that deus and θεός are cognates. recent application of PIE "laws" are used to "disprove" the connection... but let's keep in mind that ALL of the entire PIE project is based on conjecture; it is not attested; it is not a collection of "facts". the "well-understood" currently accepted etymology of theos seems far-fetched to me... many scholars want to deny that θεός and deus are related, so they invent a connection between god and the concept *dhe- "to set, put." rather than *dyeu- "to shine" as is claimed as root meaning for deus. it looks rather unlikely, and it is not attested. it is speculation based on historical tendencies of consonants, rather than common sense or spiritual history. I believe the language in the wiktionary article is too authoritative: under θεός we read "Despite its superficial similarity in form and meaning, the word is not related to Latin deus; the two come from different roots. A true cognate of deus is Ζεύς (Zeús)". the current model links these two words to different root concepts, despite a lack of any evidence that neighbouring tribes would have considered the Divine so differently: as a source of light or as a source of order....— This unsigned comment was added by Mikosloper (talk • contribs) at 10:54, 21 March 2021 (UTC).

Talk:θεός, have fun. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:35, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Were any of those "linguists" in the past century or so? I'm sure you could find lots of authorities from centuries past that agree that disease is caused by bad air and flies are spontaneously created from filth- not to mention the world being flat. Given the rather extensive data on correspondences between Latin and Greek, there's really not much room for doubt about something like this. In fact, there's a perfectly regular cognate in Latin for Ancient Greek θεός (theós), seen in derived forms like feriae and festus. Chuck Entz (talk) 11:43, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

I should have known that folks here would follow orthodox "thinking" in which tracing trends of consonant change is more important than considering how two neighbouring tribes would base their words about God in completely unrelated concepts: light/sky vs set/put... the laws of PIE are cool, but when they deny common sense, I would think people would think... really, guys, do you REALLY believe that some groups of PIE-speakers thought of God as "he who sets/puts" while their cousins thought of the sky-god? -miko

But they weren't neighboring tribes. Greek speakers in the southern Balkans and Italic speakers in central Italy were separated by the Ionian and Adriatic Seas as well as hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain on either side of those seas. Greek speakers and Latin speakers didn't have any contact with each other until many centuries after each of them had settled on their respective words for 'god'. Likewise, English and Mbabaram were in contact for over a hundred years before the latter became extinct, but they didn't come into contact with each other until long after each language's word for "dog" had developed. Superficial similarity of two languages' words for the same concept really is a coincidence sometimes. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:20, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

there was plenty of trade between Greece and Italy in pre-historic times. a few hundred miles of separation was rather little. they WERE neighbours! nobody has addressed my initial notion: that it seems counter-intuitive to believe that these two groups would base their fundamental concept of mysticism on wholly unrelated root ideas. how can you all take seriously that one of these tribes worshipped a god of "putting" (maybe a cosmic creator-god) while the other tribe worshipped a shining sky god...? it seems highly unlikely. - miko 6. April 2021

It doesn't seem unlikely at all. The Celtic word for 'god' is also from the "sky" word, as Irish Dia and Welsh Duw are related to deus, and the Germanic word for 'god' is from a different root again, and basically means the thing (since *gudą was a neuter noun!) to which libations are poured. And the speakers of Proto-Italic were in closer contact with the speakers of Proto-Celtic than they were with the speakers of Proto-Hellenic. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:08, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

On this topic, can someone with more time than I have right now look at this change and determine: is it the loss or the presence of v which prevented ẹ̄ being raised to ī? - -sche (discuss) 01:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: Should the whole paragraph be deleted? It is unusualy detailed. When the target group does not understand the details, the reconstruction, it should take place in the reconstruction space with closer scrutiny. ApisAzuli (talk) 14:17, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

At first glance, the word 'Qiqihar' looks like it could be Hanyu Pinyin. You'd almost think the same for 'Harbin' too. But the truth is more interesting than sophomoric assumptions. A while back I proved beyond doubt that 'Harbin' long antedates pinyin. The pinyin name is 'Ha'erbin'. Well I've been thinking that Qiqihar isn't pinyin either, but I don't know what language it is from. The pinyin name is 'Qiqiha'er'. However, use of the spelling Qiqihar dates to the late 70's early 80's too, just like Hanyu Pinyin forms do. My guess is that 'Qiqihar' is generated as part of a scheme of Manchu/Mongolian/etc. transcription/transliteration. I wish an expert would look into this and tell us what is going on here. Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:39, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

