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Etymology scriptorium

Welcome to the Etymology scriptorium. This is the place to cogitate on etymological aspects of the Wiktionary entries.

August 2023

Apulia / Ἰαπυγία

It has been suggested that Apulia and Ἰαπυγία are related, and I am inclined to believe it. The Greek Ἰ is possibly prosthetic, and Greek υ regularly substitutes for Italic u. It has been also suggested that Apulia derives from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep- (“water”), and this seems to hold true for Ἰαπυγία as well (the Ἰα could be a reflex of h₂). This also involves Messapia, which according to Pokorny is Proto-Indo-European *médʰyos + *h₂ep- "among waters". It seems that these names denote peoples in a rater dry land made their homes close to water. Any thoughts? 24.108.18.81 02:36, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

No, PIE *h₂ > Greek ἰα (ia) isn't feasible. Going through your edit history, I see you've made quite a few spurious edits that had to be reverted. Please make an effort to source all your etymologies. Thanks. --{{victar|talk}} 03:58, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Niggerat(t)i

The etymology we give for niggerati is that it is a blend of nigger +‎ literati. The coinage is usually ascribed to Wallace Thurman, who, however, spelled it consistently Niggeratti, explained as a blend of Nigger + ratty.^[1] Thurman always uses the term as part of the proper noun Niggeratti Mansion, except once when he uses it standalone attributively in Niggeratti clique.^[2] Another person sometimes credited with coining the term is Zora Neale Hurston.^[3] Sometimes Thurman and Hurston are credited together. A biography of Hurston states that she proclaimed herself "Queen of the Niggerati",^[4] which, as far as I could find out, she did not put in published writings such as her autobiography. Hurston and Thurman were literati enough to know that literati is spelled with a single ⟨t⟩, so it is possible that Hurston coined the term as a pun on literati with a tongue-in-cheek self-bestowed title, and that Thurman took the term from her but thought it was funny to relate it to ratty instead of literati.  --Lambiam 10:39, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Sounds plausible enough for the talk page, but not so sure about mainspace. DCDuring (talk) 16:18, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Google n-grams suggests that niggerati is the original and most popular form of the word[5], though we should certainly list niggeratti as an alternative form, it would be very easy to cite it if we did. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:57, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

‎־עכץ‎

I've asked about this before and I still have no clue. Saw in one German-language source that claimed the suffix to be Slavic (slawische) in origin, but it did not elaborate any further as it was just a footnote on one page. I looked through Slavic gerund-forming suffixes and arrived at Polish -ęcie being the closest one, but obviously it's still quite far off.

I talked to a linguistic enthusiast from Poland, and he thinks that due to the (sometimes) pejorative nature of ־עכץ‎ (-ekhts), the suffix could be descended from Polish augmentatives; possibly some combination of -cha, -cho, -isko and -iszcze. Thoughts? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 05:32, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

The German-language source in question: paper, quote: "Slawische Wortendungen wie -ekhts sind nicht in jedem Fall negativ konnotiert...", page 230, footnote 882. Doesn't explain the way in which ־עכץ‎‎ (-ekhts‎) is Slavic; it just says it is. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 03:04, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

千 (Old Japanese)

This entry for Old Japanese has a request for verification by it, where the etymology reads "From Proto-Japonic *ti." Is there really anything contentious about this? I don't have a source, nor do I know where Japanese etymology typically comes from, but this is obviously a native Japanese word, so where else would it come from? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 22:04, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

It seems as if many early, reconstructed languages actually would lack words for such large numbers. There was a hypothesis that words that were missing in the related Ryukyuan languages could have been derived from Korean varieties, I believe. Wakuran (talk) 22:11, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

The Old Japanese entry was added in 2020 by @Poketalker, complete with the etymology and the {{rfv-etym}}- presumably because the etymology was an educated guess without a reference to back it up. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me; the reconstruction page has an anonymous edit that is appealing to StarLing for the etymology addition... no wonder the previous and erroneous edit(s) attempting to make cognancy with terms referring to “myriad” or “ten thousand”. ～ POKéTalker（＝◉＝） 15:59, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

No argument about removing Starling.

That said, I did a quick search over at JLect, and there appear to be Ryukyuan terms that include this etymon as a compounding element, particularly the name of the "plover" bird: https://www.jlect.com/search.php?r=%E5%8D%83&l=ryukyu&group=words

Some of this looks like inherited forms rather than borrowings, having undergone expected Ryukyuan sound changes, terms like cizui for mainland chidori (from this same Proto-Japonic *ti (“thousand”) + *təri (“bird”)). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

שפּרײַזן

This one's been surprisingly hard to find a reasonable etymology or semantic shift for. I want to link it to German spreizen, but I don't know how one could go from "to spread" to "to stroll". sprießen could be an option phonetically, but the semantic shift is probably even harder to find other than something far-fetched like "sprout" => "stalk (noun)" => "stalk (verb, "to walk haughtily")" => "to stroll". Any ideas? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 04:59, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I could guess you spread your legs similarly as straddling, while you're strolling. I've seen stranger semantic shifts, per se. Wakuran (talk) 10:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if it could be some sort of weird metathesis/alteration of spazieren. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:22, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083 spreizen (from Middle High German spriuzen) can also mean 'to stretch/extend sth'. Regarding the semantic shift, in my variety of English at least, it's not that uncommon to suggest an after-dinner stretch of the legs (i.e. an evening stroll). As for MHG 'z' in spriuzen > modern German /ts/ (instead of expected /z/, c.f. the Yiddish /z/), this appears to be the result of a later development in German, according to Grimm (“spreizen” in Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols., Leipzig 1854–1961.) Helrasincke (talk) 11:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

MHG z => /ts/ also occurs quite often in Yiddish though, e.g. צוויי‎ (tsvey). The question then, if we assume שפּרײַזן‎ (shprayzn) to have come from some MHG form with z, is why Yiddish didn't display this shift for just this one word it seems. Yiddish /z/ is more likely to correspond with MHG s. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 12:13, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

teck

This is a rather particular question, but how come that in French "teck" (teak) is spelled with a ck? Otherwise, French words with -ck- are nearly all borrowings from English or German, such as rock, hacker and black (ethnicity), but teak is spelled the English way in all Germanic languages except for in Insular Scandinavian (tekk). Italian also occaionally uses the -ck-spelling, apparently, but I suspect it's a borrowing from French. Wakuran (talk) 10:32, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a pseudo-anglicism? —Mahāgaja · talk 11:15, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I guess it's possible, although it's difficult to see why. Possibly there was an older /tɛk/ pronunciation adapted to a perceived English spelling. Wakuran (talk) 12:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

From the history it's unlikely to have anything to do with English. TLFi says the forms teck and tek are 19th-century, and gives earlier variants: Teca (1614), Theca (1652), Teka (1685), tecke (1770). tek was apparently the form canonised by the Académie in the largely-ignored 1990 spelling reforms. I think c and k, historically at least, varied fairly freely in 'exotic' terms, so there might not be any specific reason. Pinging @PUC. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:17, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, peculiar. Would you know of any other French words spelled with -ck- of other origin than Germanic? Wakuran (talk) 12:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

One source I found mentions kopeck (“kopek”) as another example (we don't have it atm but fr.wikt does). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:50, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Another word I have wondered about is étang, but that was apparently due to mistaken etymology, similar to English island. Wakuran (talk) 17:37, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

References needed for Appendix:Old Church Slavonic pronunciation

Quoth the Wiktionary appendix:

See Old Church Slavonic at Wikipedia for a thorough look at the sounds of Old Church Slavonic.

Quoth Wikipedia:

For English equivalents and narrow transcriptions of sounds, see Old Church Slavonic Pronunciation on Wiktionary.

Well... One of those two should provide some references :)

Cheers, Chernorizets (talk) 22:42, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Sławobóg @Thadh Perhaps we can find something and update it. Vininn126 (talk) 06:53, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets, Vininn126: This (utexas OCS course, section on The Sound System could be used quickly as a base. Routledge The Slavonic Languages, ed. by Bernard Comrie, Greville G. Corbett, OCS chapter by David Huntley, also has a section on OCS Phonology, pp. 126–133.

I’m sure there are dedicated OCS grammars too, but those two should be enough and fairly easily available for English speakers. // Silmeth ^@talk 09:29, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets, Vininn126: I’ve removed the obviously non-OCS phonemes from the list (Serbian ones + Ruthenian /ɣ/) and added a References section with the two items I mentioned above. I haven’t verified carefully the rest of the table though – but still, this should be an improvement. // Silmeth ^@talk 11:13, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Silmethule thanks for adding those references and making some changes to the table. If not you, then someone on the long list of people pinged should carry over some of the remaining information from those sources into the appendix. For example:

• р (r) was a trilled "r", not a flap like the appendix claims
• ꙑ (y) was a central vowel, not back

Cheers,

Chernorizets (talk) 12:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets: Huntley in The Slavonic Languages actually gives ꙑ (y) as the back unrounded vowel (and this makes some sense to me, as it continues the back *ū with unrounding), but then UTexas course gives it as central. As far as I’m concerned it’s just some sort of “non-front non-low unrounded vowel” inside the [ɨ ɘ ɤ ɯ] space, and I’m not sure we can actually ever reconstruct the exact pronunciation with certainty.

Same with р (r) – both Huntley and UTexas course list it as a “trill” – but since OCS doesn’t have a contrast between “short” and “long” rhotic (which many languages have as a contrast between /ɾ/ and /r/), and many languages without this contrast do often use the single tap (like Polish, where the /r/ phoneme is often called a trill, despite generally being [ɾ] unless a speaker is emphasizing it by trilling), I think it’s more than likely that most often it was a single tap too in OCS…

But maybe the change is warranted just because both of the references listed currently use the word trill and not tap. // Silmeth ^@talk 12:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

It is typical to give just /r/ if there's no distinction between a tap and a trill. Vininn126 (talk) 12:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Also pinging @Bezimenen, @Vorziblix and @IYI681 for viz. Chernorizets (talk) 07:30, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I’m away from my OCS resources at the moment, but I might drop in with some academic sources (Lunt’s grammar, plus various papers, etc.) some days from now. One thing that may be worth noting is that the sounds represented by щ and ꙉ/жд seem to have varied even in the earliest period; based on the earliest OCS acrostics and abecedaria, their original sounds in the dialect of Cyril and Methodius are thought to have been something like /c/ and /ɟ/. In Great Moravia the corresponding phonemes were instead /ts/ or /ʃtʃ/, depending on etymology, and /z/ (and written as such in the Kiev Missal). Of course the eventual standard that developed was /ʃt/ and /ʒd/. How much we should represent this variation in the appendix is an open question. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 13:21, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vorziblix: I think it’d be a good idea to describe the attested variation in a paragraph below the tables, but keep the “eventual standard” values as canonical in the tables themselves. // Silmeth ^@talk 13:43, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vorziblix I'm very curious about the research that shows "щ" might originally have been something other than /ʃt/. That's different from what I've read/studied, so I'm looking forward to those references, and I wonder if academics other than Lunt or Friedman hold that view as well.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 21:34, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious about that as well, since I was under the impression that the current academic consensus holds that the letter is a ligature of ш and т. Thadh (talk) 22:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets, Thadh: I’ve been away from the literature for a while and don’t pretend to be anything more than a dilettante in OCS, but I believe most of the relevant research I was reading was related to the reconstruction of the original Glagolitic alphabet, if that helps narrow down the field; many papers discussing the origins of Glagolitic bring up the issue of possible alternative original sound values for щ. As mentioned, I unfortunately don’t have most of my reference works at hand, so I don’t remember all the details of which authors held which views about the sound values of щ and ꙉ in particular. Here’s a broad overview statement of the issues involved from Marti and Veder, “Die Freiburger Diskussionsrunde zur Entstehung der Glagolica”:

“Für Ⰼ ist problematisch die entsprechende Zeile im Gedicht von Konstantin von Preslav und ggf. sein Lautwert (Entsprechung für *dj oder griechisches g vor vorderen Vokalen?); […] für Ⱋ Position und Lautwert (Position 26 oder nach 29? Lautwert št, š, griechisches k vor vorderen Vokalen, ggf. andere Vertretung von *tj?) […]”

Veder is, if I remember correctly, among the authors who supports a value such as /c/ as the original value of щ (mentioned in e.g. Veder 2004, “The Glagolitic Alphabet as a Text”); another one is Miklas, although I think Miklas takes it as originally only made for use in Greek loanwords rather than reflexes of Slavic *tj, etc. (maybe Miklas 2003, “Jesus-Abbreviatur und Verwandtes: Zu einigen Rätseln der glagolitischen Schriftentwicklung am Material der „Azbučna Molitva“”? I don’t remember now if that’s the right paper). There were others but it’s been a while.

