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Etymology scriptorium

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

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March 2025

gangbusters

— 2601:240:8002:E690:D88C:DA3C:A38B:53BC 10:15, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

From like gangbusters.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:03, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Albanian neth

Rfv for etymology. This doesn't seem to be mentioned in any cognate list for English nest, Latin nīdus etc. Exarchus (talk) 15:10, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Etimo as the person who added this.

Are there parallels for the vowel outcome neth < *nisdós?

The semantic development would seem a bit odd (‘sprout’ < ‘nest’).

Nicodene (talk) 23:54, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

mister

Etymology: "Unaccented variant of master".

Why would it be an unaccented version? In modern English I don't detect any difference in accent, or stress. Perhaps this could be explained better. Mihia (talk) 22:59, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Unaccented, as in not having the primary stress in the sentence. I would assume that "Master so-and-so" as opposed to plain "Master" would draw enough of the focus from "master" that the vowel might be less carefully enunciated by some people. It might be that in some dialects or registers the first vowel might have become more schwa-like (or even have disappeared into the following "s"), and the distance between a schwa and a short "i" isn't that far. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Convincing. So the path would be /ˈmastər/ > unstressed /məstər ˈ.../ > by reapplication of stress /ˈmɪstər/. I agree that this should be made clearer in the entry. 2.202.159.64 02:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

In a sentence such as "Can I introduce you to Master/Mister so-and-so", I still don't see any difference in stress. I say that with the primary stress on "so-and-so" in both cases. Mihia (talk) 09:37, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

That's because today, they're two distinct lexical items with two different meanings. But etymologically, mister started out as a weakened/reduced form of master before taking on a life of its own independent of its etymon. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:10, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Dutch meneer developed analogously as an unstressed version of mijnheer, from a univerbation of the address Mijn Heer (“My Lord”).  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Claimed cognates at ker- and char (etym. 3)

It would seem to me that the Celtic word cannot be related to the Germanic word nor to Ancient Greek γῦρος (gûros), can it? As far the relation between the latter two is concerned, I don't find it mentioned anywhere either. 2.202.159.64 02:38, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

They definitely can't be related to the Greek at least. Removed but kept the Celtic for now. The etymology of ker- still strikes me as suspicious in general though. — Ganjabarah (talk) 01:24, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ganjabarah Thanks :) However, regarding the Celtic: What the entry claims is that English "char (3)" and Irish cor are cognates. I'm not sure how that's possible. Does Germanic *k ever conincide with Celtic *k? Whether English ker- is from the Celtic at all is of course another question. 2.202.159.64 19:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

zero point

Requesting etymology, especially for sense 2. — Ganjabarah (talk) 01:18, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

In regard to sense 2, according to this, "Each member of the team will shout 'Zero Point' as they cross over the rope. When the whole team has crossed, all will shout 'one point'", i.e. it apparently refers to the game's scoring system and would be "zero points" in standard English. Mihia (talk) 19:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

The etymology of 'ciŏrać' seems outright wrong

The etymology is given as 'trzić' + -ać, and I've got two questions to do with that:

1. How exactly does 'trzać' become 'ciŏrać'? 🥴
2. Why would an already imperfective verb be suffixed again with an imperfective suffix? That seems counterintuitive unless the end result was a habitual.

vxern (Dorian M. Oszczęda) (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

It's the same as Polish ciorać, which is sourced. It's likely that originally you had a long a there placed from -ać (which often adds vowels). IIRC, Bańkowski also mentions it was a dialectal realization at first. As to -ać being added, forms in Middle Polish such as wijać are attested, these are often frequentative in nature. Vininn126 (talk) 13:29, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I've checked the source, but there is nothing to be found about 'trzeć' there. It just claims that the word was formed the same way 'ziarać' was, but that doesn't explain the initial ciŏr-. vxern (Dorian M. Oszczęda) (talk) 15:15, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I've still addressed your two other points. I'm not curious what other option it could be. Vininn126 (talk) 15:25, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

My question about how 'trzać' became 'ciŏrać' wasn't explained. How did 't' become 'ć', 'rz' become 'r', and where did this random vowel 'ŏ' come from? This is really an abnormal amount of change, I would say. vxern (Dorian M. Oszczęda) (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Did you look at any of the mutations listed at -ać, which shows numerous vowel inserations and consonant mutations, hardening among others. I did link this in my first comment and even said the fact this suffix causes these things in my first comment. I did address it. Vininn126 (talk) 15:37, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I see now. Thanks, it all makes sense now. vxern (Dorian M. Oszczęda) (talk) 15:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

moscabada

Spanish. RFV of the etymology. "From mosca (“fly”) and bada (“bad”). Would also benefit from less encyclopedic content in etymology. Purported definition is also hard to attest. DCDuring (talk) 16:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

"unrefined brown sugar" being "excreted by sugarflies" seems like total nonsense to me. The ety used to be longer, including the claim that this substance is "a great alternative to both wood varnish and it has been known to be used as a substitute for blood in an IV drip". Someone made up some nonsense, I would guess. Mihia (talk) 18:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

It certainly could be nonsense but some animal (also fungal) excretions are eaten: castoreum (beavers), taxea (badgers), and honeydew (aphids, etc.) are examples, though honeydew is usually converted to honey by bees, not eaten by humans directly. I looked for some mention of moscabada with sugarfly/sugar fly without joy. DCDuring (talk) 19:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I hadn't checked but no Spanish translation of bad is bada or has bad as a morpheme AFAICT, so the etymology is highly likely to have been someone's idea of fun. We've had the entry, including this etymology, since 2017. DCDuring (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

More specifically, Wonderfool's idea of fun. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh. DCDuring (talk) 21:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

(out) of

We list an obsolete/dialect sense of of meaning "from", as in, to quote one of the examples, "vapours which ascend forth of the stomach". Is it reasonable that "out of" meaning "(out) from", as in e.g. "Take the chicken out of the freezer", is a modern relic of this sense? Mihia (talk) 18:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

-osa

According to our main dictionary here in the Spanish-speaking countries (RAE) -osa doesn't come from "glucosa" as the Wiktionary article on the suffix, but from the French suffix -ose. 31.177.52.129 13:49, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Ukrainian adverbs in -(ов)о

Hitherto, when a Ukrainian adjective ending in -овий begets an adverb ending in -о (e.g. терміновий → терміново), we have analyzed this in the adverb's etymology section as {{af|uk|терміновий|-о}}, {{af|uk|цілодобовий|-о}} (etc.), because such formations are analytically no different from any other adverb formation where the adverbial suffix -о replaces adjectival ending -ий. This is consistent with our established treatment of, for instance, Belarusian -(ов)ы → -(ов)а, Czech -(ov)ý → -(ov)ě, Polish -(ow)y → -(ow)o, Russian -(ов)ый → (ов)о.

78.37.216.35 (talk) (@78.37.216.35) has rebracketed this formation as {{af|uk|термін|-ово}}, {{af|uk|ці́лий|-o-|доба́|-ово}}, etc, i.e. as a noun suffixed with -ово, and yesterday made this change to almost all such Ukrainian adverbs ending in 'ово', thereby categorizing them in Category:Ukrainian terms suffixed with -ово and removing them from Category:Ukrainian terms suffixed with -о.