(PS- If you propose that both 'Qiqihar' and 'Qiqiha'er' are from Hanyu Pinyin, then I would ask you to explain the lack of a 'Tairzhuang' (see 'Tai'erzhuang').) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I don’t understand what it means for a name to be “from Hanyu Pinyin”. The name is a romanization, similar to but different from the pinyin romanization. The Chinese name is said to be borrowed from Manchu ᠴᡳᠴᡳᡥᠠᡵ (Cicihar), so the spelling Qiqihar could be a pinyin-inspired romanization of the Manchu pronunciation . Among the various romanization schemes, the use of ⟨q⟩ for seems to be particular to Hanyu Pinyin.  --Lambiam 03:10, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

It's not particular to Hanyu Pinyin, though; it's found in other pinyin systems inspired by it, like Tibetan pinyin (the source of Qomolangma, for example). What makes this interesting is that it's almost like a kind of Manchu pinyin, as it seems not to be borrowed via Mandarin, yet I can't find any evidence of scholarly use of such a system. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The etymology of the word is clear enough, even if details of the origin of this spelling could be clarified. The spelling of a word isn't the word itself (just as a painting of a pipe isn't a pipe). —Mahāgaja · talk 07:52, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Lambiam- "from Hanyu Pinyin" to me means that the particular spelling of the English language name or word would not exist except for the fact that the Hanyu Pinyin system for romanization of Mandarin generates the form. Lambiam & Metaknowledge- to my knowledge, there is a Uyghur Pinyin and Tibetan Pinyin that attempt to move the romanization of those languages into line with the way the alphabet is used in Hanyu Pinyin. I assume that Manchu/Mongolian/etc have similar systems and that Qiqihar must be from one of those systems. Mahagaja- I cannot agree with the way that the etymology has been written- if the word is from Manchu, then there's no need to see Chinese characters in the etymology. If there's no need to see Chinese characters there, then the 'alternative forms' are actually synonyms from another language- words brought into English from different languages are not generally seen as alternative forms of each other. Either 'Qiqihar' is Mandarin or it is Manchu (etc) or it is explicitly from both intentionally, and I have no evidence they tried to convey the sound from both languages at once in one word. I will default to Manchu for now. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I wrote the etymology the way I did because it seems likely that English borrowed the word directly from Chinese, not directly from Manchu, although the Chinese and Manchu words are so similar it's hard to be certain one way or the other. The other spellings are simply alternative spellings of the same word, not synonyms with a different etymology. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:28, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I cannot accept that "it seems likely that English borrowed the word directly from Chinese," could possibly be true- Hanyu Pinyin would not produce it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:26, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Hanyu Pinyin is a writing system, not a language. It's utterly irrelevant to etymologies. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:52, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey @Mahagaja check this out if interested- GEOnet Names Server says "Gazetteer Name: Qiqihar Language Name (Code): Mongolian (mon)". On the basis of that database's claim (I am not familiar with the level of accuracy GEOnet brings to claims about language of origin), I'm thinking that Qiqihar could be Mongolian SASM/GNC romanization. I don't know what the Mongolian name for Qiqihar is (couldn't find the Mongolian Wikipedia page for Qiqihar). Is this etymology possible? (For a historically analogous example of the use of SASM/GNC, see SASM/GNC for Uyghur in the etymology @ Ürümqi.) See also . --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The etymologies given on the pages gram and γράμμα contradict each other. Semantic calque of Latin or Semitic loan? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:03, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Semantic loans in the direction from Latin to Ancient Greek are not impossible, but relatively rare. The same claim as found at the entry gram that the weight sense of Ancient Greek γράμμα arose from a false identification with scrīpulum is found in Le Trésor, and also in an entry in the dictionary of Modern Greek of the Centre for the Greek Language, copied from the Triantafyllidis Dictionary. However, the latter has an interesting twist. According to this account, the false etymology of scrīpulum as being derived from the verb scrībō was perpetrated by the ancient Romans, who concocted (allegedly) a false fancy synonym of scrīpulum. So Latin gramma then acquired a weight sense before Ancient Greek γράμμα did. Yet another theory (mine), which however presumes the Greek weight sense was earlier than the Latin: might it be that the corruption scrīpulum of scrūpulus gained prevalence under the semantic influence of γράμμα?  --Lambiam 13:12, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Because the Latin term is a by-form and somewhat vulgar and late, and then still the form and meaning is somewhat remote to that of scrībere, and especially since even then one probably knew the derivation from scrūpus (“sharp stone”), one has to see the whole complex scrīpulus, scrīpulum, scrūpulus, scrūpulum as hard to be related to scrībere and thus influence γράμμα (grámma, “letter”). A borrowing of an old Semitic weight resulting in unrelated homonymy is much easier. Similarly easy it was for Latin to just calque the Semitic term “stonelet, a kind of small weight”. Fay Freak (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree, the explanation looked dodgy from the outset. Maybe it's best to remove of the (uncited, I might add) explanation given for γράμμα (grámma) in gram altogether. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Above, I provided a citation from the dictionary of Modern Greek of the Centre for the Greek Language. That of Le Trésor, which calls it a calque maladroit, is found here. Fraenkel calls the similarity of γράμμα with גרמא (which he glosses as Kern) an auffällige Übereinstimmung, which is considerably weaker than endorsing a borrowing theory. I do not know what Bauer’s Lexicon says about the theory of a Semitic borrowing (no preview), but I do not readily see that this theory is cited. Based on the limited evidence I have found, I see no ready way for evaluating and comparing the respective plausibilities of the competing theories.  --Lambiam 11:27, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Well, Übereinstimmung well means that someone follows in motivation of another: “Ich stimme mit dir überein!” – “I agree with you!” – this does not usually mean a “agreement” in the sense of coincidental parallelism but a causal connection, and I think this is also the original sense (from Stimme (“one’s vote in a particular matter”)), so this is cited with Fraenkel. Note that at his time borrowing vocabulary, with all the semantic loans, loan renditions, loan creations etc. was raw and it only was systematicized with modern linguistics in the 1950–1960. For the nineteenth century the term Bedeutungsentlehnung was not lexicalized. Fay Freak (talk) 14:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Here is the full sentence plus my translation:

Bei dieser Gelegenheit gestatte ich mir die auffällige Übereinstimmung von γράμμα — das im Griechischen keine rechte Ableitung hat — mit גרמא »Kern” zu constatieren.

I allow myself on this occasion to note the striking correspondence between γράμμα — which has no proper derivation in Greek — with גרמא “kernel”.

The observed remarkable agreement is not with another linguist, but the phonetic cum semantic agreement between two terms from different languages.  --Lambiam 15:01, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: ”I allow myself on this occasion to note the striking agreement of γράμμα — which has no proper derivation in Greek — with גרמא ‘kernel’.” As terms are their speaker communities, this is a dead metaphor implying that Greek speakers agreed with Semitic speakers, perhaps even in particular bargains, and thus took over the term, so the languages agree. He also clarifies “it has no proper derivation in Greek”, so what else does he opt for if not a borrowing? Not native, but borrowed origin, have I missed a third? Fay Freak (talk) 15:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I do not share your reading of the sentence that Fraenkel meant the interpretation of the observed agreement as an agreement between the speakers of the respective languages. There is also an auffällige Übereinstimmung of Japanese 野蛮 (yaban) en Turkish yaban, which nevertheless is a coincidence. Also, while Fraenkel’s sentence does present the theory of the Greek term being a Semitic borrowing (I agree with the implied direction), it is IMO presented weakly, as a tentative hypothesis.  --Lambiam 16:45, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

> this does not usually mean a “agreement” in the sense of coincidental parallelism but a causal connection,

I would subscribe to this (say, unequivocal, congruent), barring the ham-fisted speaker-speech metaphor irrespective of its validity.