From my readings, I was also under the impression that academic consensus is very much against the idea that щ is a ligature of ш and т, since щ clearly derives from the Glagolitic form, which does not contain the Glagolitic т and is not formed analogously to any of the other Glagolitic ligatures. But, again, it’s been a while since I read the relevant literature, and I could be mistaken. All in all, sorry to not be more helpful. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 03:05, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

פֿאַרליאַפּען

Was going to add this, but then I noticed the "lya" in there which is rather atypical, and would usually hint at a Slavic origin. However, this book says the palatal consonant was given to a non-Slavic word. What word could this be then? Also, may I suggest reinforcement by Russian ляпать (ljapatʹ)? Although then I'm not sure where the sense "to drench" would come from. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:06, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/šišьka

Could someone please provide an etymology for this reconstruction? I did a little digging online - some sources seem to think it is a reduplicated form, some sources have other ideas, and they are all in languages I don't speak, but can partially understand as a Slavic speaker myself. It may have a semantic relationship with a PIE root for "sharp" or cutting, and the yer might actually be ъ.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 06:52, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiktionary tends to display reconstructions as they appear on the surface level. On the surface level, pSl. -ъ- would never appear after palatalized consonants, even when it's etymologically expected (cf. *jьgo < pre-Slavic *juga) 2A00:23C7:9C97:8201:D95A:61D1:BAB:E4A5 10:12, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for providing etymological notes! Chernorizets (talk) 10:27, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2023/July#шикалка, for a supposed prefix few authors know but we can technically put on the Proto-Slavic level especially with this word and *šipъ as I mentioned. It is not illegal to make a theory present in literature more fruitful in connection with other material, that’s what the value of a scientific theory is, its Erklärungsleistung. Fay Freak (talk) 13:44, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: feel free to add other hypotheses and/or corrections to the etymology. I didn't have time to check and exhaust all theories. I just summarized what Snoj, Vasmer and Melnychuk have said. 2A00:23C7:9C97:8201:D95A:61D1:BAB:E4A5 17:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak I actually asked the Institute for Bulgarian Language about the etymology шикалка (šikalka), and they mentioned two hypotheses:

• a shared derivation with шишарка (šišarka) ( < *šišьka) from a PIE root meaning "to cut"
• a derivation from Proto-Slavic *šiti

I'm going to update the entry for шикалка (šikalka) based on that, but in the meantime I was trying to cover by bases here ;-) Chernorizets (talk) 20:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Including dialectal descendants on (Proto-Slavic, but possibly other) reconstruction pages

I've noticed that a number of Proto-Slavic reconstruction pages list multiple Bulgarian descendants - some from the standard literary language, and some from dialects. I don't as frequently see that done for e.g. West Slavic descendants (selective attention maybe?), and I've been wondering about it. I realize this is just an example of a broader question - what's the right amount of detail w.r.t. dialectal word variants on a reconstruction page?

I see a few distinct cases depending on the reflex(es) of the proto-word in the daughter language:

• the reflex is in the standard (or literary) language, and it is what you'd expect from sound laws. I'd argue that it's a sufficient descendant by itself. There could be additional reflexes in dialects, but IMO those would would rather go in the "Alternative forms" section of the "standard" word.
• the only reflex is dialectal, dated, etc - i.e. not to be found in the standard language. I'd similarly argue that that reflex is sufficient by itself.
• there are reflexes both in the standard variety, and in dialects, but it's a dialectal form that represents the expected outcome of sound laws. In that case, I'd list that as dialect_form (dialectal); standard_form, giving prominence to the dialectal form.
• reflexes exist in either the standard variety or dialects or both, neither of which is the expected result of sound changes. In that case, list as many as your judgment dictates.

I realize this might not be a new discussion, so if the question has already been answered, please point me to the relevant conversation.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 07:54, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I feel like these should be in the alt forms of the l2 if applicable and that |alts=1 should be used in {desc}. Vininn126 (talk) 08:18, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vininn126 so if a word has N alts, they all should end up on the reconstruction page? I still think that the form which supports the reconstruction based on known sound changes from proto-language to daughter language is the relevant one, not necessarily all the remaining N-1. Chernorizets (talk) 09:43, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

You can also cherry pick by just using param 2,3 etc. Vininn126 (talk) 09:56, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

For Proto-Permic, I've opted to include Beserman Udmurt, Izhma Komi and Pechora Komi as "descendants" of their literary language (when differing from it), because these dialects are partly written down (Beserman and Izhma even have their own dictionaries) and sometimes provide insight in the reconstruction.

Cf. Proto-Permic *ku̇lni.

I don't think this is relevant for Slavic, but I would like to be able to keep doing this in Permic. Thadh (talk) 09:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Thadh good call-out. Dialects with their own written traditions showing different reflexes IMO deserve the prominence. This would apply to Slavic in cases like Banat Bulgarian (Latin alphabet, separate orthograhic standard), and possibly lects like Kajkavian, Chakavian, Slavomolisano, etc. Chernorizets (talk) 09:38, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think they should only be added if the dialect is conservative and retains original features not found in the standard language, i.e. if the dialectal form actually helps with the reconstruction. If it's an innovation, I don't see the point of mentioning it. PUC – 09:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@PUC that's more or less my thinking as well. Chernorizets (talk) 09:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

We put there all material for PS reconstruction, besides pre-reform notations and when there are too many alt forms (often in Old Ruthenian). This is what reconstruction page is for and this is what ESSJa and SP do too. To distinguish what is a standard word and what is not are glosses. It happens more often to South Slavic because there are more dialectal forms mentioned in dictionaries. Sławobóg (talk) 11:39, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Sławobóg who is the intended user of Proto-Slavic reconstruction pages? Is it only for specialists, or also for the casual reader who might be curious about etymology, and about the correspondences between different Slavic languages? For example, I'm part of the Facebook group "Slavic Languages", which currently has 46.4K members. Some of the most common questions that come up are "how do you say X in your language", and "where does the word X come from". We use Wiktionary links extensively for that, including to reconstruction pages. Are we part of the intended audience? Chernorizets (talk) 22:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Chinese 毒 components

I have added the etymology given by Li Xueqin (2012) to the 毒 page, however, the sound component is supposed to be 土 over 母, instead of 士 over 母, but I can't find the character in any font. Can someone find it? Or is there a way of explaining the character components using the {{Han compound}} template? I believe 𡹆 might also be an intermediate stage, looking at Li's etymology and the glyph forms. Also, it seems an old variant of 毒 was 𤯟 (according to hanziyuan.net), so maybe that should be added as well? Tradittore (talk) 12:27, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

老芋仔

RFV of the etymology. https://www.facebook.com/ili.cheng/posts/528075215356489/ 芋頭長這個樣子，生在太久且老掉的芋頭上下會長一些像毛的根，看起來像眉毛跟鬍鬚，芋頭沒在好的狀態時採下來的話，老了會縮水，死老芋頭就是以負面形象來描述年事已高的老人不中用了，通常指的是男性。

{{Han etym}} not automatically updating

The template in pages is not updating automatically when new information it can feed on is added. I have uploaded several images of Chinese characters to Wikimedia, but they do not appear unless I edit the Wiktionary page Glyph section and save it (it works even if no changes are made). For more details and examples, check the Discussion page of the template. Tradittore (talk) 18:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Tradittore: This is a technical issue with how transclusion works on Wikimedia sites. Each template or module can be transcluded in far more pages than those affected by the edit, and that's true of those that transclude them, etc. For any automated process to update everything, it would have to spend a tremendous amount of resources following every chain of transclusions to the end to see if they're affected by the change, with most changes only affecting a tiny fraction of those. As a compromise only the pages that directly transclude the original page are automatically changed, and even then it's done by an automated process that does this for all the Wikimedia sites- so each change goes in a job queue and may take a while before the server gets to it. Going the other way is much simpler: when a page is edited, the system just has to follow each transclusion back to its original page. Since most pages are edited from time to time, the changes generally propagate where they need to go.

Short(er) answer: in a website accessed by millions of people with thousands of templates and modules transcluded in millions of pages, it's just not practical to update everything at once. If it's important, do a null edit (i.e. click "edit", then "publish changes" without changing anything) in the affected entries. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:48, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Under Preferences, there's also an option labelled 'Add a "*" tab to the top of the page' etc. (just search "purge" to find it). This will add Purge, Hard purge and Null edit shortcut links in a dropdown at the top. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:54, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz@Al-Muqanna Thank you both, I understand. I have been doing these nulls edits lately since I realize it was happening, so I'll go on doing them. I also added the * tab. Thanks! Tradittore (talk) 21:23, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz I just noticed that the Japanese Wiktionary is using the template Template:字源 (I don't know how to link it directly since it's in a different Wiktionary) which immediately updates when I upload a new image. For example, in this page. This doesn't happen with the {{Han etym}} template, so I'm wondering if this is actually related to transclusion as stated before, or whether it's due to the template itself. Tradittore (talk) 20:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@Tradittore to link to Japanese Wiktionary you would put "ja:" in front with the namespace spelled out, out as in [[ja:Template:字源]] or [[ja:テンプレート:字源]]. The big difference between our template and their template is that ours invokes a module instead of using template code. That's a more powerful and flexible way to do things, in general, but it adds another step to the transclusion chain. Beyond that, I'm not really sure about the exact effect that has on how the transclusion reaches the entry. At any rate, this whole topic should really have been posted at the Grease pit, since this is all about technical matters. By the way: pings only work if they're in the same edit as the adding of your signature. I didn't get your ping at all. Fortunately, I make a point of reading every edit to the forums at least once a day, so I saw your message anyway. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz I thought just replying would add the ping, but now I know it doesn't and that it can't be done through an edit. Fortunately, you saw the message. I didn't know about the Grease pit. I might take a look and comment about it there. Thanks! Tradittore (talk) 22:18, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@Tradittore: A ping works only if it's made in the same paragraph with a new signature/timestamp. Adding a ping to an already signed comment doesn't work, but you can (1) replace your original signature with a new one, or (2) ping the person in the edit summary. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:35, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

vapor

RFV of the etymology.

From vapë (“hot weather”) +‎ -or noun suffix.

The names for new material things and new technologies tend to be borrowed along with them. Given that Albania was ruled by the Turks at the time of the first steamboats, the most likely source for this word is Ottoman Turkish واپور‎. That in turn obviously came from a Romance language (our entry says from French vapeur). Pretty much all the European terms for this are based on a word for "steam", which was at the heart of the technology involved- so Albanian basing its term on a word for hot weather seems highly unlikely. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Albanian sources derive it from Italian vapore but I think it could be from Turkish too. The current etymology is fake, of course. Vahag (talk) 21:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

At a first glance, a Turkish derivation seems more likely than an Italian one. Italian vapore, although it also means "steamship", predominantly means "steam", so, assuming a direct derivation, I find it unusual for the main sense to be entirely lost, not even as a secondary or archaic sense. The Turkish one on the other hand neatly matches the semantics perfectly. It's also noteworthy how the Turkish term is one of the "generous" ones, being variously loaned.

That said, I suspect the Turkish terms ultimately does come from Italian rather than French, possibly indeed through the Balkans. For example, {{R:DSMG}} derives Greek βαπόρι (vapóri, “steamship”) directly from Italian, and {{R:DEX}} derives Romanian vapor (“boat; steamship”) from Greek. With that taken into consideration, I suspect the word to have been borrowed first in the Balkans, likely into Greek; then from Greek into Albanian, Romanian and Turkish; and from Turkish into the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

{{R:tr:OTK}} does derive the Turkish term from French, and I don't find it implausible that the French term indeed reinforced the loan, but I don't think it should be taken as the only source. Catonif (talk) 12:22, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

In 1818, when Ferdinando I, the first Italian steamboat, left the port of Naples, the Mediterranean Lingua Franca was not yet extinct. Many terms related to ships and sailing entered the Turkish lexicon indirectly through this Lingua Franca; perhaps vapur is one of them. Note that a direct loan from French should have given rise to *vapör ; compare adaptör, aktör, akümülatör, ..., traktör, valör, vibratör.  --Lambiam 20:58, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Boaz

Etymology for this Hebrew word is missing. The text of the article Boaz and Jachin quotes Josephus thus: while Boaz (Hebrew בֹּעַז boʿaz "In him/it [is] strength") stood on the left. How could it be missing, when the etymology is already given in that clearly related article? Nuttyskin (talk) 21:49, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

While that's certainly plausible, the science of etymology wasn't very well developed 19 centuries ago when Josephus wrote, so it would be nice to have confirmation from recent scholarship that this isn't a folk etymology. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:19, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

By analogy, Shuowen Jiezi, the foundation of the exploration of glyph origins for Chinese characters, is a good start but is wrong on some descriptions. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia often gets into hopeless muddle over this sort of thing because of editors misconstruing either the sources themselves or what previous editors wrote, but to be clear that etymology's an editorial comment and not from Josephus himself; in the citation given he's just talking about the position of the pillars. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:27, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

The Hebrew Wiktionary gives the meaning of the name as "מי שיש בו עוז", "in whom is strength", but like many etymologies spelled out in the Torah (אַב־הֲמ֥וֹן > אַבְרָהָ֔ם) this may be a mere fanciful ad-hoc explanation.  --Lambiam 16:43, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

tjanten

I am at a loss as to the etymology.