I propose that these changes be reverted as they are analytically superfluous, are inconsistent with established practices on Wiktionary, and even subtract value from our entries because we end up losing the link to the root adjective in the etymology section of the adverb. As argued above, XXXовий (adjective) → XXXово (adverb) is just -ий → -о and doesn't differ analytically, orthographically, or in any other respect that I can think of.

I am raising this here for discussion because it would be good to get other contributors' thoughts about how this kind of formation should be treated in etymology sections and etymological categories. I also believe that this question has implications for other rebracketings, e.g. -іст (agent-noun suffix) + -ка (feminine suffix) rebracketed as concatenated suffix -істка. Notifying @Eilaiyas, PhoenicianLetters, PUC, Underfell Flowey, Vininn126 who work on Ukrainian/Slavic word formation and/or may be otherwise interested. Voltaigne (talk) 17:13, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

You are being too polite. I think this is obvious and is not even up for debate, considering all the sources on Ukrainian morphology. It's just that 78.37.216.35 (talk) has been making a lot of incompetent unsourced edits, while ignoring all the warnings and criticism, even after getting blocked 3 times. I would just permablock them already. Eilaiyas (talk) 17:57, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree that this doesn't seem useful. Deriving adverbs from adjectives is the much more straightforward rule, I'm not sure what the point of this would be.

Compound suffixes make sense when they don't necessarily imply the existence of intermediate forms. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 18:39, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Why did he did it? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:13, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Nothing more I can add to this. This IP has added many such bad affixes. Vininn126 (talk) 22:41, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you all. I've gone ahead and reverted the edits in question (x19). Voltaigne (talk) 11:49, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

The same applies to -євий + -о. E.g. суттєво = суттєвий + -о, not суть + -єво (see Special:Diff/84402632). Voltaigne (talk) 10:31, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

κάνθαρος

Could someone take the trouble to clean up the copyvio? Notice has been there since September. See WT:RFC#κάνθαρος for more. DCDuring (talk) 01:27, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done. Somebody might pick out the convoluted Egyptian terms from Bernal’s book, which can be disappointing enough. Fay Freak (talk) 01:43, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Albanian jetë

Rfv for etymology "Related to the participial form of jam and to eshë (“period of time, span, space”)." Exarchus (talk) 19:17, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

урод

RFV of the etymology.

This is supposedly both inherited from Proto-Slavic and reborrowed from Russian. It's not clear what "reborrowed" means here, because there's no indication of the Russian having anything Bulgarian in its history. On top of that, this is said to be an alternative form of ю́род (júrod). A usage note says:

Inherited form ю́род (júrod) is used predominantly in poetic or ecclesiastical context. Russian loanword у́род (úrod) is used in standard (everyday) speech.

The impression I get is that the part of this etymology about inheritance is referring to Bulgarian ю́род (júrod), and only the part about "reborrowing" is referring to Bulgarian урод (urod). The other alternative is that Bulgarian урод (urod) was replaced by borrowing from Russian урод (urod), or maybe it disappeared before the Russian borrowing came in and picked up where it had left off.

Either way, nothing completely adds up between the two Bulgarian and the single Russian entries, and reading them has just left me confused. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:06, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Old Irish “sinnach”

The entry requests a citation for the etymology. Please see “6 Prehistoric layers of loanwords in Old Irish” by David Stifter 2024

“ OIr. sinnach 'fox' is not a substratal loan, but finds a perfectly language-internal explanation in PC *senunako- 'old one', an adjectival formation in

• -ako-from the on-stem *senu, *senon- 'old one', with generalised full grade of the suffix as a morphological marker of high animacy. This is a noa word that replaced the inherited word for the 'fox', probably PC *loperno, for taboo reasons.”

172.56.109.222 17:25, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Stifter really has a remarkable talent for grasping at straws, doesn't he? —Mahāgaja · talk 21:27, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

But *senonakos cannot phonetically yield sinnach; there is nothing to raise the *e. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

True, but are there any other examples of a generalized full grade of a suffix being used as a morphological marker of "high animacy", whatever that is? And then there's calling an animal that's known for being energetic and sprightly "the old one", not to mention applying taboo avoidance to an animal no one is afraid of. Taboo avoidance for lions and tigers and bears and wolves, sure, but foxes? I think Stifter is suffering from male answer syndrome, a pathological inability to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:08, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

In modern Europe, the phrase "old fox" to refer to someone sly with age seems fairly common, but it might not have been the way the Old Irish saw things. Wakuran (talk) 22:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

नकार

RFV of the etymology.

I was unable to find any reference attached to it which says that it was borrowed from Sanskrit as claimed. Moreover, the dictionary of which links are given into the Reference section says it to be of hindi orgin rather than being of sanskrit origin, Help me understand if I am misunderstanding anything

Prishtinë

RFV of the Latin etymology provided for Prishtinë (Albanian name of the capital of Kosovo). A reconciliation and merging with the etymology section of Prishtina (Albanian definite form) is also necessary. – According to Prishtina and Wikipedia: Pristina, the origin is unknown, with several theories coexisting. – Thanks in advance.

рабінавая ноч

I'm not sure I’ve written the etymology for рабінавая ноч correctly, could someone check and improve it?

I took “рѩбинаѩ ночь” from ЭСБМ, but I have the following doubts:

• ЭСБМ says рѩбинаѩ ночь is from Primary Chronicle (written in Chruch Slavonic and not Old East Slavic — although it does say it’s an East Slavic-only word, so I assume it's an Old East Slavic word in Church Slavonic text),
• I'm not sure I'm using the correct ‘normalised’ form of Old East Slavic:
  • Should it be ѩ or ꙗ?
  • I guess it should also have a stress? But I can't put an Old East Slavic stress myself, I don't know the language.
• Also, I'm not sure I can say 'Inherited from Old East Slavic' because there's also Old Belarusian/Ruthenian between them (?)

If someone could check this and fix my mistakes, I would be grateful! Хтосьці (talk) 11:51, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Gizmo

I believe the word gizmo comes from the Arabic "shu ismu" which means, literally, 'what's his name', a phrase that is used in the same way as it is in English when you're not sure what something is called; "can you give me the what's its name".

in Spanish they have the word 'chismo' with the same meaning (along with many other words derived from arabic after the moorish occupation). Also note the Maltese word "x'jismu" meaning "what's its name" - with the same usage DavidMCraig (talk) 18:52, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Apparently Marine/ Navy slang from the 40's. The hypothesis seems unlikely. I don't know about any other 40's Navy slang words from Arabic, and the initial consonant sound shift is unexplained. Wakuran (talk) 19:44, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Do you have source for chismo being used as a Spanish noun? Borrowing from Spanish is more likely than from Arabic, but the sound change from [ˈt͡ʃiz.mo] to [ˈɡɪz.moʊ] remains problematic.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

It might be a mixup with Spanish chisme, which apparently is of unknown origin, itself. Wakuran (talk) 12:34, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

hernani

Looking at this word's origin, I surmised it came from the Basque town of Hernani, though there is no indication of it being a place where textiles were made. Perhaps from the Victor Hugo story Hernani, because the term doesn't seem to predate the play. Maybe a character wore a certain garment? 90.174.3.169 09:03, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/ȷ́aluš