If I may weigh in on this: Both senses from different etymologies are defined in a single etymology section for the Greek term, at the moment.

Beekes includes γραμμάριον "weight of two obols" (Aët.7.117., cf. L&S 1940) as derivation from grapho, from --without considering a Semitic origin.

That's cognate with carve. This is so difficult to distinguish from engrave, *gʰrebʰ-. Further more compare either one of Krumen, granum (gramen, if we are talking tally marks), core (credito), groat, krupa, pick one, can't miss. Further more, schwer (“heavy”), swear and Beschwer (“grievance”) might prove a certain gravity of formalized words.

Are the Semitic congeners securely etymologized? Is there an Akkadian or Egyptian gram? ApisAzuli (talk) 10:13, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone have an idea what the West Germanic descendant of PGmc *jabai is ? I imagine it would be *jabē based on the dative form, however the Old High German and other daughter languages seem to indicate *jabu which would actually be derived from the PGmc instrumental case. Leasnam (talk) 10:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

There are definitely multiple forms involved. Unfortunately, complications like these are frequently ignored by our reconstruction appendices. How about this:

• Gothic iba = OHG ibu < PGmc *ibō
• Gothic ibai = OHG ube, and perhaps ibi, ubi, oba < PGmc *ibai or *ibōi
• Gothic jabai = OHG ? < PGmc *jabai or *jabōi

Not at all sure about the sound changes involved (ube may be a Late OHG development of ubi). In OHG, even some stressed instances of o are patently secondary (e. g. wohha < wehha probably because of the preceding /w/), so the o of oba can probably dismissed as having arisen in an unstressed clitic, and the u may also be the result of rounding of an unstressed i prior to a labial. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

As for PWGmc, yes, we would expect *ibu, *ibē and *jabē respectively. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

As for the non-HG descendants (i.e. OE, ODT, OSX, OFS) would a Proto-West Germanic *jabu be the answer ? How does the initial /j/ re-emerge ? Leasnam (talk) 16:29, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@Leasnam: synchronic univerbation from *ja is one option.

I reckon it would be pragmatic the way it is today in colloquial German as entirely optional collocation added for emphasis. *ga as reflected in either and each from *gahwaþera on the other hand just makes no sense to me, given that's an option on phonetic grounds. ApisAzuli (talk) 03:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

"Entirely optional collocation added for emphasis." Similar to Swedish ju? Wakuran (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

The etymological section for the name Matilda states that the modern name is directly derived from Old French's Mathilde. However, the name "Mæþhild" appears in the Exeter Book's poem "Deor", long prior to Norman conquest. The Bosworth and Toller attests this too . Is it not more likely that the modern English name stems from "Mæþhild" instead? AdjacentTriangle (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Have you seen this ] ? Leasnam (talk) 17:21, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Bosworth & Toller say that Matilda can't come directly from Old English, but don't say why not. Phonologically, there are multiple reasons why Matilda can't be inherited directly from Mæþhild: (1) if it were inherited, the second consonant would be /θ/ or /ð/ rather than /t/; (2) if it were inherited, stress would be on the first syllable rather than the second; (3) if it were inherited, there would be no /ə/ at the end. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The etymologies of polluo and lutum are apparently incorrect / missing. --Espoo (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

No, they aren’t as far as I can see (if there is something missing then it is perhaps details nobody can say for certain), pollution has been by going needlessly deep and obscure, Fixed by me by cutting its etymology at the Latin, so there is no contradiction. Fay Freak (talk) 21:55, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Are you a linguist? Both the etymology por- + lavō of polluo and the etymology luo of lutum seem completely illogical and incorrect to me as a layperson. According to https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/pollute and https://www.etymonline.com/word/pollution, the etymology you removed was correct. --Espoo (talk) 06:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

(I brought dumbledore up here back in 2019, but this is on a slightly different point than that discussion.)

The given etymology is well known, sound and makes sense logically, but I find it strange that a. words in other Germanic languages such as Dutch hommelbij, Danish humlebi, German Hummel exist, where the element appears to be related to hum, and b. the first element of the English word appears to have ended up being construed as referencing a humming sound by native speakers at some point, hence the word's replacement by bumblebee (first element from Middle English bombeln ) later.

