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2nd and 3rd ones are likely from a Munda language but in Munda languages koṛi means 20 not a crore; 1st one too probably because of the double ड्ड. I remember seeing witzel proposing Mesopotamian ellum is from Para-Munda comparing it to Munda "jar-tila" AleksiB 1945 (talk) 08:56, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
The spontaneous retroflex and lack of cognates outside Indo-Aryan makes it seem likely that this is a loanword from a non-Indo-European (Dravidian?) source. —Mahāgaja · talk20:55, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Though some have derived this from Sanskrit कोष्ठ(koṣṭha), more likely it is a Dravidian borrowing. See now the entry with references. Vahag (talk) 21:41, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
You mean Pali koṭṭha(“abdomen; stomach; closet; monk's cell; storeroom”)? Can't speak to the phonetic development, but the sense development to "fort" is implausible. Vahag (talk) 14:10, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
There was no serious discussion in that deletion debate. The best sources on Indian languages — Burrow and Mayrhofer — derive from Dravidian. Vahag (talk) 08:19, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
Isn't the "spiritual mother" sense from some form of Aramaic, e.g. Classical Syriacܐܡܐ(ʾemmā, “mother, abbess”)? The quotations indicate that it is often juxtaposted with abba, which is from Aramaic/Syriac for "father". 98.170.164.8820:25, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
Yes, almost certainly, given the specific link to the Desert Fathers, cf. Hans Lietzmann, The Era of the Church Fathers p. 163: "Accordingly all heads of cloisters of both sexes were addressed with the Syriac titles of 'Abba,' father, and 'Amma,' mother and not with Egyptian names". The precise place of origin of monasticism is debated—Lietzmann supposes importation from the Levant—but etymologically it's at any rate going to be the same route as abba. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:43, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
See talk:lowboy. I've traced the claim of the French etymology to Bill Bryson's Made in America, and he may be getting it from an earlier researcher named Rosalie Maggio whose work has not been digitized. The etymology is plausible, and it follows the pattern of the earlier word hautbois (which I'd never heard of until now), but I'm looking to see if anyone can give more insight on this, especially if the etymology is listed in a dictionary such as the OED. If not, would it at least merit a mention such as Possibly from low + bois or should we leave it out altogether? —Soap—14:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Neither Bill Bryson nor Rosalie Maggio was a linguist, and when I read one of Bill Bryson's books I was pretty upset at how ignorant about language he is, so I'd take this claim with a grain of salt. If there was a plausible semantic chain, I'd say the most likely phonological explanation was French l’hautbois → English lowboy by folk etymology and then from there tallboy and highboy being created by analogy. But the shift in meaning from "oboe" to "chest of drawers" is so unexpected that I don't actually believe this. —Mahāgaja · talk08:06, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
Well, we do have attestation for hautboy as a separate English word for a type of strawberry, and the French Wiktionary also lists hautbois with another definition that's a type of elderberry. That shows that there was sizable semantic range at a fairly early time. It's even possible that these two berry words are distinct coinages from each other, and that there was at some point a productive affix -bois ~ -boy in use for items related to or made of wood. In this case, the common sense for the two berries would be fruit that grows high up. As for l'hautbois ---> lowboy, I like that idea, and it hadn't occurred to me, but I think haut is one of those French words where the definite article does not contract, so I would still keep open the possibility that it's a mixed-language compound parseable as low + -bois ~ -boy, and that perhaps the half-translated form highboy is slightly older than lowboy. —Soap—13:10, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
It's also somewhat strange that the first part haut- would be calqued/ translated and the second part -bois loaned/ folk etymologized, where both parts would be pretty straightforward for someone knowing French. Wakuran (talk) 14:00, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
The French term bois can be used for furniture, but only as a plural in the collective sense, and this use is considered argot. --Lambiam19:45, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
I wonder if 'bois' meaning 'berry' could be connected to Frankish, and related to Dutch bes. Long 'e:' becoming diphtongized 'oi' seems a regular phonetic shift in French, anyway. Wakuran (talk) 02:22, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
Well, all of the Scandinavian wods likely have the same or similar origins. Runeberg's Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok states that the Old Swedish and Old Danish word might derive from a metathesis of an Old English, Old Irish or Old French word as a borrowing/ derivation from Latin crux. Svenska Akademins Ordbok states ultimately from Latin crux. Bokmålsordboka states Old Norse kross, through Old English from Latin crux, whereas Nynorskordboka states of Latin crux, through Danish. Det Norske Akademis Ordbok states from Old Danish, possibly through Old English or Old Irish from Latin crux. Den Danske Ordbog just states from Latin crux. I guess the route of the exact origin is lost in history, and must be considered inconclusive... Wakuran (talk) 01:53, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
Old Danish can be considered a dialect of Old Norse, so these different etymologies may be more like the descriptions of an elephant by a bunch of blind men. --Lambiam15:33, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
How Latin 'crux' turned into Swedish/ Scandinavian 'kors' seems to be a matter up to debate, although at least Runeberg seems to state pretty much what it's currently claimed. Wakuran (talk) 02:55, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Batton
The initial k cannot be from Germanic and cognate, one would think, although the root has reduplication, *(s)ker- (Pokorny): cp. *(s)kr̥-kr̥-, PIt. *karkros; *(s)ker-k-, κίρκος, κρίκος, beside *(s)kre-u-k-, crux. Repduplication does wonderful things to assonance.
1. The similarity to *ḱers- (carrus, horse-cart) is unmistakable but unrelated so far. NB: John T. Koch thinks *wagnaz ~ *wegnos (wagon) is an isogloss and mentions couinnus, "used for Caledonian war chariots in Tacitus, Agricola" that is "probably from *ko(m)-wegno-". In fact, the semantics of Tocharian B kwarsär(“league, path, course”) and yakne(“way, manner”) match this very well, and indeed we see that reduplication maintains the velar at least in *hurskaz, *ḱr̥s-kó-s (criss cross).
2. To demonstrate imitative qualities, ring of it may be illustrated by the Marsiglian ace of clubs with its trimmed prickles, corresponding to the German card of Kreuz (as discussed, previously). It is a shame that the assonance with Christ (a kind of magi) must have had influenced the connotation of cross, grosso modo. 141.20.6.6713:49, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
/dekember/ > /deˈsɛˀmbɐ/ seems to be a fairly regular change, that must have been active to some degree in many languages.
Latvian krusts corroborates "perhaps no borrowing". Yet, synonym Latvian rist (risti) shows the loss expected from High German. Cp. Rost(“grill”), grate; wind rose.