@Exarchus All "descendants" of this are extended with extra lexical suffixes (a velar one in most of them). Is it reasonable to reconstruct an unextended form at the PII level? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Skt. जलूका (jalūkā) / 'jalāyukā' is commonly connected to जरायु (jarāyu, “the cast-off skin of a serpent; outer skin of the embryo”), related to जॄ (jṝ, “to grow old”). Lubotsky (IAIL p.248, jarā́yu) says the Iranian terms are probably borrowed from Indo-Aryan (apparently because of the suffix -ūka, see KEWA at 'jalūkā'). For semantic development (similar appearance is suggested), see Hoffmann's 'Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik' p.101 note 16. Exarchus (talk) 09:32, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

But: Matasovic still suggests the link to Proto-Celtic *gelu- as a possibility. But I'd say this can simply be mentioned at the relevant Indo-Iranian terms, without having to reconstruct a PIIr. term. Exarchus (talk) 09:45, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Ossi

RFV of the etymology, specifically the purported reinterpretation of "Aussie". I do not see any other sources or references claiming this, and the term "Aussie" is not particularly well-known in Germany to begin with. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 13:29, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Duden and DWDS don't mention anything about "Aussie", I see. There's also a hypothesis that the corresponding term "Wessi" is the oldest. Wakuran (talk) 18:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, but neither of these give actual etymologies, rather just surface analyses. So this doesn't mean much. I've adapted our etymology in such a way that the English connection is now in the form of a hypothesis. As such I think it's justified because the expected form would be *Osti. It is true that the English word isn't widely known (and was much less widely known in past), but in the end all you need is someone who heard it and made a joke about it, and it would've started from there. I've converted the "rfv-etym" into an "rfe", because any information from reliable linguistic sources (first attestation etc.) would be appreciated, not just regarding this particular question. 88.65.40.7 00:36, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

PS: The word Ösi (“Austrian”) also belongs to this complex of course. I'd guess that it's younger, but that has to be seen. If it were older, it would likely rule out the English connection. (Would it, though?) 88.65.40.7 00:46, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

"Ami" also belongs to this grouping, I have an attestation for that from 1948, so in use before East and West Germany even existed. So the general concept of clipping with -i was an established pattern - like in "Mutti", which is also older.

I'm having a hard time finding early attestations - until just before the Wende years, basically all the attestations in the DWDS corpus are personal names and nicknames. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 01:49, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Clipping with -i is extremely widespread in German, and there's no reason to think that Ossi and Wessi have any interesting etymology beyond their surface analyses. There are also plenty of examples of clippings that unexpectedly lose consonants, e.g. Kugel(schreiber) → Kuli and Musk(el) → Mucki. So the loss of the t from Westen and Osten (as well as Österreicher in Ösi) is also nothing to be surprised at. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

There are also plenty of examples of clippings that unexpectedly lose consonants

The root is Proto-Indo-European *h₂ews- and the underlying prosodic syllables are /ˈɔsˌtən/. In terms of Olav Hackstein's Iceberg Effects it is lamentable that modern linguistic theories "largely converge in regarding the synchrony and the diachrony of a human language as separate entities" (Studies on Language Change in Honor of Don Ringe, Kim et al. 2024).

there's no reason to think that Ossi and Wessi have any interesting etymology beyond their surface analyses

German Low German Oss or Osse (“ox”), Brandenburg-Berlinisches Wörterbuch (Gansleweit, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig: 1994), is cognate to German Ochse and an insult (in my experience). Existing earlier, it could be influential to the offensiveness of Ossi in the 1970's and earlier. If this is correct, the etymology of aurochs has one hypothesis relating the first part to the root of east.

e.g. Kugel(schreiber) → Kuli

The etymology of Kugel and Upper German kūle in relation to Kuhle is uncertain. Kuli is a pathologic corner case.

and Musk(el) → Mucki

Good point! English has muh guns (“bizeps”). How about that?

They say muscle is related to mouse. Mucks is somehow said of mice, mucksmäuschenstill. Muckel is generally a pet name. Ancient Greek μῦς (mûs) + γᾰλέη (găléē) → μυγαλέη (mugaléē, “shrew”) may be quite regular.

Plurale tantum Mäuse and Mücken and singular Moos (“money”) are synonym slang. The latter is apparently Yiddish. Mücke and Latin musca (“mosquito”) pattern in the same way. The differences between *múHs and *mews- and *mew- are one metathesis away from **meHw- such that Cowgill's Law might apply as for Âken ← *néh₂us, but this is controversial. Musculature is part of the motor apparatus, Latin moveo, note German Low German mucksen (“to move”), but that was not the question. This is obviously not a proper argument to suggest that Muckis (“muscles”) derived from a different word, e.g. *maganą, Middle High German mugen (“strong”), when Latin muscula would become German Muschel (mussel, seashell), but it is amusing: Mucke also means music. It remains mysterius as a language myth.

Clipping with -i is extremely widespread in German

Handy is an egregious example of that. Pulli also is an English loan. Schoki is precedented by cacao / cocoa and Alemannic German Schoggi shows the short vowel. Tausi is correctly Taui broken at the syllabary boundary as /z/ marks syllable onset, but it is reminiscent of the English change from -ende to -ing: Early Modern High German Tausing, Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch[1]. Sozi, plural Sozen, shows that its formation is different from Nazi, plural Nazis. Speaking of nepotism (Sippe, versippt → linksgrünversifft, affricate in Norse sifjar), Old Norse nefi, nephew and diminutive Dutch neefje do resemble Proto-Germanic *-į̄, German Neffe rarely feminine, *-ō recalls vocative, and Neffchen (other than Neffle) like plantje and Pflänzchen may be related by de-/voicing, like -ich / -ig and -y. This is wrong, I guess, but the gist of it is borne out by Schwengel over Schwanni with etymological velar in schwanken against a probably West-Slavic -ek, -ik, Proto-Slavic *-ъkъ, -ak, *-akъ in Schwannek (Hustensaft Jüngling[2]), and perhaps rote Socke (socialist).

TL;DR: I am cherry picking and you surely are not mistaken that -i is productive. I have shown that the etymology has to be probed in each case. The category currently is a waste basket mixing upto three different definitions and clipping is just a minor part of it. SmeaShmea (talk) 03:36, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

David

For the last 9 years, this article has said that this name in Portuguese is an unadapted borrowing from English. This seems to be mostly true in Brazil (which is why I didn't replace that etymology), but inaccurate for the rest of the Portuguese speaking world.

David is a biblical name, from the catholic saint and king of Israel. It may be an "unadapted borrowing" because Portuguese doesn't have, in fact, any common noun ending in "d", but I seriously doubt there was any prominent devotion to the king of Wales throughout the history of Portugal, outside of noble environments and international merchants. Surely this name is, in most cases, taken directly from the Hebrew David, possibly through Latin "David". In the early history of Portugal there was a 11th century man called "Sisnando Davidiz" (son of David), a Mozarab ruler and therefore a speaker of an early Iberian Romance language with Arabic influence. Other than that, there are thousands of archives for free in Portugal's digital archives that show lots of people with first name and surname "David" going back to at least the early 1700s, defying the etymology on the entry for "Davi" that implies it has been the global Portugal standard since the Middle Ages.