• Given the differing pronunciation, I don't think it is related to Dutch chanten, from English to chant; I could not find a meaning of to chant as "to seduce, to flirt" in (Caribbean) English.
• The absence of an end vowel in the Sranan Tongo cognate tyant seems to me to rule out a palatalization of a word from seventeenth-century English or Dutch; moreover, in that case, it would probably turn up in older sources.
• A modification of sjansen?

Appolodorus1 (talk) 08:06, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

The Surinamese Dutch verb is almost certainly borrowed from Sranan Tongo. Given tyalensi < challenge, tyana < chana, tyans < chance and tyars < charge, possibly mostly relatively recent borrowings, tyant < English chant cannot be ruled out on phonetic grounds. The verb is also used as youth slang for to chat. Could tyant be a modification of *tyat < chat up? A modification of sjansen seems less likely.  --Lambiam 16:15, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Sjansen should at least be from French chance, according to Dutch Wiktionary. No entry for tjanten. Wakuran (talk) 16:30, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Could it be a clipping of (something related to) enchant? At least the semantics of "enchant" → "seduce" are easier to understand than those of "chant" → "seduce". —Mahāgaja · talk 08:35, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Semantically seductive, but one would expect the etymon to be a colloquially used term.  --Lambiam 18:50, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

There is also Brazilian Portuguese cantar (“to attempt to seduce by flattery”).--Appolodorus1 (talk) 18:05, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

This makes me wonder if the verb chant can have been used by the 17th-century British colonists in the Guianas with the same slang sense.  --Lambiam 19:50, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

In case it's from the 17th century, cant (“to speak in a whining or affected voice”) might also be a candidate. But I don't think it's that old, it would end in a vowel and it would be in Schumann's or Focke's dictionary. Edgar Cairo used a lot of colloquialisms and vulgarities but the word does not seem to appear in his oeuvre, which makes me wonder if it is very recent.--Appolodorus1 (talk) 17:10, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Rehal, Rahal

Over the years, editors have changed these from being Anglo-Norman surnames derived from Anglo-Saxon "rye hill", to Punjabi surnames derived from Punjabi, to Punjabi surnames derived from Sanskrit, or Lebanese surnames of unspecified origin, to Punjabi surnames from Arabic "book rest", or Algerian surnames from Arabic "traveller".

Looking at a database of census records, I see people in 1800s and early 1900s records with names like Annie, Evelyn, George, Gertrude, James, John, Julius, Maria, Patrick and Rose with this surname born in the US (often in Utah, Montana, Massachusetts; sometimes also Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming) and in Ireland (often in county Cavan; sometimes Wexford or Longford), plus one in Scotland, a few in Bavaria, and a few (François and Louis) in 1700s France. If this is also found in Punjab, Lebanon or Algeria, it must have more than one origin (like Lee). I also see a Shebal Rehal born 1886 in Syria and a Satwant Kaur Rehal born c. 1950 in Uganda. I'm not sure whether to RFV this or list it here or what, but I'd like us to revise both the ety and the "of x origin" bits based on sources. - -sche (discuss) 14:50, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

At minimum there are two totally separate etymologies which need separate ety headers. I'll leave the Arabic to an Arabist but it's at least plausible the various Arabic, Punjabi etc. instances are from the same source. (For the Ugandan case, given that "Satwant Kaur" is a South Asian name, Satwant Kaur Rehal is probably just a member of the fairly large South Asian diaspora community in East Africa.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:03, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

When I search census and other population (birth, marriage, death, etc) records from before 1780, I find many people with the surname Rehal in coastal northern France (Côtes-du-Nord / Côtes-d'Armor to Hauts-de-France) from the 1500s onward, as well as several in Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary from the 1600s onward. For Rahal, I find many Germans (from all over Germany) from the 1500s onwards, as well as many Slovaks. (It is entirely possible the surnames are older; this merely demonstrates they are at least that old.) This indeed suggests at least two separate origins (European vs Arab). - -sche (discuss) 17:18, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

नेद्

I have no knowledge of Sanskrit. However, the term claims that it derives from the Proto-Indo-European "*neyd" (both words meaning "to flow"). However, Londinium says that this PIE term is in dispute. cf (talk) 03:02, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The journal article by Coates linked at Londinium says that "the denial [of *neyd] cannot be accurate without stranding at least the Sanskrit verb", so it doesn't look like there was any better suggestion available at that point at least. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I think no responsible Indo-Europeanist is going to posit a root on the basis of nothing but one Sanskrit root and one possible interpretation of a Celtic placename. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, the argument for *neyd is that it appears in a wide variety of placenames—it's not just Londinium at issue—though the comparative evidence is still thin on the ground. For the toponyms the alternative theory, according to Coates, involves a non-PIE Old European etymon. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

yam yam

We have a meaning of ‘heroin’ listed at this entry and originally this was under the same etymology as yam yam in the sense of someone or something from the Black Country (especially the dialect) but this seems distinctly unlikely, so I’ve separated this into another etymology instead. I added a quote to Citations:yam where yam refers to a small package of heroin - perhaps specifically to a yam-shaped balloon of heroin if Urban Dictionary is to be believed. Perhaps this is the etymology? Another possibility would be that it refers to the yam powder used to make counterfeit drugs or to cut drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, in Nigeria (a few books on Google Books mention this particular practice). Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:24, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

An idea I had was that it sounded fairly similar to terms such as yum yum and nom nom, but I don't know if the semantics would make sense to an active heroinist. Wakuran (talk) 13:06, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Very likely irrelevant, not the user perspective: Berlin Crime rapper Frauenarzt says "Ich mache im Club Money, Bitch / Tick das Yummy Yummy Gift" (Hayiti, City Tarif, Cmub Money), that is poison). I don't know how toncite this? This never made sense to me because normal anglicisms are contra-indicated in de rap. Recent slang is permissable, showing one in the know, as is the metaphor of addictive substance, but this is mostly based on Cocaien, so Miami as ablative is a plausible connotation, and Arabic ya- is possible in the German Crime scene, much Coke being routed through Morocko, Spain or Albania. Boko Wítis ToYou (talk) 19:23, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

This largely German song[6] seems to be saying that a two-litre bottle of Faygo with an ‘80mg OxyContin tablet’ (Oxy 80) is ‘yummy’ and there are several uses on Twitter of the phrase ‘yummy heroin’, so I suppose there may be a connection there. I’ve just mentioned yum and yam in the etymology section of the entry, though I’ve labelled the suggestion as uncertain. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Back-(re)formations from inherited compounds: Wal from Walfisch?

I'm wondering what the standard approach should be for etymologies of inherited compounds which are still analysable in terms of the modern language, as for instance with German Walfisch. The etymology on that page implies it is a straightforward compound of Wal and Fisch. On a surface level this seems fine enough but is actually likely to be circular logic because, according to DWB, modern Wal is a relatively modern (19th Century) back-formation from the inherited compounds (though interestingly others such as Duden and Pfeifer make no mention of this - perhaps modern corpus methods have thrown doubt on the claim - can anyone with knowledge of Early Modern High German chime in?). Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/hwal lists the Middle High German compounds walfisch, walvisch and Köbler's OHG Dictionary even lists walfisk, walfisc (given in Pfeifer as (h)walfisc), which surely provides more adequate explanation for the origin of the term? This particular case is admittedly complicated by the fact that OHG wal and MHG wal did exist but, as mentioned, the modern simplex usage should best be seen as a back-formation.

So I would propose the following suggestions which I would like to implement, if there is no objection:

• Walfisch

===Etymology===
From Middle High German Middle High German walfisch, Middle High German walvisch, from Old High German Old High German walfisk, Old High German walfisc. Surface analysis Wal (“whale”) + Fisch (“fish”). Cognates include German Low German Waalfisk, Dutch walvis, West Frisian walfisk, Saterland Frisian Waalfisk.

• Wal

===Etymology===
Although similar words existed in earlier historical stages of the language, according to Grimm, in earlier Modern German the word was exclusively used in the form Walfisch as well as in other compounds such as Narwal. The simplex reappeared in the 19th century, at first in the domain of scientific literature, as a back-formation from Walfisch.

The word would thus be derived from Walfisch, from Middle High German walfisch, walvisch, from Old High German walfisk. Compare Dutch walvis, Low German Waalfisch. Cognates include English whale, German Low German Waal, Icelandic hvalur.

===References===

• And for *hwal, I propose to rearrange the order to reflect the back-formation of modern Wal:

====Descendants====

• Old High German: wal
  • ⇒ Old High German: walfisk, walfisc
    • Middle High German: walfisch, walvisch
      • German: Walfisch
        • ⇒ German: Wal
          • → Estonian: vaal
          • → Luxembourgish: Wal
  • Middle High German: wal

This final suggestion brings me to my second question, what is the general criteria for listing compounds at reconstruction pages? If Walfisch is listed as a derivation at *hwal should Walross, Narwal, Walrat, etc. also be included? And should we have a separate reconstruction page for these compounds and their descendants or are we assuming that they were all coined within the confines of written history? Helrasincke (talk) 12:43, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

To further complicate the matters, it seems that all of the compounds Walross, Narwal, Walrat - although occasionally having passed through Dutch or Low German - originally are North Germanic in origin. Wakuran (talk) 13:03, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. It seems intuitive these would be borrowings reinforced by the native root 'wal' given there's not too many narwhals or walrus' to be seen in Mitteleuropa, or even within reach of the north sea coastline for that matter. Helrasincke (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Update on פֿאַרליאַפּען

I've now added the word. The semantic shift of "to plunge into something dirty" to "to drench" seems plausible enough to me. I'm still thinking of that source that claims insertion of a palatal consonant into non-Slavic words though. Any ideas where they may have gotten that from? And if you think my proposed etymology isn't plausible enough, any other ideas? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 05:01, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Persian "لوز" and other words for nuts

Currently Persian لوز‎ (/⁠lwz⁠/, “almond”) and a few other pages say that this word is cognate with Latin nux, which is usually connected to Celtic *knūs and Germanic *hnuts (De Vaan argues that these three are from a shared root of non-PIE origin). I don't know enough about Persian sound changes to evaluate if this is plausible; does anyone know of a source that discusses the etymology of the Persian word, or at least that would shed light on the relevant sound changes? I'm also curious whether the resemblance with Armenian նուշ (nuš, “almond”) is coincidental, as the semantic match seems very close. Urszag (talk) 08:18, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

So far I will only mirror what I said on its talk page 2½ years ago. “The alleged Indo-European relations I of course won’t believe until we have a well-supported Proto-Iranian reconstruction.” I have not ever found sufficient discussion of the Middle Iranian past, or Iranian cognates, of the Persian word even.

In spite of the word occurring in Genesis 30:37, where “the meaning almond is hardly under dispute” in the words of Löw, Immanuel (1924) Die Flora der Juden‎^[7] (in German), volume 3, Wien und Leipzig: R. Löwit, page 143, thus so glossed in more recent reference works, and three old place names Luz are reckoned identical.

It was only from Güterbock 1968 recognized that Hittite 𒄑𒇷𒄿𒋾 (^GIŠ LI-I-TI /⁠liti⁠/), 𒄑𒇷𒂊𒋾 (^GIŠ LE-E-TI /⁠leti⁠/) (CHD L–N 72b–73a) means “almond”, and it was borrowed into Ugaritic 𐎍𐎚𐎊 (lty, “almond”) as understood by Watson, Wilfred G. E. (2004), “A Botanical Snapshot of Ugaritic”, in Aula Orientalis‎^[8], volume 22, issue 1, Barcelona, page 115. Why not connect that word instead? They would have if they had found it mentioned. But to Indo-Europeanists everything written and read has to be about Indo-European.