Our etymology sections state that both are borrowed from Italian radicchio. There appears to be more to this story however as ραδίκι /ɾaˈðici/ differs, in its phonological shape, from the Italian /raˈdikkjo/ in important ways. Perhaps it was 'nativized' via the removal of its final vowel and substitution of /-d-/ with the more usual Greek sound /ð/?
Meanwhile, ραντίτσιο /ɾaˈdit͡sio/ keeps both the /o/ and /d/ but appears to, strangely enough, substitute Italian /kj/ with /ts/. One would expect /kj/ to have simply been adapted to the nearest Greek sound, which is /c/, spelled ⟨κι⟩. And indeed that is what we find for φινόκιο < finocchio; ρομπαμπέκια < robavecchia; and κιάλι < occhiali.
What Italian sounds are actually rendered in Greek as /ts/ ⟨τσ⟩? Apparently /ts/, /dʒ/, and /tʃ/ to judge by borrowings such as αβαντσάρω, βαλίτσα, and κοντσέρτο (among other examples here).
Is there a language of Italy where the equivalent of radicchio contains one of the above sounds instead of /kj/? Yes: Venetian has radìcio (1, 2), where ⟨ci⟩ stands for /tʃ/. Venetian is, needless to say, a likely contributor to the Greek lexicon due to its centuries-long occupation of various Ionian and Aegean islands.
ραδίκι(radíki) is first attested as ραδίκιον(radíkion) in the 17th century, which is a diminutive formation with -ιον(-ion), very common in later Greek. It would develop naturally to ραδίκιν(radíkin) (attested in the dialects), then to ραδίκι(radíki). Some explain ραδίκι(radíki) as a borrowing from plural Italian radicchi, but I think the addition of -ιον(-ion) to the singular and the described development is better. As for ραντίτσιο(rantítsio), I can't find it in any serious source. Could be a modern illiterate transcription. Vahag (talk) 22:02, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I see- thank you for checking. That seems a satisfactory explanation for ραδίκι.
It'd be funny if ραντίτσιο indeed turns out to indeed be an illiterate transcription. If so it's surprisingly widespread, with ten times more results on Google than the expected ραντίκιο. Nicodene (talk) 22:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
The /ts/ spelling makes perfect sense to me. Theyre not substituting /kkj/ with /ts/, theyre substituting /kkj/ with /tsj/. This has a near parallel in pastitsio, the only difference being that the initial Italian sound was /tš/ instead. —Soap—22:21, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I assume you're referring to παστίτσιο < Italian pasticcio. That is simply another example of Italian /tʃ/ > Greek /ts/, as I mentioned above. I don't see how that can explain ραντίτσιο < radicchio, unless someone visually confused the Italian endings -ccio and -cchio. If so, that's just the 'illiterate transcription' theory mentioned above. Nicodene (talk) 22:31, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I suspect Greeks read -ch- as according to English orthography and rendered it with -τσ-(-ts-). In Armenia, where the only Latin-script language known is English, everybody pronounces the Italian toy store Chicco as Չիկո(Čʻiko). Vahag (talk) 22:36, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure that in particular is a relevant example, as the expected misreading of Italian would have /tʃ/ rather than /ʃ/. Perhaps the English word was influenced by French pistache, which was also borrowed into English. Nicodene (talk) 20:21, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
I second Nicodene's doubtfulness. Greeks know Italian better than Armenians or French-confused Anglophones. The Venetian hypothesis convinced me more. Can we actually find good attestation of this word? And since when? Catonif (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
You're overthinking this. Russian радичио(radičio), Armenian ռադիչիո(ṙadičʻio), Georgian რადიჩიო(radičio), German Raditschio are all attestable on the Internet. It's like expresso or choritzo. Vahag (talk) 23:16, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Oh no. You are correct. That's kind of sad, going from “Venetian rule on the Ionian and Aegean islands” to “ignorant internet word.” :( Catonif (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Yeah. Unless there turns up, say, an eighteenth-century citation for ραντίτσιο, I'm also going with the 'didn't know how to read Italian' theory. It was still an interesting exercise in loanword adaptation I suppose. Nicodene (talk) 23:55, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
@Nicodene, Vahagn Petrosyan, Catonif, I have updated the etymologies +ref at ραδίκι(radíki) and i marked as self-made etymology, with no ref, the ραντίτσιο(rantítsio), a recent word (I never improvise etymologies, sorry for the exception and please correct it as you think). The question asked here is How does Greek render the Italian endings -ccio, -cchio, -zio, -tio, ...
* a) in learned orthographic borrowings; how are they transliterated? (e.g. the latin letter c)
* b) in direct acoustic speaker-to-speaker borrowings
The main greek etymological dictionaries discuss the above in their introductions and rarely comment in each lemma (sometimes with a "cf" or in the pattern of). For the transliterations, the style changed over time. For the direct borrowings, some normalisations may happen according to Greek phonetic restrictions e.g. there are no postalveolars ʃ ʒ etc. The addition of greek endings for both a) and b) is a normal procedure, needed for inflection. They never omit to mark a Venetian borrowing (a standard Italian pronunciation would have produced a slightly different result in Greek). For -cio, interesting example, Hellenistic βενεφίκιον@ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ also medieval μπενεφίτσιο@Kriaras, not used in modern anymore. And, no, i would not know that Italian -cchio is pronounced kio. I would immediately transliterate to -tsio. But acoustically, I will repeat Πινόκιο(Pinókio) for Pinocchio. Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek♫I02:45, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
In Martin's JLTT, some words with emphatic nominalizing particles in them that have been reconstructed include "*-Ci" in them. For example Proto-Japonic*kamuy(“god”) is spelled in JLTT as *kamu-Ci. So is it safe to say the "*-Ci" nominalizing suffix can be spelled here as "*-y"? Chuterix (talk) 22:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
In the index of JLTT, labeled *-Ci as a a noun suffix/marker and a verb infinitive suffix so this seems related to emphatic nominal particle い(i) and also explains the 連用形(ren'yōkei, “continuative form”) of 五段活用(godan katsuyō, “quintigrade conjugation”) verbs, so I have more likeliness. Chuterix (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
The MYS spelling using the character 射 is interesting here, as the verb 射る(iru, “to shoot, to let fly”) is reconstructed as having an initial "y" (phonemically /j/).