Literary citation: Os Lusíadas, 1572 (https://pt.wikisource.org/wiki/Os_Lvsiadas/I)

page 24, I (71) "Tamanho o odio foy, & a mà vontade, Que aos eſtrangeiros ſupito tomou, Sabendo ſer ſequaces da verdade, Que o filho de Dauid nos enſinou, Os ſegredos daquella Eternidade A quem juyzo algum não alcançou." (son of David)

Ortographic Agreement of 1945: "As consoantes finais b, c, d, g e t mantêm-se, quer sejam mudas, quer proferidas, nas formas onomásticas em que o uso as consagrou, nomeadamente antropónimos e topónimos da tradição bíblica: Jacob, Job, Moab; Isaac; David, Gad; Gog, Magog; Bensabat, Josafat." (final consonants are kept in names where recurring use has legitimated them, namely biblical names)

Ortographic Agreement of 1990: "As consoantes finais grafadas b, c, d, g e t mantêm-se, quer sejam mudas quer proferidas nas formas onomásticas em que o uso as consagrou, nomeadamente antropónimos e topónimos a tradição bíblica: Jacob, Job, Moab, Isaac, David, Gad; Gog, Magog; Bensabat, Josafat." (same thing)

Essentially, while "David" pronounced [dejˈvi.d͡ʒi] undoubtedly comes from English, it's a relatively recent etymology and exclusive to Brazil, possibly coming from American/British media consumption or 19th/20th century immigration. What Brazilian Portuguese speakers may write as "Davi" or "Davide", in reference to the legendary king of Israel or to derivated terms in other European languages, is written as "David" everywhere else. Therefore, the likely Latin/Hebrew borrowing is the oldest and more established borrowing in the Portuguese language, and due to its portuguese pronounciation [dɐˈvi.ðɨ] the only variant that's legitimized as Portuguese by the Ortographic Agreement of 1990 between all the Portuguese speaking countries. Stylianius1 (talk) 17:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

defying the etymology on the entry for "Davi" that implies it has been the global Portugal standard since the Middle Ages.

There is a joke for you, translated from German: In sunday school the preacher asks one after another for their name. I'm Hannes. No it is Johannes. Sepp. No, it is Joseph. And you, my son? Kurt. No, it is Yoghurt. :-) SmeaShmea (talk) 21:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Inasmuch as uses of the name occur in Brazilian Portuguese, other than by code-switching, they can (depending on the particulars) have been an unadopted borrowing from umpteen languages, not only English and Latin, but also Albanian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Maltese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Undoubtedly, like in French, European Portuguese David comes from Latin. Etymologically, the main question is whether this form is attested in Galician–Portuguese. If not, it may have been a more learned borrowing.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:20, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Portuguese eis

The Portuguese entry says it's from Latin, while Arabic ها has it as descendant... Exarchus (talk) 20:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Fixed. Nicodene (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Boaz

RFV of the etymology. See בועז — This comment was unsigned.

Is this a serious request? Can there be any doubt the English proper noun comes from the Hebrew proper noun? — This comment was unsigned.

Maybe OP meant to RFV the Hebrew word's etymology instead? A quick search for references (for the English name) finds me the Dictionary of American Family Names confirming that the English surname derives from the English given name which derives from the Hebrew given name, but it says the Hebrew given name is "of uncertain etymology". - -sche (discuss) 19:04, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

sucrer les fraises

C'est à la toute fin du XIXe que cette expression est apparue bien qu'elle ait été popularisée au XXe. Elle trouve son origine d'un rapprochement entre le fait de secouer sa cuillère à sucre pour en verser sur les fraises et les tremblements qui agitent les membres d'une personne âgée. 92.184.110.8 11:50, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Tu peux ajouter ces détails à la page même (en Anglais !), si ton idée était de trouver ici un quelconque assentiment. Saumache (talk) 18:56, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

athazagoraphobia

one of the novelty -phobia words for which there's probably no hope of tracing back to an original coiner. the makeup is very confusing: people have theorized that this might be a- +‎ Ancient Greek θαζός (thazós, “seated [3]”) +‎ Ancient Greek ἀγορά (agorá, “place of public gathering”) +‎ -phobia, so "a fear of not being seated in the place of public gathering", which, on top of being very cumbersome, i also find extremely unlikely ragweed theater _{talk, user} 01:03, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

This “looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter”.^[4]  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:40, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

In any event smartypants attestably use the term. We don't usually do very well with sense development even between languages, let alone within one. That said, I am not sure how combining a-, thazo-, and agora leads to "fear of being forgotten or ignored". Is a "seat in the 'agora'" simple a metaphor for "place in society" or "seat at the table"? DCDuring (talk) 16:48, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Even if the originally intended meaning was "fear of not having a seat in the assembly" (where people in Ancient Greek times would normally have been standing), the pseudo-intellectual who invented this was not a scholar of Ancient Greek. Since θαζός is an adjective, the meaning of ἄθαζος (athazos) would be "unseated" and an ἄθαζη ἀγορά would be an unseated assembly. The meaning of ἄθαζη ἀγορά + -φοβία would be: "fear of unseated assemblies".  ​‑‑Lambiam 18:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

in any case i think that the proposed derivation from that reddit post is unlikely, that is, i don't really think it could be plausibly linked from θαζός (thazós), so any further discussion along this line might be fruitless. afaik θαζός isn't really a well-known word that neoclassical coiners might immediately resort to. i don't have a better etymology though. our best bet at finding a clue might be if we can locate the original coiner of this term, though i'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

Lambiam is certainly right that the word formation is nonclassical and that the word was probably an idle coinage, but the word probably wouldn't have been directly formed on the phrase ἄθαζη ἀγορά: that's not really how most of the neoclassical compounds in english are formed. thaz- should just be seen as a combining form extracted from θαζός (if it was from θαζός at all) ragweed theater _{talk, user} 09:03, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I would still remain “fear of un-seated-assembly”, wouldn’t it?  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:01, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

not if you choose to assume for whatever reason that thaz- is a verbal stem; then there really isn't anything specifying the theta-role of "assembly" in relation to "seated/sitting" in a compound like this. if the original coiner did derive this word from θαζός (which, again, i'm really dubious about) they could have meant "fear of not-sitting-in-assembly" ragweed theater _{talk, user} 10:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

what is the etymology of θαζός (thazós) anyway? the only information i can find about this word is from Liddell & Scott ragweed theater _{talk, user} 10:28, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

According to L&S this, as well as a verb θάζω, occur in the Cyropaedia, but I have been unable to spot it.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:28, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Latin from Greek, or Greek from Latin?

Translingual Intybus says:

Latin intybus (“endive”), intubus, forms of intĭbus, from intĭbum, intybum, from Ancient Greek ἔντυβον.

Ancient Greek ἔντυβον says:

From Latin intibus (“endive”), itself probably from a Semitic source.

This has the appearance of a circularity.