The Hittite noun’s ablative ends in -z, but it is still difficult to think that lūz is borrowed from it, or another Anatolian language, as Luwian which as the same ending. I still don’t know what they said in Hebrew about the Hittite origin of the other nut word Talk:ընկոյզ, but in any case a borrowing from a third source is likely, for such a tree. Fay Freak (talk) 16:27, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The connection with nux was Irman's invention, who did not like the idea that Persian can borrow words. I have removed it. Both n ~ l and š ~ z alternations are known in Iranian, so the connection of luz-type almond words with Armenian նուշ (nuš) (of Hurrian origin) is possible and has been proposed by de Lagarde. So we may be dealing with Armenian նուշ (nuš) ← Hurrian *nuš- → Iranian *nuš-, later luz-. On the other hand, according to Hassandust, Eilers has proposed a native derivation from Iranian naučaina "of cedar", from *nauciš (“cedar”). I have ordered his book and will look at his arguments before updating our entries. --Vahag (talk) 12:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I noticed now that the connection of Akkadian nušḫu (see նուշ (nuš)) with the Semitic luz- words has already been proposed by Thompson, Reginald Campbell (1941), Cyril John Gadd, editor, A Dictionary of Assyrian Botany‎^[9], London: The British Academy, published 1949, page 254. Vahag (talk) 13:06, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: I am thinking what borrowing path we can make with the comparison to խնձոր (xnjor): it seems not too easy then, in spite of us blatantly seeing the Hurrian-ending cluster -šḫu⁠ in the Akkadian form mentioned at նուշ (nuš). If Hurro-Urartian had a word **~n(o/u)š(V)ḫə “almond” the switch from l → to n requries Iranian participation, no later than the time of the Genesis, while I am not exactly sure that in Iranian as well the ending could easily come out z as in روز‎ (rōz) which Lagarde pointed out (beyond which his suggestion is naturally outdated because of his lacking our current attestation and grammatical knowledge about Akkadian and Hurrian), and we would reckon that it is Semitic which swapped nz to zz and z as in descendants of Old Median *ganǰəm (“treausure”). Due to the likelihood distribution of the needed sound changes, if we suppose նուշ (nuš), the Akkadian and Hurro-Urartian to be relatives with the lūz words, then Iranian and Semitic borrowed between each other on manifold occasions.

Thinking about Iranian borrowings in the Torah my intuitive answer is “peripherally”, if not גַּד‎ (gad, “coriander”) in Exodus by the same scheme then נָדָן‎ (nāḏā́n, “= نیام‎ (niyâm)”) in the Book of Chronicles should show the occasional borrowing of material culture, and they also say about Biblical Hebrew that “the two most common donor languages are Egyptian and Old Iranian“ and “the vast majority of Old Iranian loanwords appear in the books of Esther, Daniel, and Ezra”, from the “Persian period”, a term known “in the context of biblical studies”, although “no Greek, Old Indic, or Old Iranian loanwords are attested in the Torah”: an interesting claim for somebody who is informed enough to note Hittite/Luvian and Hurrian loans, so I would not dismiss this observation of scarcity of Iranian words in older Biblical Hebrew lightly, but cultivated plants can be an exception, and it is beyond doubt that Aramaic in the same period had borrowed Iranian terms, so Hebrew should have more of these anyway in older times at least in mediation from Aramaic (notably I assumed this for أَرْز‎ (ʔarz), Hebrew אֶרֶז‎ (ʾérez, “cedar”), with insane further connections) and likely more specific terms beyond the small corpus of the Bible texts, as after all this is a hapax in the Hebrew bible anyway.

(I suggest to later readers that we should have our own tables of loanwords in Biblical Hebrew by source groups and sections of the Scripture, to compete with the kinds of Benjamin J. Noonan.) Fay Freak (talk) 14:16, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

This is all very complicated. I don't like touching cuneiform stuff. Vahag (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I summarized whatever I could find at لوزینه‎. My Semitic and cuneiform chops are not sufficient to dig deeper. By the way, looking at the shape of lawzīnaj it is tempting to derive lozenge from it. Vahag (talk) 18:06, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

sap "to weaken"

Is it from us sucking the sweet sap out of trees or from the military term? The tree theory seems more straightforward to me, but the military sense at sap#Etymology_3 provides a plausible stepwise semantic shift. If the question is unanswerable, should we make a 4th etymology section, saying it may be from etym1 or may be from etym3? That is what we've done with some other words.

Also, though I consider this of lesser importance, EtymOnline has sap (“fool”) coming from what we list as etym2, a shortened from of sapling. Best regards, —Soap— 14:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The OED states that it's figurative from the military sense—where it is now—but reinforced by conflation with the fluid. It's worth noting that the verb "to sap" involving literal tree sap seems to have been rare until relatively recently. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:36, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I wonder what we called tree sapping in older times ... tapping maybe? —Soap— 15:45, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

ἄγω

RFV of the perfect stem etymology. The perfect stem is weird. The thing that might be regular is γ to χ. There are too many extra vowels inserted in the middle.

I assume an ο combining form of ἔχω (ékhō) is suffixed to the perfect stem. The present infix ε should not be found in the perfect, and the perfect ο could easily come from a suffixed verb. Deverbal suffixes have precedent, like τίθημι (títhēmi) becoming the passive suffix and the plural middle suffix. Latin habeō in Romance becomes the future and conditional suffixes on the infinitive stem, and the compound past ("I have VERB-ed"). Thus, I want to derive the same Romance compound past for the perfect stem of this Ancient Greek verb.

Is this derivation valid? Daniel.z.tg (talk) 03:06, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. I've never heard of Ancient Greek using ἔχω (ékhō) to form a perfect tense. The oldest perfect of ἄγω (ágō) is ἦχα (êkha) with the vowel lengthening expected in a vowel-initial word. Since the aorist of ἄγω (ágō) is ἤγαγον (ḗgagon) with Attic reduplication, ἀγήγοχα (agḗgokha) is probably an analogical formation combining the aorist with the pattern of ἐνήνοχα (enḗnokha, “carried”) (to the aorist ἤνεγκα (ḗnenka), suppletive forms of φέρω (phérō), as well a few others in -oCe with Attic reduplication, like ἐπ- (ep-)/κατ- (kat-)/παρ-ενήνοθε (par-enḗnothe, “grew”), ἀνήνοθε (anḗnothe, “gushed forth”), and ἐδήδοκα (edḗdoka, “ate”) (from ἐσθίω (esthíō). —Mahāgaja · talk 10:02, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok. So you're saying this perfect stem is irregular. I removed this theory. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 20:08, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Yiddish word for "curry"

The Yiddish-language wiki page states קאַרי‎ (kari). The University of Kentucky Yiddish dictionary lookup states קאָרי‎ (kori). Is there any dictionary with the word in it? Could not find it on the online Verterbukh. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 07:40, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I can't find it in either of my dictionaries. I also tried קורי‎ (kuri) just in case, but couldn't find it there either. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:13, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The link you provided says that the source for קאָרי‎ (kori) is "Forwards: S-R Schaechter", which I assume means The Forward. I don't know if it's possible to search back issues online for a specific word, though. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:17, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@Mahagaja I found the article that mentions curry, and it's used in this sentence:

‏די איבערלעבונג האָט מיך טאַקע אינספּירירט צו שאַפֿן מײַן אייגענע חלה נוסח־אינדי: מיט זאַפֿרען, פֿרישע קאָרי־בלעטלעך און האָניק.‎‎

di iberlebung hot mikh take inspirirt tsu shafn mayn eygene khale nusekh-indi: mit zafren, frishe kori-bletlekh un honik.

The experience really inspired me to create my own Indian-style challah: with saffron, fresh curry leaves and honey.‎‎

Other than that, I've not found any source that uses קאָרי‎ (kori) to mean "curry". I suppose this writer may have just been doing an ad-hoc transliteration. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 19:02, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083: Yiddish is an LDL, so this one cite is actually enough to create the entry if you want to (remembering to tag it with {{LDL}}). Wikipedia, on the other hand, doesn't count toward citations, so w:yi:קארי is not enough to add an entry for קאַרי. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: The 2016 CEYD has קאַרי‎ m (kari) (as seen here), so I'll add that later as well as the קאַרי־פּראָשיק‎ m (kari-proshik). Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Great! (I only have the dead-tree edition of CYED as well as Weinstein's dictionary). —Mahāgaja · talk 17:38, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not gonna lie, a challah with saffron, curry leaves and honey sounds delicious. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 20:09, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

But what are "curry leaves"? Curry is a spice mixture, not a specific plant that has leaves. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:01, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Probably Curry tree. Its leaves are used in curries. If memory serves, "curry leaves" is a calque. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:15, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Found it: Hindi कढ़ी पत्ता (kaṛhī pattā) Chuck Entz (talk) 07:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I guess this is a relatively recent loan, which in some uses may have entered the lexicon from German (which spells it Curry and where it is pronounced, depending on the speaker, as [ˈkaʁi] or [ˈkœʁi]) and in some other uses from English (pronounced [ˈkʌɹ.i] or [ˈkɝ.i]). Different transcriptions may reflect how the respective authors knew the word or heard it used.  --Lambiam 14:35, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

dead-nuts

Which nuts does the phrase dead-nuts come from? Unreadablecharacter (talk) 15:55, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

A "nut" as a hyperpedantic brainiac? Wakuran (talk) 19:36, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

פֿיליער

Purportedly this means "fish seller" according to the University of Kentucky Yiddish dictionary lookup I mentioned earlier, and has a feminine form פֿיליערין‎ (filyerin). I'm not aware of any Germanic word meaning fishmonger with that sort of phonology however. פֿיליערוואַרג‎ (filyervarg) is very much a real word though, and is attested in the 2016 CEYD, so "filyer" must come from somewhere. I haven't a clue where though. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 03:41, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Is it basically a "filet-er"? —Mahāgaja · talk 07:00, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Sounds plausible but then I'm not sure why it's not just פֿילער‎ (filer). Cf Russian филе́ (filé), German Filet, Polish filet, none of which have a palatal L (the Russian one isn't separated by some "и" or something). In fact, the UKY dictionary lookup gives פֿילע‎ (file) for fish fillet. Allegedly it was used in a Forverts article, but it's hard to find because פֿילע‎ (file) is also an inflection of פֿיל‎ (fil) (despite the Wiktionary entry saying it's not inflected). A cursory search on Forverts for פֿילע‎ (file) didn't yield much in the way of fish. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The translate page for English fillet also claims נעט‎‎ (net‎) to mean "fillet", but somehow I doubt it. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:27, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Clausilocola

The Clausilocola protist is the type genus of the Clausilocolidae family. The name is composed of claus, closed, and cola whose meaning escapes me: is it "large intestine" to say that they live confined in the stomach of worms Annelid? Thank you for your help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 12:46, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Per this article: "a peculiar mouthless ciliate, Clausilocola, which lives in terrestrial snails of the family Clausiliidae" (from clausilium). Cola can likely be understood as the plural of colon, so "intestines of Clausiliidae snails". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: More likely, -cola refers to where it lives, as in "that which inhabits Clausilia". Chuck Entz (talk) 14:53, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Good point, that's a better analysis. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:55, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that seems likely: genus names as far as I know are singular as a rule. Clausilocola is apparently treated as feminine ("Clausilocola apostropha") which is atypical, since Latin uses the masculine gender as the default for nouns of this sort, but I guess not strictly speaking an "error" of agreement, since compounds in -cola can be used in the feminine too: e.g. "Ruricolae Cereri" in Ovid. I guess "Causilo-" is meant to be some kind of relational prefix for Clausiliidae or Clausilia/clausilium, but I'm not sure how exactly these are derived from clausus.--Urszag (talk) 15:09, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Clausilium is apparently meant to be understood as "a little door", though how exactly they worked out the word is not particularly obvious. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:18, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Masculine -cola nouns form the plural with -colae; see e.g. ruricola. In the context, Ovid's country dwellers are not specifically female.  --Lambiam 16:12, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Etymology of "tactical" vs. "tactful"

@Theknightwho I'm not sure whether it's the right place to discuss this and I apologise if it doesn't belong here, but this is related to your recent edit.

tactical (en) taktyczny (pl) тактычны (be) тактический (ru) - derived from the Greek τάσσω?

tactful (en) taktowny (pl) тактоўны (be) тактичный (ru) - derived from the Latin tactus?