The particle is also cited in sense to both the Kojiki and the MYS, spelled using the character 伊. This had a Middle Chinese reconstructed sound value of something like /ʔiɪ/ or /ʔjɪ/, reinforcing the idea that this particle in Old Japanese and earlier had a "y" glide as the initial sound. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig20:27, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
Usually connected to furnus but the details are unclear. If you are interested in the development of the sense "fornication", Szemerényi suggests a phono-semantic matching with Greek πόρνη(pórnē)-derived words supposedly widespread in Antiquity, represented by Old Armenian պոռնկութիւն(poṙnkutʻiwn), պոռնիկ(poṙnik). Vahag (talk) 11:34, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
If this passage is reliable, it seems to shed light on the development of the second sense. Can someone who understands Latin better than me add that information, if it seems accurate? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:41, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
According to Samuel Martin's "The Japanese Language Through Time", the noun 宝(takara, “treasure”) seems to be an Old Japanese compound of 高(taka, “high”) + 等(-ra, “pluralizer”).
The etymology of "TAKARA (treasure)" is "TA KARA (from rice fields)"
Can't comprehend the rest of the information on the page.
But I'm not sure if this is correct because たから had existed since Old Japanese. And I'm not sure how rice paddies have anything to do with treasure (aside from treasure being rare to find). If kara was 柄(kara, “origin, source”) then it would make no sense of saying "origin of rice field/rice field origin" for a sense of treasure.
To clarify, here's some rough translations of 宝は田から～私たちの原点～ (currently wip). Not everything will get translated though.
宝(takara, “treasure”) is derived as a compound of 田(ta, “rice field”) + から(kara, “from”), literally “from rice fields”.
According to Japanese Dictionary Daigenkai, "It's from the rice fields, from the way grains are the source of such".
A reading from the Todai-ji says: "In harvest season, for a whole day peasants plant crops, then one day they get the values"
Back in the day, the Japanese people valued the fields raised by nature, such as fertile land, rainfall, the sun and the rain, as irreplaceable treasure.
End of translation.
They then begin to talk about the origin of the Kanji spelling and their company's name and goal.
Indicates the start of an action. Appears in mid-antiquity , continues through to modern use. In antiquity , this sense was expressed exclusively using the term より(yori).
The semantics are also strange -- 田(ta, “paddy”) + から(kara, “from”) or "from the paddy" is a phrase, not a noun, and there is no common pattern of nominalizing such phrases in Japanese. It might just be my memory, but I cannot think of any other case where から(kara) appears at the end of a noun and is derived from the particle usage.
FWIW, I'm not entirely sold on Martin's theory either: on the one hand, ら(ra) as a suffix operates more as a pluralizer or genericizer (c.f. 我ら(warera, “we, us”), ここら(kokora, “around here”), for which the corresponding entry appears to be missing), and on the other, a ら(ra) nominalization of 高(taka) would mean something like "the heights", implying a location. I do not see how this would mean "treasure; precious thing". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig21:19, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Late response, but that’s what I thought. Suspecting Takara Shuzo being a folk etymology.
I thought that both options sound like folk etymology.
See the items in the original character of 宝 spell Ta-Ka in bronze, that would be too early:
The phonetic component 缶 (OC *puʔ) was not jade, which appears later and culminates in 宝. Its kun reading kama(kama) can be explained. The symbol look like 寶, if you are being generous (eg. the pot in poker, at the end of the rainbow). If 浩 (OC *ɡuːʔ, *kuːb) is indeed cognate, nanori ひろし, *pirə is comparable, while kuma(kuma) speculates about an early wanderword related to 熊 (OC *ɢʷlɯm) and, as a matter of probable folk etymolog, has been compared to 神. See the character! If that's possibly correct and yet falling on deaf ears, any traditional account is necessarily biased in the wrong direction.
Color words - in particular 金 and 玉 as items of trade - and their derivations are compelling - especially the top / bottom semantics of bright and dark skies and earth, and everything between. See け, 庭園; 天空(tiānkōng), diem, Jupiter, brown bear, escetera.
As for 田, the words that translate "field" end in -ra.
@FUND126, your post is ... very confused. The Japanese term takara has nothing at all to do with the Chinese term 寶／宝(bǎo). Kanji use in Japanese, for Japonic-derived terms, is irrelevant to etymology. Imagine if we used Chinese to spell English: the verb get would wind up with a different spelling for each of its 31 senses, and this would have zero bearing on the etymology. So it is with Japonic terms that are spelled using Chinese characters.
I wanted to add the German descendants but apparently this didn't enter Old High German where the word instead was unbartohti but then there's Middle High German bartlôs again. Seems to me to be more reasonable to assume Old High German *bartlōs existed. Does perhaps somebody have a source that includes this? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:43, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
True, but that doesn't mean it was inherited as a unit. Reconstructions should be for things that have presumably been passed down as a whole, not reassembled each time from inherited parts. There's no way to tell if the whole existed in the parent language- there might have been a synonym that was lost. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:55, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
But just because the component parts remained productive in the daughter languages cannot be a justification for ruling out the possibility that the term existed in PGmc. Likelihood has to be evaluated on a term by term basis. Perhaps "beard"+"-less" was regarded as a slang word, or a term of low register that didn't emerge till later times when writings became more lax. But I seriously doubt a PGmc speaker would not know what bardalausaz meant if he/she were encountered with it. We don't have reconstructions for concepts like earless, hairless, legless, tailless, thumbless, but these are not lofty ideals...they're basic to human existence regardless of era. Leasnam (talk) 18:40, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
My justification is this: If it's a basic concept that one would use to "explain" a more obscure term in the most simplest of ways; and there is at least one Old-stage language that evinces the construction, I am prone to re-create it. For example, solely based on GOH ougalōs(“eyeless”) I feel compelled to create at least Proto-West Germanic *augālaus, even though the English and Dutch words didn't appear till Middle-stage. I mean, what, did they have no word for "eyeless" ? Of course they did. And yes, it may have been a completely different word unrelated to *augô, but what is it ? Right. No one knows. But we have some evidence in OHG that it may have been *augô+*lausaz, which is backed up by cognates in Dutch and English. Same is true for *bardalausaz. So until someone can prove to me that it didn't exist, then it probably did. Leasnam (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
There's no strong reason to believe that the roots had been productive for long. The etymology of beard is bizarro. The error is systematic, because PIE *bʰardʰéh is not reconstructable with *a for PIE and technicly shouldn't exist. Somebody added *bʰh₂erdʰeh to the English entry like a fake mustache to establish legitimicy. Pronk doesn't mention it. The question is all the more interesting for it.