Is there anything more to this, or is it just a coincidence? Tharthan (talk) 13:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Middle High German humbel and Old High German humbal also point in the direction of a connection with the other Germanic languages, but the very presence of a ⟨b⟩ makes Kluge question derivation from Middle High German hummen “to hum”.  --Lambiam 15:13, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

The OHG humbal, hummel (also humbalo, humbala) could still be related to the verb hummen, though further back in time. OHG humbal appears to come from Proto-Germanic *humalaz, where an alternative form, *humlaz could give rise to the form with a b. I find the current etymology hard to accept. This is what Century says: it's not directly from the verb humble (“to hum”) (which we seem to lack a def for) but rather from the ENM noun humbulbe (“bumblebee”), which is basically *humbul (“bumblebee”) + bee. The current etymology looks like a folk etymology (at best). Where is it sourced ? Leasnam (talk) 16:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Currently, it still looks like an etymological fallacy that 'humble' was adapted from Latin, in English, with a sense of "ground" infered from the base 'humus'. Although the idea appeals that "to hum" is maybe not the original root, I still just can not see how this logical sense.

Kroonen adduces comparanda from Slavic and Baltic, but I do not understand why the Slavic forms like czmiel (“bumblebee”) have sibilants where the Baltic ones like Lithuanian kamane ("bee") do not. If this is a borrowing relationship similar to what was suggested for *śěrъ, it will remain unsolved for the unforeseeable future, the origin of the humble- b not to mention.

Lithuanian kìmti (kìmstu) "to become hoarse" is supposed to prove the onomatopeia, but could be mere coincidence. A horse fly is not hoarse and a Bremse (“horse fly”) is not a fat Brummer. Given the venerable size of the bumblebee, I would naturally expect a sense that describes hugeness.

In the end, I think it's correct that epenthetic b in *humla is possible, as well as *mn > *bn > *mm (Lex Kluge and geminate m), where *bn could be rebracketed by folk etymology in isolated cases. Conversely, *lambaz, Stimme or Stummel show the opposite. ApisAzuli (talk) 01:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

If there is enough concern about the etymology that is currently given in our entry, perhaps someone might consider being bold and changing it. Leasnam stated that the Century Dictionary doesn't support the current etymology that we give, so that could be utilised as a source. Tharthan (talk) 19:07, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Our etymology at English trousers currently sources this to Middle Irish:

Attested since the 1610s, from the earlier form trouzes (attested since the 1580s), extended from trouse (1570s), with plural ending typical of things in pairs, from Middle Irish triubhas (“close-fitting shorts”), of uncertain origin. The unexplained intrusive second -r- is perhaps due to the influence of drawers.

Given what little I remember of Gaelic phonology, I find myself wondering if Middle Irish triubhas might not be an approximation of English drawers (“close-fitting shorts”). The term drawers is apparently attested to the late 1500s, so the timing -- while tight -- would seem to leave room for this.

Can anyone more knowledgeable argue for or against? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Not an answer but an observation. Scottish Gaelic drathais is said to be borrowed from English drawers. Scottish Gaelic is a descendant of Middle Irish, so if your hypothesis is right this might suggest inheritance instead of a direct borrowing.  --Lambiam 12:24, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Without knowing an alternative etymology for Middle Irish triubus, I would say that a borrowing from English drawers (or its Middle English ancestor) seems very unlikely but not utterly impossible. An inheritance of Scottish Gaelic drathais from Middle Irish triubus, trubus also seems pretty unlikely (t → d doesn't just spontaneously happen in inherited terms from Middle Irish to Scottish Gaelic), though again it's not utterly impossible. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:07, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

On this webpage the spelling driubhas is used.  --Lambiam 21:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

The etymology I have put in the etymology section is tentative and speculative. While it is likely that 巴爾郭勒 was borrowed from Oirat (perhaps via Manchu), I am not certain whether Oirat got the word ᡋᠠᠷ
ᡍᡉᠯ (bar kül) from Chagatai بارکول or somewhere else. RcAlex36 (talk) 16:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