The Belarusian тактычны and the Russian тактичный are false friends (one is "tactical" and the other is "tactful"). Is it right or wrong to assume that they are also false cognates? The false cognate article seems to mention "false friend" as the third sense. And what is the preferred way to provide the information about false friends in the Wiktionary articles? Ssvb (talk) 21:24, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Ssvb It’s a bit tricky, and I was originally wrong for thinking the Latin came from Ancient Greek τάσσω (tássō). However, Latin tāctus is a participle of tangō (“to touch”), which ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g- (“to touch”), while Ancient Greek τάσσω (tássō) is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂g- (“to order or arrange”). We currently have two identical Proto-Indo-European roots at the entry, but I don’t know how well-supported that separation is. Theknightwho (talk) 21:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Xema

Any idea what the ety is? (MW says "New Latin" with no further details.) - -sche (discuss) 00:26, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

See the Key to Scientific Names entry with various fun quotes about it ("Some authors […] have adopted the plan of coining words at random without any derivation or meaning whatever. The following are examples: Viralva, Xema"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:32, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Here is the original description of the genus- no mention of where the name came from. The species was originally described here by Sabine's brother as Larus sabinii (he took a whole paragraph to explain why he didn't think it should be split off as a new genus). Given that it was only known at the time from one newly discovered location and the local Inuit said they had never seen one before, it certainly looks like Leach just made the name up (and the common name with it). Chuck Entz (talk) 04:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. - -sche (discuss) 00:17, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Azal

Anyone want to add the (presumably) Hebrew etymon, and check whether the second translation given for it is too fanciful for such a short word? (I added the two pronunciations I was able to find in use but I suspect others exist.) - -sche (discuss) 00:17, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

here is the entry in Easton's Bible dictionary that the creator of the entry copied from, and here's the passage in question from Zechariah:

וְנַסְתֶּ֣ם גֵּֽיא־הָרַ֗י כִּֽי־יַגִּ֣יעַ גֵּי־הָרִים֮ אֶל־אָצַל֒

וְנַסְתֶּ֗ם כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר נַסְתֶּם֙ מִפְּנֵ֣י הָרַ֔עַשׁ בִּימֵ֖י עֻזִּיָּ֣ה מֶֽלֶךְ־יְהוּדָ֑

It's hard to be sure what it actually means, so it's been interpreted a number of different ways. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

"potefal"?

There are a few sources claiming the existence of the words פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט‎ (potefalnost, “audacity”) and פּאָטעפֿאַלנע‎ (potefalne, “audacious”), and I've also seen potefalnost used in a couple of places. One log I found claims that it's attested in Stuchkoff's der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh (1950, New York). Looks really (East) Slavic with the endings, but /f/ isn't native to Slavic. Any ideas? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 04:49, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

This is of particular interest to me due to the clear absence of -nost words in Yiddish. Obviously this is also because the native Germanic ending ־קייט‎ (-keyt) is used, but also it's just interesting to me. The only other -nost word I could find is a potential דאָוויערענאָסט‎ (dovyerenost, “power of attorney”) of doubtful admissibility, which apparently comes from Russian доверенность (doverennostʹ). Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083: {{R:yi:JNW}} returns the following variants: פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט‎ n (potefalnost), פּאַטאַפֿאַלנאָסט‎ n (patafalnost), פּאָטעפֿאַלנעסט‎ n (potefalnest) (used in some editions of Sholem Aleichem). According to this source:

"umzist gezukht un genishtert in di rusishe un ukrainisher verterbiklher. dos vort "potefalnost" iz dort nit benimtse. loyt stutshkovs _der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh_ (nyu-york, 1950, z' 667) kumt oys, az es vert gemeynt 'umyoysher', 'shifles', durkhfal', oder gor 'a mise mayse'. [Shalom Luria]"

It would be surprising to find '-nost' having been productive in only a single case, since the other occurrences of -nost given are all clearly borrowings: 1) נודנאָסט‎ n (nudnost) (c.f. Polish nudność (“boringness; boredom”), Belarusian ну́днасць (núdnascʹ), Ukrainian ну́дність (núdnistʹ)) 2) דאָװיערענאָסט‎ n (dovyerenost) (c.f. Belarusian даве́ранасць (davjéranascʹ), Ukrainian дові́реність (dovírenistʹ)), Russian дове́ренность (dovérennostʹ)) and 3) פּאָ ניעגראַמאָטנאָסטי‎ (po nyegramotnosti) (a an entire phrase from Russian, grammar and all. Only found in the works of Y. L. Pertz and probably not to be considered Yiddish but certainly an interesting feature of Pertz' idiolect). Other occurrences of 'nest' are all feminine and relate to Yiddish נעסט‎ (nest), from Proto-Germanic *nestą. Happy hunting! Helrasincke (talk) 14:11, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Update: I found potefalnost in the 2016 CEYD as well. Is this just a dictionary editors' inside joke that I'm not getting? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 07:29, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

kybo

My Dad told me it stands for Keep Your Bowels Open 2A02:C7C:944B:3900:E159:B406:141:BC0C 06:39, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I hadn't heard about the word, myself, but acronymical explanations are - as a rule of thumb - generally completely false. Robert Baden-Powell seems to have spent a lot of time in India and South Africa before founding the scout movement, so supposedly it might derive from a native language from one of those places. Wakuran (talk) 19:37, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

This is probably a backronym. Vininn126 (talk) 19:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

However, compare the Dutch equivalent hudo, explained as an acronym of houd uw darmen open, the literal translation of "keep your bowels open". This explanation is also challenged, but the coincidence is hard to explain if both are backronyms.  --Lambiam 15:50, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Etymology of Persian ابریشم (silk)

According to the etymology section, the word comes from Proto-Iranian *upawraišamah. Would that then be from Proto-Indo-European *wreyḱ-?

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 08:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/toviti

The only listed descendant is Serbo-Croatian, and there are no references provided. I don't find it in EDSIL and another dictionary I checked, but I didn't do an exhaustive search. Is this reconstruction valid? Chernorizets (talk) 10:37, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction is mentioned in Serbian entry reference. I don't know how reliable it is. Sławobóg (talk) 11:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

AA制

RFV of the etymology. Each "A" is meant to represent a person dining at a restaurant; the bill is split between both "A"s.

According to Bauer 2010, this word is from English each-each. – Wpi (talk) 17:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Ramaswamy

The etymology we list for the surname Ramaswamy points us to Ramasamy, which comes from the Tamil ராமசாமி. Is the Tamil word also a surname? We don't have an entry for it. Also, is the name composed of the elements Rama and swami, as it appears to be from a naive English viewpoint, or is at least one of the elements different? I ask because when I was browsing the page just now and saw that our etymology stopped with the redlinked Tamil entry, for a minute I thought it was just a coincidence and that there's no relation to the word swami. But then I typed in சாமி and it looks to me that it actually is related, and that the Ramaswamy form of the name might be an etymological restoration closer to the original Sanskrit. That leaves me wondering if ராம is Rama and therefore both elements are loaned. I would do at least some of this work myself if I had more ability in the languages involved, ... for example, there seem to be at least two Ramas in Sanskrit, one spelled Ramā and one spelled Rāma ... although they're clearly cognate, I wouldnt know which one to put in an etymology. Best regards, —Soap— 19:39, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

pillowbeer

The ety is given as "pillow +‎ bear or bier". Which sense of bear would this be? For bier I guess it's connected to the thread count sense...? - -sche (discuss) 23:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

See bear Etymology 4. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:30, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a similar comment here two years ago ... it doesnt add much to this thread, but I still say that if it's from bear, either the pronunciation shift is irregular, or bear itself, at least in etymology 4, is pronounced like beer and we should mention this. —Soap— 04:43, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Aha, thank youboth. I've expanded the entry a bit. Apparently it's the pronunciation shift which is irregular; in older poetry it rhymed with words like where. - -sche (discuss) 05:52, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

ghetto

Is there any merit to the (at least to me) incomprehensible and aggressive ramblings on my talk page? Espoo (talk) 15:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

No. As a rule, if a newcomer is most concerned about modifications to the etymology of an English entry which is an obvious loan rather than its obscure source word he is outright wrong in his endeavour rather than affording interest in etymology, because then it is only to present his feelings towards the English word. Fay Freak (talk) 16:25, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

@Urszag, thanks for your edit. Should Liberman's arguments be applied to the Italian entry's etymology? --Espoo (talk) 17:00, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

The English and Italian entries should not present contradictory information. Which hypotheses to mention for words of uncertain etymology is a judgement call and I haven't formed an opinion yet about that for this word.--Urszag (talk) 18:06, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I seem to recall that the sentence "Initially used of the areas Jews were concentrated, later extended to concentrations of other ethnicities and then non-ethnic groups." started out in the English section, but at some point was moved to the Italian section. Is it true in Italian, do Italians speak of e.g. Castro (or the Italian equivalent) as a gay ghetto, or speak of student ghettos by universities? (If not, the line should be moved back to English...) - -sche (discuss) 17:55, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

If anybody understands the (at least to me) incomprehensible and increasingly aggressive ramblings on my talk page, I would be thankful for a reply to them. --Espoo (talk) 20:29, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@Espoo: This person is blocked from editing in the Wiktionary namespace until next year, so they're a bit cranky. Feel free to remove anything they've posted on your talk page. They have all the tools to do good etymology, but there seems to be a fairly high volume of random noise in their thought processes- just when you start to think they're making sense, they wander off into the weeds. I've now added user talk pages to their block, so you should have no more problems for the time being. I wish I could block them completely, but the IP range includes millions of people in and around Berlin. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:26, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Espoo (talk) 08:36, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

姐姐 and ചേച്ചി are related?

I am new to Wiktionary, so sorry if this is missing some necessary details. I speak Malayalam as it is part of my culture, and I am learning Mandarin Chinese online. I was learning about family details in Mandarin, and came across the word for sister/big sister- 姐姐（jiě jie). I realised this sounded extremely similar to the Malayalam word for big sister, ചേച്ചി(chechi)- they both have 2 syllables, similar, frontal vowels, and the consonants are both affricates, just in slightly different locations- Malayalam's is essentially post-alveolar whereas I believe Mandarin's is more alveolar. They must be related- there are only some theories which I think could work here: 1. Coincidence (unlikely, I think) 2. One language simply borrowed from another 3. A hypothetical historical proto-language bridging the gap between the Sino-Tibetan and the Dravidian languages I think the most likely is the 3rd, as a lot of the time with these hypothetical proto-languages for multiple language families, the common words are for family members- of which, obviously, big sister is one. My proposal is simple- if this is a plausible theory, the etymology for ചേച്ചി and 姐姐 should include the theory of a possible proto-Sino-Tibetan-Dravidian language, or perhaps a more general proto language. Samiboi404 (talk) 05:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

There are extravagant theories encompassing those languages like Proto-Borean but you won't find many supporters of them, especially not on the basis of one vaguely similar word. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:12, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

See also the Zompist essay, "How likely are chance resemblances between languages?"

The likelihood of your #1 (accidental similarity) is actually much higher than you might think. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@Samiboi404: There are also other reasons:

4. Common human tendency. Repetition is quite common in names for close family members, so repetition is immediately less salient. I remember an article in Mother Tongue (the journal of ASLIP) which concluded that MAMA and PAPA are to some degree a common human inheritance, because such baby words are likely to bear a resemblance to the words in an adult language known by the parents, and therefore to be adopted into adult language. Whether one dignifies that by the term inheritance is a matter of taste.

Applying very little knowledge, I note that Malayalam ചേച്ചി (cēcci) looks rather similar to Malayalam ചേട്ടൻ (cēṭṭaṉ, “elder brother”), which we trace back to Sanskrit. I would not be surprised if those two words were related.

I also noticed a lack of cognates reported for known related languages, which makes common inheritance unlikely. The relevant denigratory technical term is to reach down - not yet recorded on Wiktionary.--RichardW57m (talk) 14:21, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

PIE hedgehog

On the hedgehog (h₁eǵʰis) page, we say

Perhaps from *eǵʰi-no-s “one that deals with snakes” > “snake-eater”.

If that's the case, why don't the non-Greek words all mean snake? Do we know of a root *h₁eǵʰi- alongside this one that means snake? If so, why did the -no- disappear in the other daughter languages? Thanks, —Soap— 12:18, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

They're probably thinking of *h₂éngʷʰis, but there's no realistic way to get to *h₁eǵʰis from there. And hedgehogs don't eat snakes anyway. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I found ἔχις, which we claim traces back to a PIE form *h₁égʰis, which is the same as the word for hedgehog except that it has g instead of ǵ. But we don't list that PIE root, and the cognates on the ἔχις page are words such as ahi, which we link back to Greek ὄφις rather than ἔχις. I think we should remove the mention of snakes from the h₁eǵʰis page unless there is some scholar making t hat specific argument and with a good explanation for all of the weak spots we've found. —Soap— 05:36, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

"thank you" in Sinhala

In Sinhala, the general word that's used to express gratitude is ස්තූතියි sthūthiyi ("thank (you)"), sometimes colloquially rendered as ස්තුති sthuthi ("thanks") or ඉස්තුති isthuthi. I have a theory that this may be derived from the Sanskrit स्तुति stuti, meaning "praise," but I can't find any resources to back this up. It could also just happen to be a false cognate, but I'd like to see if a connection can be verified regardless. Syphrose (talk) 04:09, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I've done a bit of digging and gathered some (hopefully) helpful info.) While this is based purely on Wiktionary and Wikipedia articles, these were sourced articles, but again, I haven't checked if they are reliable or not. This is what I've gathered: after looking at the Wiktionary article for the Sanskrit स्तुति, in the "Descendants" section, "Prakrit" is listed. The Wikipedia article for Prakrits says that they are vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages, and in a section listing Prakrits, "Elu" is included. On the Wikipedia page for that, it expands that it is an ancestor of Sinhala. So, in summary, according to multiple sourced Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles: Sanskrit स्तुति was borrowed by an ancestor of the Sinhala language, therefore it is plausible to say that they are related. Hope this helps! Samiboi404 (talk) 15:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

ROFL

RFV of the etymology.