I'll get out of your hair in a bit, but I don't recognize unbartohti and would intuitively argue that it means simply not having an emblemic beard in the trimmed, waxed, braided, curled, spun in a bun sense of status symbols that speaks for itself. This goes if and pretty much only if *-ohti could be read as -haft, eventually, which is as reasonable as the beard substrate is unknown. Ironically, if I can trust that glosses support the notion of facial barenness, comparison to Proto-Germanic *bazaz(“bare”) oughta follow, since shaving would be the lowest common denominator to form a polar opposite to `bad hair-doʼ, evidently in a non-barbaric, barber'ized civilization context! Albeit, PIE *bʰosós isn't well supported either, and -less would need explained away, fundamentally, by shift of semantics from bare stem to arbitrary suffix (-ulus, -ilaz, whatevas), @Leasnam. The change of bazaar should be instructive, cp. sunday dress, wash day (Sunday in Swedish]]). I'd go as far as comparing barley, as for hay markets.
Relatedly, I'd like to know how a beard had to look at blodthing: cp. wie en Bär ume Eier ("like a bear perineum", of crazy hair), æ, maybe ambeht, but badly corrupted by Eier, which might in this case be related anyway as testis are to testament: uncertain. Not only would mein Teil (Rammstein) or Ding(“tool, knob, pecker”) support the notion, but the curses ein Ding zu laufen, Ei am wandern, Rad ab, Sockenschuzs haben must be minced oaths. Ding isn't even minced but ein Ding drehen "heist" is clearly corrupted. 2A00:20:6046:1E3C:89E2:CD11:3773:4F5F06:39, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
I can barely make heads nor tails of your posts, but I can correct the detail that Sunday in Swedish would be washing day, the Washing day in North Germanic, Finnish and Estonian is Saturday... Wakuran (talk) 17:57, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
Were most Romance words for hair derived from a *pelus rather than from pilus?
I've seen this reconstruction in relation to the Romanian word păr, but weren't the other Romance words derived (with the exception of Sardinian and Sicilian) from such a Late Latin word, too? Bogdan (talk) 11:02, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Latin short /ĭ/, as in pĭlus but also hundreds or thousands of other words, regularly developed to in much of the later Latin-speaking world. Each of the Romance descendants of pĭlus shows its language's regular outcome of /ĭ/, so there is no need to explain any of them through some special reconstructed form.
Indeed, the Romance words are regular from pĭlus (or, theoretically, *pēlus), but not from *pĕlus, which would have given French *piel and Spanish *pielo. I wonder about Portuguese pelo, however: single intervocalic l normally disappears in Portuguese, so I would have expected *peu. Is the modern Portuguese word perhaps a learned borrowing, or a borrowing from Spanish, rather than an inheritance from Old Portuguese from Vulgar Latin? —Mahāgaja · talk17:08, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
That caught my eye as well. I suspect it may have been influenced by cabelo 'hair' < capillum. (Perhaps pele 'skin' < Latin pellem as well, but the semantic relation is weak.)
Pelo seems unlikely to be a learned borrowing, considering that is a quite basic everyday term, the normal development of the stressed vowel, and the also-normal development of its various Romance cognates. An early borrowing from, say, Leonese or Castilian is conceivable but still a bit odd for such a basic word. Nicodene (talk) 19:33, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
banèlo
Occitan word for "alley, alleyway" (homograph for a word meaning "lapwing" (=Fr. vanneau). It looks like venelle, if I stretch it, but is Occitan ba- for French ve- a regular correspondence ? Leasnam (talk) 21:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
French venelle (Old Frenchvenele) is a derivative of veine...Spanish shows the Latin v- (vena), at least in its orthography but pronounced almost like a b; and to my knowledge doesn't have this special use of "little veins" > "small streets and alleyways". The Occitan word for "vein", sefena, is no help Leasnam (talk) 22:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
@Leasnam Not a regular correspondence by any means, but the etymology appears secure per the close match with Fr. venelle and cognates in the regional languages between them, as shown in the FEW entry. The same source shows that medieval Occitan already had the form with /a/, whatever the reason for its appearance. Incidentally, the modern Occitan word is spelled vanèla in the standard, albeit pronounced /baˈnɛlo/ in the core Languedoc dialect due to its merger of older /b/ and /v/, much as in Spanish. Nicodene (talk) 15:18, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
At mum, in the section labelled as ‘Etymology 4’, we claim that a rare sense of the word (a type of beer) comes from the German word Mumme and that this, in turn, is derived from the surname of its German inventor (who is apparently called ‘Christian Mumme’). At the German entry for Mumme, however, we claim that the word is an onomatopoeia. Looking at the linked German Wikipedia article (using Google Translate), it seems to say that it’s a myth that the drink derives its name from the surname, as Mumme was made and drunk before the alleged date of invention, and the first claims that it was invented by Christian Mumme appeared many years later. In fact, he may not even exist at all. Should we remove this claim from the mum entry? Perhaps we could include it at Mumme instead, in a way which makes it clear that this etymology is less plausible than the alternative (ie. that the word is of imitative origin). Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
The entry for aupar points one at aúpa, the entry for which in turn points us to upa, the entry for which describes it as nothing more than an inflected form of upar. But the only thing that its entry has to offer about etymology is a recommendation that one check out—you guessed it—aupar.
There is some stuff floating around suggesting that the etymon is Basque ("Según Zárate, del vasco aupa `arriba'" here, "un gran número de fuentes apuntan que el término ‘aúpa’ proviene de la palabra en euskera ‘aupatu’ cuyo significado es ‘levantar’" here), but I'm not familiar with the languages involved. The second one says there's also a separate word upa, which is from English. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
On the page pipio, piccioni in Sardinian is listed as a borrowing of Italian piccione, but in the LSC Sardinian dictionary, it seems like they favor Latin as an etymon, from a preform *pullionem. It does seem like the latter makes more sense considering the variants puxone and piglione. There's no form 'picioni' in this dictionary at least, but it seems reasonable to assume these are variants of each other. Should we remove the Sardinian list entry?
@Qwed117 We are dealing with two different words here.
The Sardinian pigione~puzone (and other variants) is a general word for ‘bird’, as the above link explains, and it does in fact derive from a Vulgar Latin *pulliónem < pullus.
The Sardinian piccione~piccioni, which notably is not listed above as a variant of puzone, is another word that specifically means ‘pidgeon’. The perfect phonological and semantic match with Italian piccione make it clear that this is a borrowing. I am not aware, incidentally, of any Sardinian variety that shows as the outcome of Latin in native words.