(Moved from main ] page. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC))

The tribes of West Germanic peoples seem to be named after objects, such as Angles from angulō (a fishhook), Saxons from sahsą (a knife or dagger), and Franks from frankô (a spear or javellin). However, I could find no information about where the Jutes come into this. The links of the words that formed the etymology of the Jutes (such as eutīz) are all red (ie do not exist). Can some linguist explain what eutīz means? 218.214.92.142 00:03, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I fixed the redlink on Jute to go to Proto-Germanic *eutaz, which is probably what you're looking for. DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 04:22, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

From their historical forms, they certainly look like pictograms of a scorpion, but their etymology sections do not mention this. At least the original character 萬 seems to be a pictogram. Perhaps 蠆 is not, because it is a derivative, but I am not familiar with the rules regarding this.

Also, the etymology section of the separate character 禺 includes the text 'Zhang et al. (1996) considers this character... a pictogram (象形) of a kind of insect with a decorative mark, similar to the one in 萬 (“scorpion”).' This statement seems to imply that 萬 is indeed a pictogram of a scorpion.

I would add it to the etymology, but I noticed that neither character is in the category "Han pictograms", so I don't want to go against a more authoritative source that I'm not aware of. ChromeGames923 (talk) 06:28, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, 萬 is a pictogram. I've added this to the entry. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Good to know, thanks so much! Is there a general source for information like this? ChromeGames923 (talk) 07:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@ChromeGames923: Glyph origins for Chinese characters are often icky and there is a lot of misinformation out there. I think one of the better sources is the Multi-function Chinese Character Database, which only has glyph etymologies in Chinese. I don't think there's a free resource in English that is quite as reliable, but the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters is a pretty good English source if you want to pay for something. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Gotcha, I really appreciate the help! My Chinese reading ability is still quite lackluster, but I see that the Database you linked does say that 萬 is a pictogram. Thanks again, ChromeGames923 (talk) 20:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

From Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2021/March#Etymology_bashing

Hello. I wanted to bring up this page which was noted in a Beer Parlour discussion. This is the specialist forum for etymologies so I felt a notice here is warranted. 119.56.97.84 11:10, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Not an etymology issue, but does this really need to be reported as "Internet slang" for specific languages (Chinese, Japanese) if we already list inter-character spacing to emphasize words as Multilingual? I also do not quite get the distinction between Punctuation mark and Typography. The latter is not an “allowed POS header”.  --Lambiam 15:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Whether the etymology(ies) is proper in this entry still has to be decided at that ongoing Beer Parlour discussion, as I see it. The Chinese and Japanese sections are duplicates of the English section, which is already covered by #Translingual#Punctuation number 4: markdown definition. Finally, #Punctuation and #Typography refers to different uses of SP. One is as a punctuation, the other is as a symbol where mention is made of its past as a control character, and its 'now' as a quarsi-control character. In the second instance, as a symbol it is indeed not always used as a WT:POS. This is going to be an ongoing quirk of entries for Unicode characters. Many Unicode characters are not properly punctuation, yet as an entry, enough usage notes have to be given so that readers can learn to use it with confidence. So this means definitions and examples for such symbols also. The header for this entry lists SP, NBSP and ideographic(?) space. So, for completeness all 3 has to be defined in the entry, by right. 119.56.98.164 16:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambian:On the vaporwave etymology, I saw that a user has boldly edited and in the edit summary, it was noted that this is not an internet slang and was already an old practice in instances where bold or italic typeface is not available.

On the wrong POS header, I feel your point. I will put up a new discussion on it at Beer parlour119.56.96.138 06:18, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I saw that the English vaporwave origin is the only language-specfic definition left on the page. After looking at it carefully, I now realize it can be possible to be an Internet-era practice. It is a unique origin.

Anyway I am still working on the page. I can write normally but writing lexicographies is like a whole new ball game.119.56.103.173 06:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology. Is 语言常识全知道 a reliable source? --沈澄心✉ 04:01, 30 March 2021 (UTC)