@Wpi: The discussion started with diff in Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/CJK#笑到轆地.

The Chinese term is attested in 1979, see diff. Terms from Chinese into English tend to be more frequently calques than borrowings compared to from other languages, and one example is the etymology of brainwash. https://www.etymonline.com/word/rofl says the English term was coined in 1993, giving time for the calque to spread from Chinese to English. I hope I didn't do a post hoc ergo propter hoc with my diff. Does this derivation seem reasonable to everyone? Daniel.z.tg (talk) 05:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

The English expression roll in the aisles is cited back to 1934, for people in theaters, and may be even older than that since it could apply to plays in the pre-film era. I think rolling on the floor might be a derivative of that ... we just wouldn't have had much opportunity to use it before two-way communication, primarily the Internet, became commonplace. (I could imagine people saying it with telephone conversations, radio shows, etc but probably not as much.) —Soap— 07:09, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, etymonline is specifically talking about the initialism and "by 1993" is as early as it gets for widespread online initialisms (see also "lol"). "Roll on the floor laughing" is attested far earlier than that: "A jury would roll on the floor laughing" 1935, "I got to tell you a real funny thing Hans did yesterday. You'll roll on the floor, laughing" 1944, and in a less fixed form even 1870: "I have a settled conviction that Dr. Craig is at this moment rolling on the floor with long-suppressed laughter". Early attestations have nothing to do with Sinophone contexts. Compare laugh die me for an actual calque. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 07:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

RFV Failed Daniel.z.tg (talk) 08:20, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

roll in the aisles is related, but we can't tell the direction of derivation. I will just add it in the synonyms section. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 08:20, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

笑到轆地

Moved from above:

Now I think the calque is in the opposite direction, which I will add to Chinese 笑到轆地／笑到辘地. This is very likely because it's Cantonese, which is in closer contact with English. In this case English contact is proven by the cited song's YMCA name. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 08:20, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

RFV of the etymology. Started by diff. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 08:50, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Please stop making ungrounded speculations. – Wpi (talk) 11:09, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

This particular figure of speech seems to be pretty cross-linguistic. For example I can find a 1911 Hungarian attestation for "nevetve hempereg […] a menyasszony" ("the bride is rolling around laughing") which is unlikely to have anything to do with either Chinese or English. So I wouldn't postulate particular derivations without good specific evidence. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:17, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I gave the grounds of my theory above, and people figuring out whether they are right or wrong is the point of WT:ES. My theory was disproven by the cross-linguistic evidence, which I didn't consider because I usually avoid anything that sounds like Proto-World. I use phonological and semantic similarities together with the comparative method to analyze etymologies, and the longer the similarities, the more likely. This word was a four-character compound, and the English word was long and nearly a perfect transliteration, which combined with the dates, would have made it convincing had it not been for the Hungarian evidence.

Removing as per above. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 21:33, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

RFV Failed Daniel.z.tg (talk) 21:33, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Hullabaloo

I think this word originates from the phrase for Indian Sikh battle cry of "Halla Bol" which was used in the battlefields by Sikhs from 16th to 19th cneturies. These battle cries are used even today by the Sikh regiments of the Indian Army .

"Halla Bol" ( a military charge accompanied by battle cries) is an event in Sikh martial festivals held annually in the month of March at several places in India . Please see video link https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=213846446397495

In modern Hindi and Punjabi, Halla still means "attack" and Bol means "shout".

The Scots might have picked it up from the time that the British East India Company and the British were in India. Several battles involved Sikhs fighting Scots. One example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sobraon Ajayjo (talk) 15:44, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

pickin

RFV of the etymology.

Derived from English pickaninny

Considering that English pickaninny apparently traces back to some Portuguese-based African pidgin term derived from Portuguese pequenino (“boy, child”), it would seem to make more sense to leave out English pickaninny and derive this directly from whatever pickaninny came from. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:56, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

See also Krio pikin, Nigerian Pidgin pikin and Sranan Tongo pikin, none of which mention pickaninny.  --Lambiam 15:06, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Well direct loaning from Portuguese is plausible since the city name Lagos is Portuguese. But regardless of the origin, it seems pickin and pikin are almost certainly the same word, and one should be listed as an altsp of the other. Does Nigerian Pidgin have stable spelling? Wikipedia suggests it does, but also defines the language as being spoken outside Nigeria, where standards may be different. —Soap— 07:47, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

schito

Is it possible that this word (whose etymology is missing) derives from Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skitiz? They have the same meaning and pronunciation! And it would not be the first case of Germanic influence in the Venetian language. Pottercomuneo (talk) 09:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Was Venetian in regular contact with any Germanic language that did not undergo the High German consonant shift? I'd expect it to have s(s) rather than t in the middle if it were a Germanic loanword. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

There are some very old borrowings from Gothic, apparently, but it does sound like a much later loanword from Dutch or Low German (or possibly Norse) seafarers... Wakuran (talk) 15:08, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Examples that come to my mind and don't undergo the consonant shift are schei, rumar (derived from räumen), sgnapa... but actually these are directly from German, so yeah more probably directly from the Low German or German word Schitte? Pottercomuneo (talk) 16:08, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Early Lombardic? Nicodene (talk) 01:04, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

patena

Patena is a (probably old-fashioned) term used to describe A grassy expanse in the hill region of Ceylon. I'm assuming the etymology is nothing to do with Latin. Any ideas what they call those things in Sri Lanka? Lfellet (talk) 14:07, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

No, but keeping in mind that the Portuguese colonized Sri Lanka before the British did, it's not unthinkable that it's a loanword from Portuguese pátena, from Latin. A grassy expanse could be compared to a flat dish, I suppose. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:10, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Webster seems to agree: “Cf. Pg. patena a paten.” Einstein2 (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

The OED gives a completely different etymology: "< Sinhala patana < Sanskrit patana, Pali patana fall, descent". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:17, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Our entry for that is at पतन (patana). It's possible it's originally the Sinhala word but with the spelling influenced by the Portuguese word. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

It's worth noting that patena seems to be a much less common spelling than patana. All of the OED's own citations have either patina (once) or patana, and there are many more results on Google Books for "the patanas of" than "the patenas of". So the "patena" spelling may well be from a false etymology taken up by Webster. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:09, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

farfet

Etymology stated fet comes the past participle of fette. WTF? SpAway (talk) 20:03, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

It was probably going for a late form of Middle English fetten, but I replaced it with obsolete Modern English fet. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:45, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

September 2023

sound as a roach

What kind of roach would be sound??? Jin and Tonik (talk) 20:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably the nautical one (etymology 3, sense 1). —Mahāgaja · talk 21:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

trit: Blend of tri- +‎ bit

However, its wikipedia page states the blend is actually form trinary + digit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system JMGN (talk) 21:59, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

I guess it should be interpreted as the word being an analogy of bit, which is derived from binary + digit. Wakuran (talk) 23:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

I've modified the etymology accordingly. 50.196.138.188 19:30, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

roach

We have had five etymology sections for this since 2016. To me there should be at most three. The excess etymologies seem more like sense evolution (eg, figurative use). Am I missing something? DCDuring (talk) 23:38, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems a bit unclear what the origina of the senses "headdress" and "shaving" are, and whether they are related... Wakuran (talk) 19:02, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

The following seem clear to me, but I could be wrong:

1. Ety 6 is related to Ety 3, which is related to Ety 1. It seems to have something to do with appearance somehow like some aspect of the appearance of the fish. Pictures would be a test of the relatedness. It may have to do with the fish roach having red fins.
2. Ety 4 is by its own admission connected to Ety 2 by reason of appearance.
3. Ety 5 is unrelated to the others.

That would make 3 etymology sections rather than 6. DCDuring (talk) 19:16, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

I have merged old Ety 4 into Ety 2 and old Ety 6 into Ety 3. Old Ety 5 is now Ety 4. DCDuring (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

As to Ety 1 and Ety 3, the often-red color of the Native American headdresses may have evoked the red fins of the common roach. I'm not sure whether the curve of the sail with a roach has any connection with either the fish or the headdress. Sailing roaches may be relatively new, FWIW. DCDuring (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Intoshellina

Intoshellina is the type genus of the family Intoshellinidae. The name could mean "into shell". But this protozoan is a parasite, not of shellfish, but of worms! Thanks for your help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

It was hard tracking this down. The original description of Intoshellina dedicates the new genus to W.C. Macintosh, who published what was later renamed to Intoshella here. Intoshella are worms, but the dedication of Intoshellina says "Je dédie ce genre à W.-C. Mac-Intosh, qui a la premier signalé un Infusoire astome dans ces Vers de la Familia de las Tubificides, cet astome étant vraisembablement celui que nous étudions ici." If I'm translating it correctly, that means Mac-Intosh (whose name is usually spelled William M'Intosh) described organisms (then classified as Astomes in the Infusoria) parasitizing the worms he studied, which the author believed are probably the same as the ones being described in his work. Indeed, works like this one refer to a number of worms parasitized by "Infusoria".

Which brings us to the genus Intoshia originally coined here (at the bottom of the page). It's named after M'Intosh, apparently by discarding the "Mac-" from the surname. I'm guessing that Intoshella was named in the same way, but with a diminutive ending to distinguish it from Intoshia. Likewise, I think Intoshellina added another diminutive ending to Intoshella for the same reason. At any rate, I think it's safe to say that the "Intosh" part of Intoshellina is a reference to William M'Intosh- whatever the origin of the rest. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:34, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Both -ella and -ina are common suffixes in taxonomical naming. Macintosh/McIntosh/M'Intosh comes from Scottish Gaelic Mac an Tòisiche (literally “son of the chieftain”), meaning this could be our first Translingual term derived from Scottish Gaelic. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:25, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Though I think it's a race with Whiskey. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank at all for this very precise and valuable survey. Gerardgiraud (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

სკაროსი

How is სკაროსი (sḳarosi, “ray”) a Learned borrowing from Old Georgian სკაროსი (sḳarosi, “parrotfish”); does Old Georgian know ray?

Same problem with skate. How is Old Norse skata (“ray”) possibly related to shad (genus Alosa)? 79.140.115.70 16:19, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Old Georgian translator encountered Ancient Greek σκάρος (skáros) and simply transliterated it as Old Georgian სკაროსი (sḳarosi) without necessarily knowing what it means. Some sloppy modern philologist saw სკაროსი (sḳarosi) and glossed it as "ray" (we do not know what was going on in his head, he probably did not know Greek well; maybe he found it similar to Russian скат (skat)). Modern dictionaries picked up his gloss and happily adopted it as the standard designation of "ray" in the modern literary Georgian. That is how ghost words are born. Vahag (talk) 16:38, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

The relationship between skata and shad doesn't seem that odd to me, considering possible semantic shift between the languages, though. Wakuran (talk) 22:20, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

verwaarloos, verwaarlozen, waardeloos

The Afrikaans from Dutch word for neglected. Etymology mentions older Dutch "verwaerlozen", but nothing about the word "waarde" ("value"). The word "waarde" etymology has nothing. (I think in the Dutch Wiktionary). "Verwaarlozen" seems to be rooted in "waardeloos", so there is no word "verwaar" that gets a "-loos" on the end to make an antonym. (Goog translate has/had that non-existent word confused with Afrikaans "verwar. Which is hilarious, because verwar means confused in Afrikaans.) Mrjjacobs (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Could it be connected to German verwahren / Verwahren? To me it sounds strange that waardeloos would get an intensive ver-prefix. Wakuran (talk) 19:57, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Alternatively, Dutch verweren? Wakuran (talk) 20:54, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Dutch waarde is cognate to English worth and German Wert, all inherited from Proto-Germanic *werþaz. The component waar- in verwaarlozen, also found in Dutch waarnemen (“to observe”), bewaren (“to preserve, to keep”) and vrijwaren (“to safeguard”), stems from Proto-West Germanic *warōn (“to watch, protect”) and/or *war (“aware, alert”) (not to be confused with *wār (“true”)), whence also German (ver)wahren and English aware, while French garage is a cognate.  --Lambiam 16:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Kangshung Face (Mount Everest)

Hey, I made a speculatory etymology for Kangshung Face (Mount Everest) based on my experience on Wiktionary with these words- see Talk:Kangshung Face. Let me know if this seems legit, or how I should qualify this assessment ("probably", etc.). --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:53, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Since the Chinese Wikipedia calls it 康雄壁 (壁 (bì) means “cliff, steep“) I think you can qualify this as “most certainly” – the alternative theory that this Chinese name is a partial calque of the English name is too farfetched. I wouldn't use a judgemental term like “garbled”; more likely, someone just wrote down what they heard, using an ad hoc transliteration.  --Lambiam 14:46, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