Here are the two words’ entries in Wagner’s Dizionario Etimologico Sardo, the premier source for Sardinian etymologies: pudzòne, piččòne. The latter is specified as a sporadic borrowing from Italian, with the ‘true’ (native) Sardinian word for ‘pidgeon’ being columbu/columba. Nicodene (talk) 21:23, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Columbu/columba being cognate to several other Romace words, by the way. I'm not sure whether there's a direct (or indirect) relation between the words columbus/ columba and palumbus, or if the similar ending merely is a coincidence. Wakuran (talk) 12:34, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Considering this is such an international word, I figured I should discuss the etymology here. I am checking two Polish dictionaries, Witold Doroszewski, editor (1958–1969), “amfolit”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), Warszawa: PWN claims it's from amphi--lyte, whereas Mirosław Bańko, Lidia Wiśniakowska (2021) “Etymology scriptorium/2022/November”, in Wielki słownik wyrazów obcych, →ISBN claims it's ultimately a blend of amphoteric and electrolyte (Polish really doesn't do blends so it'd probably ultimately be a borrowing but the source language would be a blend). While both elements contain the presented affixes, this is technically not presentable in the surface analysis. Does anyone have any other sources? Vininn126 (talk) 13:14, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
It appears the term was coined by Brailsford Robertson (1906) in "On the Conditions of Equilibrium of an Associating Amphoteric Electrolyte in the Presence of any Number of Non- Amphoteric Electrolytes", The Journal of Physical Chemistry 10(7) at page 531, where he pretty much makes clear that it's a blend: "The term 'ampholyte' will be used as a synonym for 'amphoteric electrolyte.'" Earlier hits on GBooks are misdated. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:51, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
I don't speak Polish, but from the words I recognise that appears to be a list of rocks/minerals and not the same sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:55, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
Rocks aside the blend seems secure for English ampholyte so I've added it to the entry, we may need a mineral entry for ampholite (not sure if it's a mistake or just a less common alternative). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:11, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
They are completely different things. One is a term for any member of class of watery solutions defined by the properties of conducting electricity and additionally having certain chemical characteristics. The other is a specific rock-solid mineral. --Lambiam12:16, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Nice find. That matches the olivine–amphibole definition I found above. There's still a loose end with @Vininn126's 1875 Polish hit, and I can find a lone (correctly dated) 1872 hit in English for "ampholite" , but it seems likely then that we're just dealing with sporadic variant forms in these two cases rather than something with a distinct definition. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:34, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Currently our entry states that πιτσούνι /piˈtsuni/ derives from Italian piccione /pitˈtʃone/. That, however, does not explain why the Greek form ended up with a stressed /u/ and final /i/. Could it have instead been borrowed from Sicilian picciuni /pitˈtʃuni/? Incidentally, the Italian piccione itself originated as a borrowing from southern Italy. Nicodene (talk) 21:50, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
The ending -ι is very common for Greek nouns, whereas the ending -ε is extremely rare. The few examples with this ending, such as ακουαφόρτε(akouafórte), are recent learned borrowings. So I think the final ⟨ι⟩ is not in need of an explanation. Our notion of Italian as a standard language, based on Italo-Dalmatian languages such as Tuscan and Florentine, is relatively recent; prior to the 19th century everyone spoke their own local vernacular. Unless πιτσούνι is a recent borrowing, interpreting “from Italian” as “from standard Italian” is anachronistic. It is unlikely we can be more specific unless it can be determined when and where the word was adopted into the Greek lexicon. For centuries, dominant Romance lects in the Aegean Sea were Venetian, difficult to position in the Romance language families, and Genoese, a Gallo-Italic language. Moreover, in the Mediterranean a lingua franca was spoken, sometimes called Sabir, that adopted terms from many sources and donated them all over the place. Based on the intensity of contact, these may be more likely immediate donors than Sicilian. --Lambiam17:47, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
@Tropylium, Surjection, Maas555 Currently Finnish läsiä and Ingrian lässiä (I'll use the latter as shorthand) are both given as borrowings from Russian лежать(ležatʹ). This poses three problems for me:
First of all, there is a -ä- in there, where you would normally expect a -e-.
Secondly, there is also the Ingrian lessiä, supposedly from the same source, that does show the expected vowel.
Moreover, considering the large number of languages having a cognate for the first etymon, I'd expect an earlier borrowing than "Russian".
I see two possible solutions:
First, both lässiä and lessiä are borrowed from (a historical variety of) Russian - probably OES - but at different stages, the -ä- variant being an earlier borrowing and the vowel change being an unexplained irregularity.
Second, which I actually prefer, that lässiä is actually from Russian лечь(lečʹ) (or, rather, its OES predecessor) - which shows the present stem ляг-, allowing for -ä- in the borrowing; lessiä would then still be from лежать with the regular outcome.
Option 1 seems readily better (and might be what sources already claim — many do not make a consistent distinction between Old Slavic vs. Russian loans, would have to be checked individually). Includes lessiä being possibly just a relatively modern newer loan from Russian (or a meld of inherited lässiä with later Russian). Probably also ž in Veps läžuda would need and explanation of this sort, native inheritance would predict **läzuda (*läsi- as in Fi/Krl/Ingrian would give **läži-, but such a form does not seem to be reported). Under option 2, how do you figure getting from Russian ч or г to Finnic reflexes as if from *s?
"Many-language" distribution does not seem to really make a difference either way, when the word has a very southeastern dialect distribution in Finnish and a northeastern one in Estonian, exactly what we'd expect also of newer Russian loans. --Tropylium (talk) 19:41, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
@Tropylium: The г-ж alteration in лечь still applies: ляжешь, ляжет, ляжем, ляжете, ляжут - quite possible the soft stem variant was taken as the model. And for the distribution I rather meant the semantic shift in all East Finnic varieties "lie" > "ail", which suggests common ancestry. I also quickly checked, and the birchbark letters do display the е-ѧ(=я) alteration for лечи (лечь), but again not for лежати (лежать), so there's also no problem in the geographical distribution on the Slavic side. Thadh (talk) 22:18, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Oh, ofc, should have checked the inflection in detail: ляжешь should probably indeed also give läsi- etc. just fine. In recent loans there is also some tendency towards long Finnic vowels for stressed Ru. vowels in open syllables (e.g. määlitsä, sääli), but this is not mandatory or anything. --Tropylium (talk) 22:58, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
No, a Latin origin seems more probable, given that Spanish-speakers weren't prominent in the early phases of European contact. The word was probably mediated through the Roman Catholic mission to Hawaii, who would've needed a word for "frog" in Bible translations (in e.g. Revelation 16:13). Given that the mission consisted of Catholics from several different nationalities, a Latin word may have been chosen as a compromise form (while there are only a few other Latinisms in Hawaiian, Protestant missionaries introduced many loans from Greek). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 10:29, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
Aha! Good catch re: Catholic missionaries. Thank you @Hazarasp! Could we add a note to such effect? Perhaps clarifying that this is speculation amidst a lack of references explicitly calling this out. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig19:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Is Japanese ない related to English “no” or “not”?
