Talk:pentagon

On en.wikipedia an anon has added that this and other -gon's derive are derived from Sanskrit pancha 'five' + gona 'corner' = English pentagon. Anyone know anything about this? --Salix alba 16:59, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Er – no, it's wrong. All these related ‘shape’ nouns are from Greek. The Greek suffix was -γωνος, literally ‘angled’, and in this case combined with πεντα-, from πέντε ‘five’. The Sanskrit forms are cognate (i.e. both Sanskrit and Greek are descendants of Proto-Indo-European *penkʷe ‘five’), but Sanskrit is not the immediate source of the English word. Very few words in English come from Sanskrit. Widsith 17:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheers for that. --Salix alba 17:45, 15 September 2006 (UTC)