אָוואַ

Wondering if there is an etymology for this. My first thought was Russian ого (ogo), since it can be pronounced like "ova" in words like какого (kakovo). Problem with that of course is that ого (ogo) isn't pronounced with /v/. If anyone knows of some Hebrew or dialectal German interjection that sounds like this, let me know. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 19:14, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Is that pronounced something like [ʊvʊ]? Initially, I wouldn't find it unlikely if it'd be an interjection having originated spontaneously in Yiddish. Wakuran (talk) 20:56, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

bushwah

There was some discussion on its talk page about "bouchois" being a possibilty but this etymology having no attestations. TDHoward (talk) 00:20, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

The OED simply says it's a euphemistic form of bullshit. A lot of sources agree. There are a few more convoluted suggestions. Holt, Phrase and Word Origins (1961), cites Webster deriving it from bodewash, a dialectal US term for dried dung from settler French bois de vache (literally “wood of the cow”), and then comments (maybe with some sarcasm), "It is only a coincidence, perhaps, that the disreputable ejaculation, 'bullshit,' is used in exactly the same way as 'bushwa'." More recently Mark Peters, Bullshit: A Lexicon, offers "bourgeois" as a possible origin or model, though he also agrees it just means "bullshit". I strongly suspect though that any older sources talking about supposed French etyma are just being coy and it's a straightforward mincing of bullshit. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:38, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

The bourgeois theory makes sense to me given uses like this 1971 book (may not be visible to all) where someone says bushwa and then is told by another speaker that the word they want is bourgeois. This requires an /ʃ/ pronunciation for the word contrasting with /ʒ/ in bourgeois. It's possible that the author of this book is assuming a folk etymology, but this is what makes most sense to me since someonme hearing the word bourgeois but not knowing how to spell it is likely to come up with something like bushwa(h) as there is no stable way to spell /ʒ/ in English. —Soap— 05:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I've expanded the entry with etymological notes and a separate section for the pronunciation spelling of bourgeois. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:48, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually derivation from bullshit can't quite work if bullshit itself is only attested from 1914 as the entry there says (which seems to be true), it must have been conflated subsequently... I've just changed it to say it's uncertain and kept these various origins listed. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:10, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

龜毛

Any idea what "hollow logic" is supposed to mean in the etymology? ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:04, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

重編國語辭典修訂本: 佛教用語。龜沒有毛，兔沒有角。僅有其名而無其實。佛典常用以譬喻空理。

空 (kōng) may be related to Buddhism (sunyata), but I don't know much about it. --ItMarki (talk) 07:09, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Turtle fur and rabbit horns is a metaphor for a mistaken perception of something nonexistent. The algae on a sea turtle may be mistaken for fur. The pricked-up ears of a rabbit may be mistaken for horns. In various Buddhist writings, this is used as a metaphor for illusions – such as the illusion of a permanent self – that need to be shed to advance on one’s road to release from suffering. The term “hollow logic” is sometimes used to criticize an idea that superficially seems to have merit but on deeper examination lacks substance. This is not a common idiom, though; the sentence should be rewritten to make the intention clear.  --Lambiam 14:17, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

For "hollow logic" I think specious logic is probably the more usual / less ambiguous term. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:22, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Logicians might counter that the belief in nonexistent things is not an issue of logic at all.  --Lambiam 10:31, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Unless it's a matter of judging the logic of inferences from perceptions, of course, which is what appears to be understood in this case. I recall reading a monograph advancing a logic without the principle of the excluded middle which wanted to categorise logically correct inferences from perceptions that are then subsequently disproved by further information as in some sense both true and false, and the argument in that case was also vaguely influenced by Eastern philosophy. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:03, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Update on "potefal"

I've added פּאָטעפֿאַלנאָסט‎ (potefalnost) and פּאָטעפֿאַלנע‎ (potefalne). I'm still stumped at how four separate Yiddish dictionaries can contain the same word, yet we are none the wiser to its etymology. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 13:57, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

אַפֿענע

Apparently this means "blueberry". I found it in the 2016 CEYD, so this has to come from somewhere. Could this be something inherited from dialectal German perchance? Doesn't seem too Slavic to me. Edit: could this come from Romanian afină? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:32, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

μύκης

This might be more about the format than the etymology, itself, but the etymology added on 30 December 2020 by User:Samubert96 mentions a person 'Furnée' not linked in the sources. So I wonder 1st if the hypothesis would be fringe-like or generally accepted, and 2nd, if the latter, how it could be better linked in the entry. Wakuran (talk) 00:39, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

The added etymology, including the judgemental “correctly”, is lifted almost verbatim from Beekes; Furnée refers to: Edzard J. Furnée, Die wichtigsten konsonantischen Erscheinungen des Vorgriechischen. Mit einem Appendix über den Vokalismus. Mouton, Den Haag, 1972. The entry in Furnée (pp. 298–9) is:

μύκης, ητος m. ‚Stumpf eines gefällten Olivenbaums‘ (IG 2, 1055, 43): cf. μύσκλοι = οἱ πυθμένες τῶν ξηρῶν σύκων (Η.).²² — Vergleiche das oben § 45 angeführte bask. mukuŕ = moskoŕ ‚tronc d’arbre‘;²³ illustratives Beispiel für den irgendwie bestehenden Zusammenhang zwischen Vorgriechisch und Baskisch.²⁴

The rejection of a connection with μύσσομαι is found in footnote 22.  --Lambiam 10:19, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, so maybe it could just be sourced more clearly.... Wakuran (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, it is distressingly common that someone writing an etymology will mention a scholar by last name only and then provide no bibliographical information allowing the reader to trace the claim back to its source. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:36, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

And this is what virtually always is the case when “Furnée” is mentioned on Wiktionary, about 300 times. Should be removed because non sequitur anyway. The superficial similarity to once transmitted μύσκλοι (múskloi, “stalks of dried up fig trees”) says nothing and is sought, in addition we might rather connect it to μόσχος (móskhos) and μίσχος (mískhos), and that to μασχάλη (maskhálē), which are of course all pre-Greek.

Like every second time I open a Greek etymology it is Pre-Greek. These substratum claims, a pet theory of Beekes, are statistically impossible, I have noted on various occasions. Hundreds must be removed or relativized contra Beekes and Furnée. Fay Freak (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Although it's tempting to just remove all of Beekes' Pre-Greek etymologyies, I think they come with the turf of using his dictionary, which the most updated source, especially for Indo-European etymas. I do agree that they ought to be relativized with qualifications such as “Beekes claims” or “Beekes holds”.

When they are credibly disputed and alternative etymologies exist, it should be noted that Beekes' Pre-Greek claims are idiosyncratic or even outright fringe. That qualification can be backed by many reviews of his dictionary, which while praising his Indo-European etyma, decry his overzealousness to classify most of everything without crystal clear etymology as Pre-Greek. Ido66667 (talk) 01:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

effervescent

RFV of the etymology. Says it's from French but all the other dictionaries list it as being directly from Latin. lattermint (talk) 20:33, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any particularly convincing reason to think it's from French. The OED's earliest attestation is from 1684. It's very possible that it was reinforced from French given the importance of French in the 18th-century chemical revolution, but I can find English uses already referring to bubbling substances in 1719 [10], 1740 [11], 1756 [12], etc. TLFi meanwhile has it as a late 18th-century thing in French, and the earliest French instances I can find for both effervescent and effervescens, the unadapted form mentioned in the TLFi, are from the 1750s. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:53, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

On that note effervescence is also listed as a borrowing from French and is claimed to be that by Etymonline but not by the OED. lattermint (talk) 21:06, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I can't find any 1640s French attestations for effervescence so not sure reference what Etymonline might be referring to. TLFi dates it to the 1680s. There are some misdated hits on Google for the 1640s, notably a Regnier de Graaf translation where the printer's accidentally given it the nonsense year "MDCLXCIX" that Google's chosen to interpret as 1649, apparently the actual date is 1699. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:12, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

shag-boy

Any idea where the shag but comes from? Jewle V (talk) 22:30, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Because you shag, shake, heavily when fancying one in your vicinity. Fay Freak (talk) 22:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Turkic/tebe

An Etymological Dictionary of Altaic Languages. S. A. Starostin, A. V. Dybo, O. A. Mudrak. Page 1424 — This unsigned comment was added by Abu Windy (talk • contribs) at 01:43, 11 September 2023 (UTC).

@Abu Windy: Probably worse than nothing. See WT:Beer parlour/2023/September#Ban cross-family comparisons from EDAL. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:53, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

פּרעצל from English?

Now I don't know enough about Yiddish as a day-to-day language - I do live in Hong Kong after all - but the CEYD suggests both בייגעלע‎‎ (beygele‎) and פּרעצל‎ (pretsl) can be used to mean pretzel, the former of which was also borrowed into Hebrew and appears to be the most common Hebrew word for pretzel. For the time being I've assumed פּרעצל‎ (pretsl) to be an inherited word, what with a regular B => P shift as seen in some other nouns, as well as the Bavarian-ness of pretzels themselves, and of course Yiddish was strongly influenced by Bavarian as well. Hence you see stuff about Middle High German and Brezel in the etymology section.

But what if it's not that at all? What if, as it appears to me that בייגעלע‎‎ (beygele‎) is the more common term for "pretzel", פּרעצל‎ (pretsl) was actually re-borrowed from (American) English back into Yiddish? What if it went dialectal German => English => Yiddish? Or am I overthinking things? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:41, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe “dialectal German” is actually Yiddish? Actually it isn’t that dialectal, around 1900 both Bretzel and Pretzel very unproblematic written German forms, as you instantly find; and I am surprised that Otto Jastrow translated an Anatolian Arabic text edition in 2003 with Pretzeln, which apparently wasn’t even found strange at the publishing house in Wiesbaden. But the relevant consideration here is that it would require a reason to reckon that specifically Yiddish lacked the word before borrowing it from English. Rather it must have had the word like all other German dialects. Fay Freak (talk) 17:22, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Rosh Hashanah

Do we have a basis for saying this is from Yiddish and not Hebrew? Based on sound/spelling, Hebrew would've been my first guess, and indeed the Hebrew entry says the English etc names are from Hebrew... - -sche (discuss) 14:49, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

The OED says Hebrew too. Their first citation is from 1594, with continuous attestation since, and the spelling is fairly consistent, so I'd also tend towards Hebrew as the immediate source. Beginning in the 19th century I do find the spelling "Rosh Hashona(h)" on GBooks, primarily in Jewish sources, which I would assume is Yiddish-influenced. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:04, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

The English pronunciation has Hebrew vowel quality but Yiddish stress placement, so it may be a blend of the two. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:15, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Though I think it's unlikely that the stress placement would have been borrowed from Hebrew unadapted. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 09:17, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the stress placement seems more natural for English anyway than e.g. /-əʃɑːˈnɑː/, and something like /-æʃəˈnɑː/ would be even more unfaithful to the Hebrew. Of course it's unlikely we can figure out how it was pronounced in Early Modern times, but I doubt we can say for sure whether the current pronunciation was an import from the Yiddish or just reinforced by it. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:18, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/dungz

This should be moved back to Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/dungiz, per the cited source. The rationale for the move to *dungz was wrong: OE does not reflect an original consonant stem; the umlauted variant ding points to an original i-stem instead. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:14, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

beezer

RFV of the etymology. (Tagged but not listed.) Supposedly from Chinese! - -sche (discuss) 01:48, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm skeptical. The Pinyin "z" is pronounced more like "dz", so the Mandarin word sort of rhymes with "pizza". Also, I don't know much about immigration to England, but in the US the early waves of immigration were from further south, so they mostly spoke lects like Cantonese that pronounce this even more differently. It was only with the Communist revolution that Mandarin started to predominate here.