The Japanese adjective ない(nai, “not”) (not the verb negativizer one) sounds both phonetically and semantically similar to English negatives such as no and not.
I’ve only found the classical negative auxiliary verb attaching to verbs: ぬ(-nu, negative verb auxiliary; donot; don’t); reconstructed to Proto-Japonic by Alexander Vovin as *-an-. He also makes a comparison using 안(an, “not”).
The English negatives such as no and not is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European*ne. So is there any cognate/connection with this?
No I’m not an Altaicist (even though Starostin’s Proto-Altaic reconstruction for these variety of words are there; but that’s a bunch of baloney), just saying my theory. Chuterix (talk) 03:25, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
It's an interesting thought. Impossible to confirm, however.
I recall reading somewhere years ago that there's a theory that some aspect of the biomechanics of speech predisposes humans to using an /-n-/, /-m-/, or other nasal phoneme for a negative. That said, my quick perusal of entries at no/translations#Translations suggests that the preponderance of languages that have a prominent nasal in their words for negation seem to be clustered in Eurasia, and it's not even all of them by a long shot -- many of the Turkic languages don't have any nasal in their negation words, likewise many of the languages of India. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig04:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
And in thoroughly Indo-European modern Greek, ναι(nai) means 'yes', while 'no' (όχι(óchi) has no nasal in it. Linguistic coincidences happen; it doesn't do to read too much into them. —Mahāgaja · talk08:28, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
I have added the most etymological information I can with the resources at my disposal. But there remain still some unanswered questions:
Is the word kūtiyya supposed to be Arabic or Hindi? Agius (2010), p. 56 is a bit confusing because he both talks about the word being used in Kuwait (implying Arabic), but also says "The word kūtiyya is Hindi". It definitely looks more like Arabic, so maybe he means it's an Arabic word from Hindi (which may in turn be from Arabic).
Agius (2008, 2010) talks about a medieval Arabic galley called qiṭʿa, from the root ق ط ع(q ṭ ʕ, “to cross (a river or an ocean)”) and with plural forms qiṭaʿ, aqṭāʿ, and qaṭāʾiʿ. We seem to be missing both the verb and the noun senses, from our Arabic entries قَطَعَ(qaṭaʕa) and قِطْعَة(qiṭʕa) respectively. Wehr has the verbal senses "to ford (هـ a river), cross (هـ a river, an ocean), traverse (هـ a country), pass through or across s.th. (هـ)", but seems to lack the nominal sense of "galley". What Wehr does have is a sense for "naval unit", which we have as well; I'm not convinced that these are the same words, however, first of all because "unit" and "galley" are different concepts, even if both related to a navy, and secondly because that seems to be linked to the "cut/separate" meaning of the root and the other nominal senses like "piece", "portion", "division", not to the senses "cross", "traverse". Also, the set of plurals is not the same.
Are the Arabic script forms I added for kūtiyya and qiṭʿa correct? I think they are, but someone should double check.
What are the theories about Indian-language origins? Footnote 71 referenced in Suzuki (2017) might have more info, but seems to be inaccessible in the Google Books preview.
I found Malayalamകൊടിയ(koṭiya), which has an entry on ml.wiktionary with adjective definitions (per Google Translate) "Terrible, cruel, harsh, severe; big, strong" and noun definition "A wooden ship". Not sure if the adjective and noun are related, but Malayalam fits because the ship is associated with the Malabar Coast. But another source (not viewable on Google Books) says kuttiya is from Sanskritकोट(koṭa, “fort”), or some variation thereof:
The word 'Kutiyya' is of Sanskrit origin meaning 'a fort' or a ship carrying troops and guns like a fort.
Under etymology 5 (!), it has this as a term for various animals, which I'd never heard before, but then it also lists the sense as a kind of dessert. Putting this sense under this etymology seems extremely dubious, but damned if I know where it should go instead. My gut tells me it's likely related to the general sense of "cobbling" something together...but then again, maybe it has to dof with the crust being reminiscent of cobblestone. This is all just guessing on my part though, and I don't know how to really get a better idea. Can anyone offer some better insight here? Deacon Vorbis (talk) 16:22, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
I would interpret etymology 5 as just a catch-all for senses with uncertain etymology rather than saying they all derive in the same way. The OED has nothing specific on where the pie sense came from; etymonline links it to cobblestone, as you suggested, or to Middle English cobeler "wooden dish" which seems rather unlikely. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
I've split out the dessert as ety 6, since it has different theories of possible origin. Perhaps the "police" sense should also be split out; is it perhaps related to copper, or slang from the cobbler/workman sense? - -sche(discuss)19:27, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
RFV of the etymology.
This spelling is (also) used in Hong Kong, so I do not think that the word is necessarily from Mandarin, but instead it could also be from Cantonese. – Wpi31 (talk) 17:17, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
The earliest hit specifically for "Ching Ming festival" on GBooks is actually in an 1870 Fuzhou (Min Dong) dictionary; I don't know if the transcription is correct for Min Dong. "Ching Ming" is attested in a mission journal from Shanghai in 1857 . Some hits from the 1870s are securely Mandarin, e.g.. I think this one is from Cantonese. It doesn't seem like there's a convincing reason to ascribe it to any of them specifically—it can be left as from a Sinitic language. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:19, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
Any Sumerian derivatives into Arabic ? If yes please check
@Flāvidus: No, because Sumerian borrowings into Arabic are impossible. We have not even been compelled to assume any single direct Akkadian borrowing into Arabic. Moreover there appear, if you like, Ethiopian Semitic cognates, Ge'ezድማሕ(dəmaḥ), ድማኅ(dəmaḫ), ድማህ(dəmah, “head; crown of the head; skull; summit”), Amharicድማኅ(dəmaḫ, “top of the head”), Gafatdəmʷä(“head”), Silt'eዱም(dum), Wolaneዱሚ(dumi, “head; hair of head”), Tigreደምቀት(dämḳät, “crown of the head”), apparently back-formed from later plurals ድማቅ(dəmaḳ), ድመቅ(dəmäḳ), and Leslau also deems them Arabisms, against Walter W. Müller and with reservations Militarev, Alexander, Kogan, Leonid (2000) “*dimāγ-”, in Semitic Etymological Dictionary, volumes I: Anatomy of Man and Animals, Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, →ISBN, page 50 No. 52, and either view makes Sumerian origin less likely, as if you think the Ethiopian terms parallel then they would have to be shared borrowings from Iranian rule in the South of Arabia which was short and did not leave too much trace, while exclusive presence of a Sumerian word in Arabic would have no parallel to back it up: extraordinary claims. Cushitic forms are presumably borrowed from Amharic or Gurage: Awngiዱሚ(dūmī, “top”), Oromodumi(“head”).