Beekes has ἔντυβον as a loanword from Latin and writes “The Latin word seems to be a loan from Semitic (see Andre 1956: 170, Hiltbrunner 1958: 174-177, and Hiltbrunner Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen 197 (1960): 22f.).” De Vaan is mum.  ​‑‑Lambiam 05:58, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

De Vaan doesn't include loanwords, so that isn't surprising. Ernout and Meillet also cites André and says the Greek is probably derived from Latin.--Urszag (talk) 07:50, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I've changed it so that it now says: “..., forms of intĭbus, a Semitic borrowing”.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Rightly so. There were a lot of foreign language forms, distributions and thus relations to gather over the years, from materials likewise not decircularized without expensive intellectual conclusions, especially on ἐντύβιον (entúbion) and هِنْدِبَاء (hindibāʔ) by me, so the translingual entry was missed on my side, though I stress not being responsible for isolated entries being left over wrong either, sketching the general picture. Fay Freak (talk) 04:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I would expect Classical Latin "y" to be used only to represent Ancient Greek υ/Υ. Perhaps there was some sort of reborrowing involved. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it's not clear that the word did have "y" in Classical Latin. Lewis and Short cites "torpenti grata palato intyba" from manuscripts of Columella, but that doesn't prove that this spelling was used in his time.--Urszag (talk) 05:59, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The Romans, even in the Classical era, were not above Greekifying the spelling of a word they believed to be of Greek origin, even if it wasn't, e.g. pulcher. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:18, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The -y- could be a hypercorrection, as in Աքիւլլէս (Akʻiwllēs). Vahag (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

anggap

What's the source for the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian reconstruction *a(ŋ)ɡəp? Alfarizi M (talk) 05:02, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, I have found it. Alfarizi M (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

to "talk shop"

The current definition of "talk shop" says simply "to discuss one's work, business or profession". I think it is (always, necessarily) narrower than this. If I describe how well my work went today, then as far as I know, I'm not talking shop. I think it isn't even talking shop if I describe my boss's management style. Talking shop is discussing things that are very specific to the kind of work I do, such that people outside my field will not be able to understand. Isn't it? TooManyFingers (talk) 08:02, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it's more a matter of talking about work-related matters that others from outside their "work, business, or profession" are unlikely to care about. DCDuring (talk) 12:56, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I augmented the def to cover it. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:04, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

crape myrtle

Why crape? Comparing some part of the plant to thin pancakes? 🤔 - -sche (discuss) 19:00, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Or thin, crinkly silk. Wikipedia says, Flowers are borne in summer and autumn in panicles of crinkled flowers with a crêpe-like texture. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:03, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I've changed the image to make the "crinkle" more visible, but clicking to enlarge the image may be neccesary. DCDuring (talk) 13:07, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

whomst'd've'ly'yaint'nt'ed'ies's'y'es

Can we add this as a humorous extension of whom? or does whomst'd've'ly'yaint'nt'ed'ies's'y'es mean something else? 38.43.33.153 01:28, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Not likely to be attestable. See WT:ATTEST. DCDuring (talk) 12:58, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Well you can find it in urban dictionary, reddit, facebook, etc., 38.43.33.153 18:10, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

That's insufficient for our purposes. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:41, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Ok. Why? 38.43.33.153 18:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion, we generally require "use in durably archived media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year". Websites like Facebook, Reddit, and Urban Dictionary are not regarded as being durably archived media, the first two because they can't be readily archived, and the latter because it is a crowdsourced work that is completely unmoderated (basically, people can make up stuff). Anyway, this "word" has been deleted twice in the past as a "creative invention or protologism". — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:37, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Moreover, we distinguish between use and mention. Mentions in dictionaries do not count as uses.  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:54, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

ↀ

According to this article I found, ↀ is borrowed from the Etruscan crosshairs symbol ⨁ or the rotated version ⨂, which represented 1000 at the time. This video also explains the etymology as well as other roman numerals, using said article as a reference (though oddly the creator stated the reference in the comments section but not in the description). HyperAnd (talk) 08:52, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I've changed the pseudo etymology and added a book source. The book cites Keyser, so it is a secondary source.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:20, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

ⅭⅠↃ should also be fixed, because I don't know how to add sources... HyperAnd (talk) 10:54, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured it out HyperAnd (talk) 11:47, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

⊕ is not an Etruscan sign, neither ⨁ nor ⨂. Etruscan is a difficult topic for sure, as Michael Weiss says, there are few good ones in this field and very little is certain. One reason to be sceptical is the Attic numeral Χ(ΙΛΙΟΙ) "1000". If it is borrowed, it is usually difficult to decide who borrowed from whom. Phoenician 𐤈 ⟨ṭ⟩ had a more general meaning "mark" (further references in the Phoenician-Punic dictionary by Krahmalkov). Etruscan 𐌈 derives from it via Euboean Greek. Its meaning "wheel" in Semitic tradition is interesting, because at least Linear B 𐀏 ⟨ka⟩ /k kʰ/. For the sake of the argument it suffices to challenge that theta simplified to a single stroke instead of a cross precisely not in Etruscan, so the development of ↀ is also unlikely to be thought there. Green Greek boxed "window"-ksi (n.b. Wikipedia's Roman Numerals speaks of "a box or circle") and Etruscan 𐌎, as an otherwise unused remnant in abecedaries, against equivalent red Greek, Etruscan and Roman X vis-à-vis blue Greek chi rather supports the precedent of χίλιοι by association. Just my two cents. SmeaShmea (talk) 20:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Huh, seems like it's disputed. It's probably best to import the two theories from Wikipedia along with the references (it also cites Paul Keyser, should've check Wikipedia...). If they are other theories, add them along their references. HyperAnd (talk) 21:37, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

*Ar-, armağan

are there any other turkic languages with words from this root? I do not know of any Zbutie3.14 (talk) 19:15, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

According to Nişanyan this comes from pre-Anatolian Oğuz Turkish yarmak + -an, in which yarmak is a noun meaning “money”, said to be considered (by Gerard Clauson in An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish) possibly a Persian loan. Unfortunately, the candidate Persian etymon is not revealed.  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:21, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll edit the etymology and add the sources Zbutie3.14 (talk) 23:48, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

obliegen (German)

I bet it's derived from obligo, exploiting the similarity of the German word to the Latin one. — This unsigned comment was added by 2a00:16e0:1013:c45e:5d17:189a:c72e:2aef (talk) at 16:06, 31 March 2025 (UTC).

No, it's from Old High German oba liggan (“to lie on top of”), but it's possible the surface similarity to Latin obligō exerted a certain influence on the semantics. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:35, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

That's actually interesting. As a native speaker I would never have made that connection. It's clear that it is from "liegen" (to lie) because it has that conjugation (oblag, oblegen). But who knows maybe someone did at some point. Pfeifer says, however, that it is in fact a Latin loan translation, but not of "obligere", but rather of "incumbere". 84.57.154.5 13:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

In sense 1. The similarity dumb founded me and I cannot think of obliged in a way that is a good fit to add. Indeed, the entry already has “to be incumbent upon (someone)”, which means “imposed on one as an obligation”. It is problematic, specially in negative statements.

More information

1. “Es obliegt ihm nicht, die Entscheidungen der Gerichte allgemein auf die Richtigkeit der getroffenen tatsächlichen Feststellungen und der daraus gezogene Schlüsse zu kontrollieren;” Verfassungsrechtsprechung in der Bundesrepublik (1956, Friedrich Giese). “[E]s obliegt ihm nicht, die Dinge zu verbessern ...;” die Diagnose (in a translation of Michel Foucault manuscripts).
2. “Die Auslegung und Anwendung des § 114 ZPO obliegt in erster Linie den zuständigen Fachgerichten ...” 1 BvR 2076/03 (29th Dec 2005, Bundesverfassungsgericht).