Also, after looking at Google Books, the earliest usage I see seems to refer to the head, not the nose: 1912, 1913, This one from 1915 is probably clearest, with this one from 1922 offering Spanish cabeza as the origin (not that a publication catering to midwestern farmers of that era is a good source for information on Spanish or etymology). Of course, these all refer to US slang, but they mostly date to around World War I, when there was a lot of contact between speakers of British and US slang. There do seem to be some, like this one from 1914 and this one from 1917 that do refer to the nose, though. Partridge sees it as strictly the nose, and takes it back to 1908.Chuck Entz (talk) 04:33, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

It's complicated. The OED gives two different senses for "beezer" and notes they may have different origins (their other sense is one we don't have, "a (smart) person"). The "person" sense seems to have originated in Scotland (cf. DSL) but from earlier uses—and sources that explicitly denote it as such, like this one from 1919—the "nose" sense seems to originally be an Americanism, contrary to our entry. There are various sources giving the Chinese etymology for the "nose" sense (e.g. The Facts on File Encyclopedia on Word and Phrase Origins, p. 73). I also see this WWII memoir where an American recalls the term "Da Beezer" in Chinese, so the pronunciation of the Mandarin doesn't seem to be an obstacle—it's still voiced, so easier to hear as "z" than the sound in "pizza". But if they were already familiar with the English slang then they'd have been predisposed to hear it that way. The Facts on File Encyclopedia claims that it originates with US marines in China, which seems obviously false—the earliest source I can find hypothesising a Chinese origin even predates WWII (in this journal). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:13, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I've expanded the entry with as much info as I could find. What I find curious is the 1921 quotation I added under "head" from an American sailing in Vladivostok (with a lot of clearly Sinophone context in the pages surrounding). This suggests to me that a Chinese origin cannot be 100% ruled out. The 1930s source speculating about Chinese I mentioned above also specifically mentions American sailors. But it'd be more convincing if it was "nose" and not, as it seems to be, "head". The Oxford Dictionary of Slang (which I've cited) does note Spanish cabeza but also adds that the semantic development is a bit difficult since in English "nose" precedes "head" (though not by much anyway). I also don't know where the boxing context would come in. For now I've reduced the Chinese hypothesis to a mention with {{ncog}}. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:43, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

־קעלע as a separate suffix?

Now this is obviously, as far as we can tell anyway, a combination of ־קע‎ (-ke) and ־עלע‎ (-ele). But I've come across two separate words in the CEYD, טשיפּקעלע‎ (tshipkele) and טראָפּקעלע‎ (tropkele, “droplet”), which are recorded with ־קעלע‎ (-kele) but neither with ־קע‎ (-ke) nor ־עלע‎ (-ele) separately. I've also seen טשיפּקעלע‎ (tshipkele) used on Forverts so this isn't just the CEYD making stuff up as they tend to do (c.f. קאָנטראָל־שטעקל‎ (kontrol-shtekl)). I've seen a few places discuss ־קעלע‎ (-kele) as a variant of ־קע‎ (-ke) but none at a scholarly level, or at least in-depth. So should I add it here, and if so should I add it as a variant of ־קע‎ (-ke) or ־עלע‎ (-ele), or both? Thoughts? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 13:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Mariel

Right now the article says it is a diminutive of Mary, but doesn't it mean God is my lord in Hebrew and also a cursory search pulls up something about an angel named Mariel which also doesn't make sense if it's a Germanic feminine diminutive. Dngweh2s (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

There's certainly no angel named Mariel dating back to Biblical times; the angels Mariel I found online are definitely modern and kind of New-Agey. The Hebrew word מַר‎ (mar, “mister, master”) is also not Biblical; it's a medieval loanword from Aramaic. Another possibility for the name is a blend of Mary with Muriel. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

The angel Mariel features in minor roles in various medieval and early modern hermetic sources like the Lesser Key of Solomon and (apparently) the cabbalistic Book of Raziel so it's somewhat older than that, though not biblical. See also the appearance in a Syriac charm codex of the 18th c. here. For an English personal name though I'd wager it's more likely just to be a variation of Muriel after Mary. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:57, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

親力親為

What evidence do we have that this term originated in Hong Kong? It's quite a claim. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

zorch

For the second etymology of zorch, I have recently seen a reference in a paper (Veale, O'Donoghue, and Keane 1999, "Computability as a Limiting Cognitive Constraint: Complexity Concerns in Metaphor Comprehension about which Cognitive Linguists should be Aware") which in turn references Hendler (1989) "Marker Passing over Micro-Features: Toward a Hybrid Symbolic/Connectionist Model". This in turn has a footnote:

The notion of attenuation is quite prevalent in discussion of spreading activation. The term zorch has often been used orally to describe this although Hendler (1987a) appears to be the first to use the term in the spreading activation literature. This use of the term appears to be based on an MIT use of the word to refer to “an amount of energy.” More information on the MIT use of the word can be found in The Hacker’s Dictionary.

Maybe that helps? 216.59.66.162 18:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, could the first etymology be a blend of zap and scorch or torch? Wakuran (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Hendler's theory sounds plausible. But where did the MIT's use in the sense of an amount of energy come from? (The French Wiktionary has a later quotation with this sense.)  --Lambiam 19:45, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Bill Watterson used this word a few times in Calvin & Hobbes, so my first thought was that it was an arbitrary coinage by a fan of the strip, but the earlier of the two uses in the strip that I found on this site was from 1988, so apparently it wasnt a tribute to Calvin & Hobbes after all. Still, this doesnt look like a traditional etymology ... maybe it's a tribute to the early text-based RPG Zork? But that wouldnt explain the sense very much. —Soap— 22:03, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Northern and Lule Saami oabbá

These words have oampē as stated origin, but it seems that it should be oampā instead, right? Tynnoel (talk) 16:30, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

German/Bavarian cognate to פֿאַטשיילע?

As title. It doesn't make sense that somehow only Yiddish borrowed this word. In fact, given Austria's proximity to modern-day Italy, it stands to reason that Bavarian would have borrowed it first, and then spread into varieties of Yiddish. Either way, if someone could help in finding the exact language/dialect that lent the word to Yiddish, that would be nice as well, since I don't believe it would have entered Yiddish directly from Vulgar Latin. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 20:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about that, there are other examples of Yiddish borrowing directly from Romance without the intervention of any German variety. A famous example is לייענען‎ (leyenen). —Mahāgaja · talk 20:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

שינקע

How are we so certain that this entered Yiddish via Slavic? The etymology for German Schinken says that it comes from Middle High German schinke. Couldn't Yiddish have just inherited it from there? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure if it were inherited from Old High German scinco it would be *שינק (*shink) without the final *-e. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:15, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

忘れる and 忘る

The wiktionary entry for 忘れる lists the etymology as coming from OJ 忘る, which follows a 下二段 conjugation pattern, but japanese dictionaries like this or this also list a 四段 pattern with a different nuance. Is it known whether the 下二段 form derived from an earlier 四段 form, or vice versa? Horse Battery (talk) 23:06, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic ‘com’

Is anyone in a position to add an etymology and the modern pronunciation? I think in some modern Lewis Gaelic dialects it might now be pronounced [k^haum], but I’m not a native speaker. CecilWard (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@CecilWard:, Chan e labhraiche dùthchasach a th'annam nas motha, but I added what I could find. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Ching

RFV of the etymology. @Fish bowl added this and I agree- this 成 Cantonese surname seems to be more easily found as Shing. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:59, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

(The notes at 成 also read: cing4 - rare (e.g. 成數), with no mention of cing4 being used as a surname. —Fish bowl (talk) 04:14, 25 September 2023 (UTC))

phrog/phrogging

Is it related to phishing? — 204.187.100.209 22:42, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

phreaking is older than the other two words, so I guess it could be an analogous coinage. Wakuran (talk) 00:31, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Spelling f-containing words with a "ph" and vice versa was popular hacker lingo. I'll check old text files and see if this spelling pops up, and in which sense. CitationsFreak (talk) 16:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

gangbusters

— 204.187.100.209 22:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Agents like Eliot Ness were perceived as having been successful. Wakuran (talk) 00:38, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

bougar

— 204.187.100.209 22:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be a quite rare word both in English and Scots. Merriam-Webster explicitly states "origin unknown". I wonder whether it might be derived from Germanic *beuganą (to bend, bow). It seems that Scottish National Dictionary might prefer a Celtic derivation, though. Wakuran (talk) 01:31, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

stintance

— 204.187.100.209 22:46, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

There's an etymology at stint. Wakuran (talk) 00:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

настоящий

Missing etymology. 108.160.120.91 02:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I have tried. It's a participle form of Old Church Slavonic настоꙗти (nastojati) but the exact original spelling is hard to establish and it may need some normalisation. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:05, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev you've got it right:

• Ivanova-Mirčeva, D., editor (1999), “настоꙗти”, in Старобългарски речник [Old Church Slavonic Dictionary] (in Bulgarian), volume 1, Sofia: Valentin Trajanov, page 927

Chernorizets (talk) 00:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets: Thanks. Is *настоѩщь (*nastojęštĭ) the right normalised lemma spelling? The dictionaries don't seem to provide the lemma for the participle. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:07, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev based on what I've been able to find so far, probably not - if you're looking for the masculine active participle form, it's likelier to be something like настоѩщꙑ, but I don't know enough OCS to be sure. None of the grammar references I could find justify just adding "ь" directly to the participle base. Chernorizets (talk) 01:26, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

In Codex Zographensis, they reconstruct a derivative adjective настоѩштьнꙑи, if that's of any help.

хлѣбъ нашь настоѩшт[ьнꙑи]

Chernorizets (talk) 01:40, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets: Thanks. We can also check with fellow Slavic editors later. Meanwhile, you can edit настоя́щий (nastojáščij). Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

smudge

In Bergamasque dialect (and other Lombard dialects), smagia /ˈzmadʒa/, /ˈʒmadʒa/ means 'stain', 'mark'. For Giovanni Cavadini and Carmen Leone _Dizionario etimologico begamasco_ (2002) this derives from Latin macula (with an intensifying s-prefix). Unless there's a common Indo-European root, this must be a case of a striking coincidence. Richard Dury (talk) 04:46, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Coincidences are not uncommon. Wakuran (talk) 09:10, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

German Projekt

It's the source of the word for project in a number of languages, but it has no etymology. #sadface Could anyone please provide the etymology?

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 05:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

According to German Wiktionary:

von lateinisch prōiectum ^{→ la}, das so viel bedeutet wie „Das nach vorn Geworfene“ (substantiviertes Partizip Perfekt (Neutrum) von prōicere ^{→ la}, siehe auch projizieren).

Chernorizets (talk) 05:37, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

 Done —Mahāgaja · talk 09:46, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

How does that correlate with the fact that French had developed the sense "planing" by the 14th century? 88.128.92.34 15:13, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Words 'highly' and 'hayli'

Hi guys I was just thinking if the word highly in English and hayli in Persian/Turkish has an etymological connection at some point? I know their roots are different but their pronunciations are so similar and they are used in same meaning which makes me wonder. I did some research and couldn't really find proof that they are connected but here I am, what do you guys think? Justcallmeasude (talk) 14:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Nope, it's just a coincidence. That happens sometimes. My favorite example is the Mbabaram word dog, which means 'dog' and is completely unrelated to the English word dog. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes! and for a good example of false cognates specifically involving English and Farsi, vide better and بهتر‎ (behtar, “better”), @Justcallmeasude. ~ Blansheflur ｡･:*:･ﾟ❀,｡ 16:52, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Not to mention bad and بد‎ (bad). —Mahāgaja · talk 20:28, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Another nice example is Dutch stekkie and Greek στέκι (stéki).  --Lambiam 15:54, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

кадык#Russian

Can't find any such Tatar word, and the fact it is given in Latin is probably not a good sign. I must note that in traditional (19th century) Russian terminology, "Tatar" could mean pretty much any Turkic language, not necessarily the one we now call Tatar. Thadh (talk) 20:03, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Vasmer means Uyghur قاتتىق‎ (qattiq) in Radlov. --Vahag (talk) 12:21, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

גליווערן

Any ideas? Couldn't find anything Germanic or Slavic related to this, although maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 15:53, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

German nüchtern from Latin nocturnus

How did "nocturnal" come to mean "sober"? PUC – 12:51, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Because drinking culture in the Middle Ages did not suppose that you would go out club to become drunk, and club soda was not widely available either, instead one started the day with small beer, after being nüchtern in the sense of having an “empty stomach”, meaning one was in the early fasting state after having slept the usual hours, and easily having drunk something stronger would give rise to this term as an euphemism for the opposite state. It already broadly meant “abstinent” in Old High German, or the derived adjective nuohturnīn / nuehternīn meant it. The present previous gloss “sober” at nuohturn is incorrect, it meant ieiunus. Fay Freak (talk) 13:13, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. PUC – 15:09, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

How a poor dejected person is about to sleep without having a goblet of intoxication; he is unable to sleep through the nights. Being sober, he stays awake. कालमैत्री (talk) 14:10, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I guess you're joking, but if not... No, that would be a folk etymology. FF's explanation above is much more convincing. PUC – 15:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Kluge does not see a semantic connection.^[13] However, the nocturna (Latin) or nocturns used to be the first liturgic office in monasteries, performed in the very early morning. The monks would still be on an empty stomach, so this may have been the origin.  --Lambiam 15:49, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I was quite astonished the first time my doctor in Germany wanted to do a blood test on me and asked "Sind Sie nüchtern?" as if I might come to a doctor's appointment drunk. She had to explain the other meaning of the word for me. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:37, 30 September 2023 (UTC)