On top, ehm, of this, I already have reasonable suspicion about internal derivation of this word. Arabic has some partially obviously denominal verb: دَمَغَ(damaḡa, “he broke his head and thereby reached the brain; he overcame, subdued, abased, triumphed over, invalidated etc.”), while Ge'ez has ደምሐ(dämḥä, “to possess, to acquire, to dominate”) which Leslau relates to አድምዐ(ʾädməʿä, “to attain, to grasp, to receive, to obtain”) which makes us think about an extension of a biliteral in this as well as the Proto-Semitic term for “tear” reflected in Arabicدَمْع(damʕ), a biconsonantal source present as *dam-(“blood”) again across all languages. As expected, Corriente, Federico, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Angeles, editors (2017), Dictionnaire du faisceau dialectal arabe andalou. Perspectives phraséologiques et étymologiques (in French), Berlin: De Gruyter, →ISBN has the same theory, specifying page 478 that the ending element derives from a blend of the “blood” word with Proto-Semitic*muḫḫ-(“brain”), so the old Semites imagined the brain as a kind of blood of the head, while they think the “tear” word blended with *ʕayn-(“eye”). Oops, I solved the Semitic etymology! The detail that the Arabic ends in غ(ḡ) with voicedness assimilation though, against Ethiopic actually having the unvoiced guttural fricatives, then leaves Arabic origin open to doubt. An explanation may be that the source of the Arabic and Ethiopian Semitic is actually Old South Arabian where designations of human body parts are badly attested. Fay Freak (talk) 18:53, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
The consensus seems to be that the ancient name of Durostorum (modern Silistra) is Celtic (together with other towns in the area, like Noviodunum, Ratiaria and Arrubium), but I can't find any actual Celtic roots.
There are other Celtic names that might be related, such Durocortorum (modern Reims), which is sometimes said to mean "round fortress", but I can't seem to find the roots in the Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. Bogdan (talk) 12:31, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Consensus of whom, and when? As you get towards the early 19th century, "Celtic" etymologies are more often than not random nonsense. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:50, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
J. J. Wilkes cites it as a place name of Celtic origin in 2001 here (in German: "etliche Ortsnamen keltischer Herkunft – Ratiaria, Durostorum, Noviodunum"). Duridanov (1997), "Keltische Sprachspuren in Thrakien und Mösien", Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 49–50(1): 136, has: "Als keltisch wird ferner der Name der Donaustadt Durostorum (jetzt Silistra) gedeutet, belegt seit Ptolemaios: Δουρόστορον. Der erste Bestandteil Duro- kommt oft in keltischen Ortsnamen vor wie Duro-cortorum, Duro-briva, Duro-devum usw." (i.e., the Duro in Durostorum is an element that appears in many Celtic place names, such as the ones cited at the end). Duro- is glossed "fort, stronghold" by Rippon (2012) here. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:21, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
The base dur- is attested in Gaulish personal names like durio, durillus, duronius, etc. (Delamarre 2007: 220 et passim, GPN: 87, n. 7, AcS I: 1383–1387). It is usually considered either to be a loan from Lat. dūrus 'hard, enduring', which is also found in Latin onomastics (cf. Lochner von Hüttenbach 1989: 73), and/or to be connected with duro- 'market (place)' < PIE *(-)dʰur-o- '(-)gate' (e.g. GPN: 87, n. 7, Delamarre 2007: 220), which is common as (second) element in toponyms (DLG: 156 f., Delamarre 2012: 151, NIL: 130–135, Matasović 2009: 111 f., Falileyev 2010: 18). However, as pointed out by Delamarre 2012: 151 (also Delamarre 2019: 314–316, and see already AcS I: 1383), duro- as first element of compound names, especially ethno- and anthroponyms, does not appear to be the same as the 'gate'-word.
The part -stor- has been considered a Celtic inheritance from the PIE root of Ancient Greek στερεός(stereós, “firm, solid”), but this is uncertain. I have cited the relevant literature at Ancient Greek Δουρόστορον(Douróstoron) if anyone wants to read and summarize. --Vahag (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
What Slavic word is this related to, if any? I'm not sure whether "flight" is only supposed to refer to running away, per the example in Harkavy (1928), or to aerial locomotion. Polishuciec and uciekać are kinda close if it's the former. 98.170.164.8800:12, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Is it phonologically plausible that this derives from Proto-Indo-European*gel-(“cold”)? The word doesn't contain any part that looks quite like that root. Compare that to the Sanskrit descendant of *gel- listed on the root page, जल(jala), which bears a closer resemblance (although I can't find any "cold"-related sense of जल in our entry or in Monier-Williams).
I know that Sanskrit is a satem language, so some k-like sounds will become s-like sounds. Does that apply to g as well? And what about the r vs. l? 98.170.164.8800:33, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
According to ś- should be derived from *ḱ-, wheras *ǵ-, *g- and *gʷ- should yield similar results. Then, I guess it's also noteworthy that *ḱ- is palatovelar, whereas the *g- in *gel- is a velar. It seems that r and l generally merged, though, so that poses no problem. Wakuran (talk) 03:17, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
In a word, no. PIE *gel- would become jal- or jar- in Sanskrit (the merger of l and r is unpredictable), and the o-grade *gol- would become gal- or gar-. Sanskrit śar- has to come from PIE *ḱel-/*ḱol- or *ḱer-/*ḱor- (if the word is of IE origin at all). This etymology was added back in 2017 by @Samubert96; I wonder what their source for it was. —Mahāgaja · talk10:28, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
What I meant with "similar results" was that *ǵ-, *g- and *gʷ- would produce g, j, gh or h depending on circumstances, but not s. Sorry if it was unclear. Wakuran (talk) 14:14, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Just noticed that we have a reconstructed Proto-Indo-Iranian entry *ćarHáts, which lists a bunch of similar Sanskrit words as descendants. If that entry is right, then this is from a root meaning "hot" (and cognate to Spanish caliente); quite the opposite of our current etymology which places it as a cognate of English cold. And Wakuran/Mahāgaja were right, the PIE word starts with ḱ. 98.170.164.8821:40, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Proto-Albanian *a)uaϑā
ἀάνθα mentions "Proto-Albanian *a)uaϑā" with nonstandard theta and unbalanced parenthesis sic. Can someone check whether this is correct or if it needs to be changed to θ like other P.-Albanian entries seem to use? - -sche(discuss)01:30, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Once they reach the (same) Latin word, the two etymology sections diverge, at least in how they notate the PIE form: ety 1 says "from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₂meh₂, *plām- (“palm of the hand”)", ety 2 says "from Proto-Indo-European *palam-, *plām- (“palm of the hand”)". - -sche(discuss)20:45, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
This is a good example of how having the same thing in multiple places on wikis causes problems: back in 2011, @Leasnamsplit it into two etymologies that were the same for the pre-Latin part (which he added), but used a non-laryngeal, non-syllabic-l notation. He apparently hadn't noticed or didn't understand the laryngeal-based notation at Latin palma, that had been added in 2008 (he was mostly focused on Germanic back then).