• Summary: 798 hits out of 9187 court decisions (ca. 10 %) : No results for "Es obliegt ihm nicht" (0 %), which is common vernacular in plenty of books (?).
• Caveat: ngrams gives nothing despite the book results, so there is no reason to trust the results when search is targeted at a web-site. It finds one result for "nicht obliegt" however (BVerfG, Beschluss des Zweiten Senats vom 17. Juni 2004 - 2 BvR 383/03 -, Rn. 255).

For reference: Foucault begins, “Schon seit einiger Zeit [...] hat die Philosophie zum Teil eine Aufgabe bekommen [Fr. reçu une tâche], die ihr bislang nicht vertraut war: die Aufgabe zu diagnostizieren”—Philosophy got a task and the phrase in question details this, "il ne lui appartient ni d’améliorer les choses" (Foucault, 1966, p. 8 [Ewald et al., 2023]). I would agree with concern anyway.

There is a participle-like to be concerned and passive-like it does not concern him. The in- / transitive distinction liegen / legen (lie / lay) seems to be vulnerable. SmeaShmea (talk) 17:57, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Interestingly, we have related *uberlagjaną, überlegen (“to concider”) not confirmed by Gothic or Old Norse, but Old English. SmeaShmea (talk) 20:30, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I really have no idea what you're saying and I did read all of it (which you generally cannot expect with such a long edit). No offence intended at all, but you have to be more to the point in these forums. 84.57.154.5 22:01, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

If you take the quotations and discussions out of it, as I have now, it is not very long. The conclusion leads to a comparison, but the contrastive grammar in the pre-text does not lead to the pre-determined conclusion. In hindsight, it might need a little help. The argument seems to be able to support a common West-Germanic origin. SmeaShmea (talk) 21:41, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

Manhattanhenge

Given the existence of the entry -henge, is the present etymology for Manhattanhenge as a blend word valid? It could be valid, if for example, the coinage predates the affix. Inqilābī 11:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there evidence for a -henge neologism that predates Manhattanhenge? Nicodene (talk) 16:28, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Nominalizations of feminine forms of Ukrainian adjectives (англійська, білоруська, поліцейська, російська, українська, чеська)

91.122.22.140 (talk) (@91.122.22.140) has added distinct etymologies to the noun entries of all of the above, analyzing them as (Англія/Білорусь/поліція, etc.) + -ська.

It seems clear to me that they are nominalizations of the feminine inflectional forms of the respective adjectives (англійський, білоруський, поліцейський, etc.) and are not independently formed by the addition of a suffix. The names for languages are all ellipses of 'XXXська (adjective) мова'. Thus these noun entries should not have distinct etymology sections or their etymology sections should refer the reader to the parent adjective. What do others think?

P.S., I note the similarity of this IP address's work on Ukrainian suffixes to that of 78.37.216.35 (talk), which is currently blocked. For all of the edits in question (here, here, here, here, here and here), the edit summary was given as "Minor editing". Notifying @Eilaiyas, PhoenicianLetters, PUC, Vininn126 who recently participated in a related discussion. See also Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Non-English#-ська. Voltaigne (talk) 09:31, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

They are clearly not two distinct etymologies. That being said, the way we want to present the etymology is something to be discussed perhaps, but should be one etymology. This IP needs to slow down, they are making a mess. Vininn126 (talk) 09:35, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

They are etymologizing non lemma forms and have a weird way of analyzing word-formation, see here. Most of their edits are badly formated, flawed; in my opinion, better fast reverting their work. Saumache (talk) 10:09, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out підозрювана. кохана too. It feels like a game of whack-a-mole at the minute. Voltaigne (talk) 10:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

dürfen/tharf

Hello, I think dürfen (German: dürfen) needs some improvement:

• English tharf leads to an entry not related (different etymology/meaning)
• The Middle English entry seems related though.
• The descendents of the ME entry in turns lead to English thair, the entries of which however are not related (different etymology/meaning)

2A02:3100:6018:1200:4496:6B2F:1022:EC52 12:39, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

This means that the language code of the cognate cited in the German entry must be changed from "en" (English) to "enm" (Middle English). The rest is not problematic for the time being. (If the Modern English descent "thair" exists, it should be created. If not, it should be removed in the Middle English entry.) 84.57.154.5 13:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

There exists a related Scots entry for "thair", though. Maybe it's found in some English dialects. Wakuran (talk) 13:34, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

The etymology of this is missing: thiazolidinedione

From Wiktionary. 172.110.60.34 17:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Malay/Indonesian ubah

Etymology is given as coming from non-existent Sanskrit उभा (ubhā, “to erect”). Added by IP user. Exarchus (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Are the Prakrit and Sanskrit forms in tembaga correct? Just making sure. Alfarizi M (talk) 03:43, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Nevermind, both are correct. Alfarizi M (talk) 03:48, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Sundanese cau

Meaning "banana (the fruit)". Is it possible that the etymology can be traced back as a loanword from an Austroasiatic language (e.g. Khmer, Viet)? After all, I did found some phonetic similarities similarities in Khmer ចេក (ceek), Vietnamese chuối (which is inherited from Proto-Vietic *caːjʔ ~ *cɔːjʔ (“banana”)), Semai jai (“wild banana”). Udaradingin (talk) 09:50, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

PS: I also found a lemma that might correspond to this hypothesis, *ɟuuʔ ("wild banana") from Shorto's comparative dictionary. Udaradingin (talk) 10:01, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

cynegetic

RFV of the etymology.

• Borrowed from Greek κυνηγετικός (kynigetikós, “of or relating to hunting”).

The spelling and pronunciation suggest this came from Ancient Greek via Latin and/or a Romance language. While apparently in Classical Latin only the noun cynegetica and proper noun Cynegetica are attested, their existence shows that the Ancient Greek word was known to Latin speakers in Classical times. Even if we exclude Latin, the people who borrowed the term into English would be far more likely to be familiar with Ancient Greek than Modern Greek. See also Catalan cinegètic, French cynégétique, Italian cinegetico, and Spanish cinegético. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:50, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I would consider it a given that it isn't from Modern Greek. With the Latin intermediate: In the "Latin World" (Catholic and Protestant countries), Ancient Greek borrowings go through Latin by default. Exceptions of course do exist, but it's these direct borrowings that need to be proved in my opinion - unless perhaps if it's a rather recent borrowing (post ca. 1850). Do you know when it was first attested in English and/or the other languages you mention? 84.57.154.5 22:08, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: I suppose it could be a learned borrowing directly into English from Ancient Greek. The OED indicates it is a modern borrowing (nothing earlier than 1716 indicated) from "Greek", but I think that work does not have a practice of distinguishing between modern and ancient Greek. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:25, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I should mention that the noun cynegetics is attested to Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646): "There are extant of his in Greeke, foure bookes of Cynegeticks or venation." Could the adjective be a back-formation from the noun? — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:32, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Possibly, but there are many possible pathways. The form cynegetical is attested in 1829;^[5]. This might have been formed in analogy to Ethicks^[6] and ethical. Then cynegetic might be derived from it by dropping -al. It could also be a borrowing of French cynégétique, attested in 1750.^[7] There are quite a few classical books known by the title Cynegeticus (not only by Xenophon), abbreviated in many older texts as "Cynegetic.", which makes finding early attestations of the adjective cynegetic virtually impossible.  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:08, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

bylaczenie

RFV of the etymology. it's not clear the stem could be "onomatopoeic" of what. in any case, english wikipedia cites this etymology-- if this is correct, it wouldn't be onomatopoeic ragweed theater _{talk, user} 21:13, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I already updated the etymology. Vininn126 (talk) 22:01, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

But your version doesn't explain what "bylacz-" is. Perhaps you could make it clearer. -- Unrelatedly, I don't think that the merger was actually [w] > [l], but rather [ɫ] > [l]. 84.57.154.5 22:20, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

We could supplement it further. by is likely added for pronunciation, and -cza- is the result of -kać. I'm really not sure it's necessary, though. Does the page mentions [w]? Vininn126 (talk) 22:43, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

i've expanded the etymology, with a couple more sources. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 19:06, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

this is true. i've rewritten the definition ragweed theater _{talk, user} 19:17, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

alce

Etymology 1 (“elk” sense) is cited (from Latin alcē), but I could not find anything about Etymology 2 (the name of a mythological creature). J3133 (talk) 05:22, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

the obvious etymon seems to be Ancient Greek ἀλκή (alkḗ, “courage, prowess”), but i can't find a source for this ragweed theater _{talk, user} 12:33, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@Ragweed-theater: On that account, I have added “Possibly from Ancient Greek ἀλκή (alkḗ, “courage, prowess”)”. J3133 (talk) 05:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

It’s probably from D&D. Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:29, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Tollef Salemann: As you can see in the quotations, it antedates D&D and was originally used in heraldry. J3133 (talk) 05:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

беґель

Pannonian Rusyn term meaning canal that I haven't added yet. Pretty much synonymous with канал (kanal) in the sense of the waterway. Ruske Slovo (the main website consisting of Pannonian Rusyn writings) suggests that this term is only marginally less common than канал (kanal), despite the latter being the internationalism (and also the only term of the two used for YouTube channels).

I looked at Hungarian bögöly, but that doesn't really make sense. Couldn't find any sort of *begelj in Serbo-Croatian either. Maybe it could be some sort of German loanword? Although the -ль (-lʹ) would be hard to explain, since this isn't East Slavic. No cognate in Carpathian Rusyn either from a cursory search.

I don't know if this helps, but while most commonly the singular genitive form is беґелю (begelju) or беґеля (begelja), in Kocur they use беґлю (beglju) or беґля (beglja) instead. Looking into the possibility that this is some sort of back-formation like ґомбовец (gombovec), but not coming up with anything super conclusive at the moment.

I found a reservoir in Bulgaria called "Beglika", but 1) I couldn't find the etymology of that anywhere and 2) I'm really not sure that it's relevant. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:36, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

And yes, I have considered the possibility of the "to run" root, but in Pannonian that's бег- (beh-) and not беґ- (beg-), and there are no recorded cases from my personal experience of an h-g alternation, only h-ž. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:45, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Said to be from German Pegel. Vahag (talk) 10:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Still semantically quite challenging. Also, a few lines above on the same page it suggests that андя (andja, “aunt; sister in law”) comes from Hungarian anya (“mother”), when in reality it almost certainly comes from ángy (“sister in law”). So I don't know if I'd trust this source anymore than any other. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 10:40, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if it helps, but the first appearance is in reference to the Danube–Tisa–Danube Canal. Vahag (talk) 12:38, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Note the final Ъ instead of Ь. Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:45, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

That's probably a typo. Note беґель 13 lines below and also in the same author's dictionary. Vahag (talk) 12:57, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I don’t find it semantically challenging. It probably was metonymical for a lock, Schleuse, where you had to gauge the depth with the Pegel (“level”), so you waited for either to allow you passage, then by extension a canal. Fay Freak (talk) 12:54, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083, at беґель (begelʹ) you derive it from Carpathian Rusyn. Why? Carpathian Rusyn doesn't seem to be even attested. Vahag (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan The source you listed originally is in Ukrainian and lists dialectal words in Carpathian Rusyn... have you mixed up your Rusyns? Two lines below the беґель (begelʹ) line from the source you linked, it mentions something закарпатських (zakarpatsʹkyx). And one line above беґель (begelʹ), it mentions a word бачі (bači). The letter і (i) is not used in Pannonian at all; Pannonian has the word бачи (bači) instead. Also, I've checked the Old Slovak database and found no record of any *begeľ, so it must have come from Carpathian. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 15:51, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083: you misunderstood. The source I listed is a supplement of Ukrainian dialectal words by Gorbach to {{R:uk:EDUL}}. Ukrainians consider both Pannonian and Carpathian Rusyn dialects of Ukrainian. Gorbach got беґель from Gnatiuk's glossary of Bačka Rusyn words. So, беґель exists only in what you call Pannonian Rusyn. Vahag (talk) 16:01, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Even so, I struggle to find it credible that Pannonian got it directly from German. From my time trawling through Pannonian content, all words with ль (lʹ) either derive from Hungarian (e.g. Михалько (Mixalʹko) from Mihálykó), Proto-Slavic (e.g. -тель (-telʹ)) and/or from Serbo-Croatian (e.g. озбильно (ozbilʹno), from озбиљно / ozbiljno). In which case, we return to the original question that I had posed. Even if we assume that it came from German Pegel, I really think there needs to have been some sort of intermediate that would've inserted the palatal consonant. And yet, like I mentioned earlier, I couldn't find any record of a *begelj, beyond apparently a Slovene surname. And Hungarian bögöly doesn't make sense. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:22, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't know. In any case, you should remove the Carpathian Rusyn term. No such thing is attested. Vahag (talk) 16:39, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, like I mentioned in my original comment earlier, 99.9% of the time Pannonian doesn't derive loanwords from western European languages with ль (lʹ), in line with both Slovak and Serbo-Croatian tradition. East Slavic does, hence Belarusian and Ukrainian фільм (filʹm) vis-a-vis Pannonian Rusyn and Serbo-Croatian филм and Slovak film. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:01, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

dwarves

It is stated on the page for dwarves that it originated as a misspelling, which seems to be quite prescriptivist and unscientific and thus not useful for a descriptivist dictionary. Squidboy85 (talk) 00:21, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Calling it a misspelling isn't prescriptivist in the linguistic sense, since orthography isn't part of language (even the most vehemently descriptivist linguistics professor in the world wouldn't accept a student's term paper that mixes up there, their and they're or its and it's); but it is misleading, because the form dwarves suggests a different pronunciation from dwarfs and is therefore not just a matter of spelling. I don't know about the pre-Tolkien authors quoted on the page, but Tolkien himself was certainly well aware that the standard plural is dwarfs and used the form dwarves quite deliberately to make it look more Olde Englyssh-y. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:51, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

You said it better than I did. This is part of the reason that I think that section of the article should be verified or rewritten. Dwarves also is more in-line with the other plurals of nouns in English that end in "f" (e.g. wolves, elves, or leaves)(though it should also be taken into account that even Tolkien (I think) himself said that Old English dweorgas (the plural of dweorg) would have evolved into Modern English dwarrows). Squidboy85 (talk) 10:27, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I just replaced the usage note with a pointer to the usage note at dwarf, which seems to explain things better. - -sche (discuss) 17:43, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Ynys Echni