In 2018 @Word dewd544 (whose main focus has been on the history of Romance languages) updated Etymology 1, but left the Proto-Indo-European *plām- part (probably because his sources didn't mention it) and overlooked the identical content in Etymology 2.
I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of -l̥h₂ codas in PIE, so I won't say anything about what the etymologies should say. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:25, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm guessing the "ability/skill" sense originated as an allusion to the biblical "parable of the talents". (The idea being that God gives unique gifts/abilities/skills to each person, and expects each person to make good use of them.) Worth mentioning, since I don't see it on there? 2603:8080:C6F0:1280:7459:4FD2:8BB6:9FDF04:54, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
It may be worth mentioning, although it is not quite clear how and where. The sense already developed in 4th-century Greek and Latin – although not reserved for a particularly extraordinary knack, but used for the general faculty of reason gifted by the grace of God to all humankind. BTW, the sense of gift as a natural ability also arose as short for gift of God, in French don de Dieu and in Latin donum Dei, attested already in the Vulgate, in this case referring to the gift of laying hands on people to make them receive the Holy Ghost. --Lambiam18:46, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources also cites the parable as the origin of the sense ("power or opportunity divinely entrusted to a person for use, natural ability, talent (cf. 3b supra)", with 3a–b being "coin, talent b. (w. ref. to Matth. xxv 14–30)"). I've added some detail on the semantic development with a recent citation at talentum. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Descendants tree
Further to the short discussion above, I wonder how best to present the descendants tree of Latin talentum given the later semantic loans for the medieval/modern sense. It seems a number of languages, including English talent, have the word as a loan directly from Latin and also as a later semantic loan from French or another language (e.g. also Danish talent where it's stated to be from German). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:32, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Considering semantic loans, I saw that Norwegian Bokmål due (as a politician preferring discussion and agreements, rather than force and violent conflicts) is stated to be from English. It was listed as a loan first, but it'd rather be a calque. Also, the semantics aren't widely different from older connotations already found across Western languages, so I'm not sure it warrants its own sub-section. Wakuran (talk) 13:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
There seems to be a lot of various reconstructed variants of Proto-Indo-European on Wiktionary, which probably need to be thoroughly looked over and synchronized. Anyway, μετά seems related to such English words as middle, amidst and midwife (with the first part originally meaning "together with, co-") Wakuran (talk) 15:39, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
My knowledge of both Ancient and Modern Greek is rather non-existent, but it seems that the Greek Wiktionary prefers a connection to στέκω (as a place where you stand still and hang around), and the similarity to Dutch might just be another coincidence. Wakuran (talk) 13:05, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
The Greek semantics seem overall more intiutive, cf. for instance German Stelle from stellen (put/ make stand). I find the semantic shift from "stick/ stab" to "be located" a bit hard to explain. Wakuran (talk) 13:12, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
stekkie comes from stek and looks like a typical word of germanic origin. So a possible connection with Ancient Greek would be most probably by cognacy through ProtoIndoEuropean. My first guess would be -inspired by Wakuran's raised problems with the semantic shift to compare the problem with English stick (etymologies 1 (noun) and 2 (verb), which would lead us to (s)teyg- as a possible ancestor. But, as Wakuran pointed out, the greek Wiktionary goes relates the greek term to στέκω, whose english Wt article denotes it as perfect form of ἵστημι (hístēmi), which seems already much more unrelated to nl:stek.
I found a possible alternative etymology, which I have left on the Talk page because I am not aware of any evidence to support it. It comes from the post by Ray Hart on https://www.quora.com/What-secret-did-you-learn-about-your-neighbor-that-made-your-jaw-drop where he says that a (probably Jewish) Parisienne girl who escaped and, aged 12, joined the resistance after her dad was murdered, her mum (and later her sister) was raped and murdered. She was later raped by her resistance leader. This he explained was to keep the Nazis from wanting them as no self-respecting Nazi would want a girl who had been with a pied noir, i.e., a half-black Frenchman. Then she made it her mission to kill him "and more than 30 men just as bad".
He adds a footnote *pied noir has many modern polite definitions you can find on wikipedia. Those differ from the early 20th century pejorative used among Parisians to refer to French citizens with some black African ancestry, especially the sort they were trying to hide.*
Also, our existing etymology reads See Pied-Noir § Etymology on Wikipedia. If anyone has any confirmation, perhaps they could write our own in a better style. OED seems to agree with 'pedia, with no mention of mixed race people. --Enginear05:16, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
The dictionary of the Académie française also agrees: until around 1955 it was an ethnic slur for Algerians (Berbers or Arabs) in France, which then was repurposed as a derogatory term for repatriated French people. Neither of these groups has significant sub-Saharan (black) African ancestry. --Lambiam11:29, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
jot and tittle
From Matthew 5:18 in the King James Version of the Bible.
The Gospel of Matthew was of course recorded in Greek but "the Law" as Jesus was speaking of it was obviously in Hebrew. Therefore the "jot" (or iota in Greek) is a reference specifically to the ancient Hebrew letter Yod, not Phoenician as indicated in the article.
"Tittles" were "vowel points" or accents applied to Hebrew consonants to represent vowel sounds, anologous to the "tilde" ~ of modern Spanish sometimes applied to the letter 'n', viz. 'ñ', and representing a vowel sound following the consonant. -- justinacolmena (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
The Phoenician reference in the entry is regarding the etymology of the actual word jot, not what letter Jesus may have had in mind at the time. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Also, the Koine authors of the gospels probably did not use the word ἰῶτα(iôta) in the sense of specifically the Hebrew letter י, but as a generic term for a small mark. --Lambiam11:50, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
“Chilodonella”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present. says it's from Chilodon + -ella, and “Chilodon”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present. says that's from chil- + -odon. We don't have entries for either of those, but I suspect the former is a variant of kilo- 'thousand' and the latter a variant of -odont 'tooth'. Do Chilodonella have a lot of tooth-like things that could inspire the name "thousand teeth"? —Mahāgaja · talk12:01, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