The Welsh name for w:Flat Holm is Ynys Echni. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru has no listing, so I am considering a loanword, specifically from Latin echinus (“sea urchin”). Welsh does not have a genuine native name for this since môr-ddraenog is imitated from English, so a borrowing from Latin would be understandable. Thus Urchin Island. Thoughts? 24.108.0.44 01:38, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there any evidence for this hypothesis? Do we know what the Latin name was? Echni would not be the expected outcome of a loanword from Latin echīnus to Welsh anyway; Egin would be more likely. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:39, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

乪

Why are the Mandarin and Cantonese so different? What did the MC form sound like? 84.70.38.26 14:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I might just be speculating here, but is it necessary they would derive from the same root word, just because they share the same hanzi? Wakuran (talk) 21:13, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I dont know, always afaik. 85.255.236.152 12:40, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Also this isn't Japanese so yeah probably. 85.255.232.20 14:12, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Japanese didn't really have its own writing, originally, so it has also imported characters for their meaning, adapting them to its native vocabulary. Wakuran (talk) 17:38, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Are there any examples? 84.70.38.26 19:21, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

In Japanese it is called ateji, but this apllies usually when the words have no common meaning. The Japanese Go-on なう ← nau is suggestive of an MC loan that is akin to náng. Yet there is no MC entered and no etymology? That's the basic question and it does not leave much for speculation.

In Chinese we speak broadly of borrowing, e.g. 套:

Originally written as 𡘷. It was later borrowed for the “cover; cover with, put on (clothes); link” sense and has now lost its original meaning.

We are left wondering, what was the original meaning? It is one half of 河套 (hétào, “meander, bend in a river”). Maybe its onset was similar to 田 (OC *l'iːŋ). SmeaShmea (talk) 21:41, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I was here to know about how the Cantonese reading came about. 84.70.38.26 14:07, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm sure you weren't asking about Japanese.

I believe that the alternative Minanese pronounciation of 田 *C (ch, ch, chh) is relevant, that's why I mention it, but I have no reason to believe it was a direct influence. The thing is, if 乪 「náng」 乪 「kek6」 however not inherited from the same Middle Chinese pronunciation, they would belong in different etymology sections or different pronunciation sections, mutatis mutandis. SmeaShmea (talk) 23:13, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Northern Min (KCR): dîng

Eastern Min (BUC): dièng

Puxian Min (Pouseng Ping'ing): deng2

Southern Min

(Hokkien, POJ): tiân

(Teochew, Peng'im): tiêng5 / tiang5 that's relitivally similar to tian/tin nang/kek it's like comparing English river and German Fluß which I think is related to English fleet. 84.70.38.26 14:39, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Will you respond? 84.70.38.26 19:34, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

sinistrorsus et dextrorsus

Rather a RFConsideration than RFVerification. I would think that more than from LA versus, it could come from LA torsus, perfect active torsi, or participe tortus, from torquere, through haplology sinist[e]r[ot]orsus. Could it be? ※Sobreira ◣◥ 〒 @「parlez」 20:39, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

It is definitely from vorsus (the old form of versus). Lewis and Short notes that dextrovorsum and dextroversum are attested as variants of dextrorsus. There are other similarly formed adverbs with consonants other than -tr- before -ōrsus/orsus, such as prōrsus, deorsus, as well as many others ending in -rsum which you can see listed under derived terms at vorsum. Loss of -v- between vowels (followed by contraction of the two vowels to a single long vowel) was a fairly common change in Latin, and is hypothesized to have been regular when the first and second vowel had the same quality, which would be the case in dextrōvorsus and sinistrōvorsus.--Urszag (talk) 21:04, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The form dextrovorsum is actually attested: Curculio 1.1.70: Si deos salutas, dextrovorsum censeo.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:11, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Biao terms borrowed from Cantonese and Category:Biao terms derived from Chinese

I've skimmed over the entries in the categories, and while it's obvious they all have a Sinitic origin, I think neither categories are appropriate. Some of the features seen in Biao loans, e.g. /tʰ/ in thiaŋ³, that⁷, thɛn³; /θ/ in θɔ⁵, θi⁵ are not found in Cantonese proper, but match the features of surrounding Yue dialects. In general these loans all appear to be derivable from some Yue source.

Sadly the classification of Yue is poor, and it is extremely difficult to untangle the mess of borrowings in Biao (it appears to me that Biao had multiple layers of borrowings from various Yue sources, as evidenced by the doublet hoi¹ vs hoi³, plus the sometimes differing forms in Biao) without a throrough understanding of Yue's internal phylogeny and historical evolution, so I think the best option for the time being is to put all of these in Category:Biao terms derived from Yue languages ({{bor|byk|zhx-yue}}) instead.

@Linshee as the main contributor to Biao entries. – wpi (talk) 18:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Turkic origin of kelime

So our source does indeed claim all this. Nevertheless it is lingo-nationalist nonsense. The form kelime is exactly what we should expect from the Arabic etymon. Arabic short ka- regularly becomes ke- (cf. kerem, kesel etc.). And the form of the final vowel isn't conspicuous either (it would be gratuitous to cite any of the dozens if not hundreds of words in which ta marbuta surfaces as -e). So there really are no "peculiarities" as the source claims and whole thing is baseless. 84.57.154.5 23:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

It seems to be from EDAL (known to be an unreliable source), so I'd agree with just removing that nonsense. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 00:40, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

 Removed.  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:26, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

scissors

RFV of the etymology: It currently has got no source at all, including how the current spelling is influenced by another unrelated Latin word.

Armenian origin of petek

Nişanyan Sözlük is included as a reference; however as you can check here: Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “petek”, in Nişanyan Sözlük

Ermenice petag փեթակ “bir tür sepet, arı kovanı” sözcüğü ile eş kökenlidir.

It basically says petek is cognate with Armenian փեթակ, unlike the claim which states it is derived from Armenian. MustafaCavlak (talk) 08:53, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

So what? Foy, Kraelitz-Greifenhorst, Ačaṙean, Gayayan, Dankoff, Eren and Tietze listed at پتك (petek) derive from Armenian. Why the doubt? Names for civilized, sedentary realia in Turkish are usually from Armenian and Greek. Vahag (talk) 09:40, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

As Turkish and Armenian belong to different language families, I guess they don't really share cognates in the traditional sense, only Wanderwörter. Wakuran (talk) 10:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan, I was just pointing out that having this reference under the lemma caused ambiguity. Since Nişanyan suggests both words derive from an unattested Iranian source — which aligns with the etymology section here; it looked like Old Armenian could be the source instead of Modern Armenian. Since you removed the reference from the lemma, it makes sense now. Also, I really wish you had mentioned me so I'd get a notification about this change (or even about your comment), but it's fine. MustafaCavlak (talk) 12:01, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

No, it doesn’t, since having a reference or further reading only means there is something about it, not that the cites there have all the same as each other and our entry. There is always something that “could be”. Fay Freak (talk) 13:02, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure. Still made me question the etymology since it tells a different story about the derivation. That’s it. MustafaCavlak (talk) 13:28, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

'akikiki

'akikiki is roughly translated to Flower creeper bird in Hawaiian language likely newer etymology for Hawaii languages of vocabulary Kostya-Artist2005 (talk) 16:02, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Pannonian Rusyn дзека, Old Slovak dzeka

Another Pannonian Rusyn entry that I haven't made yet. This one means either "will/volition" (basically the same thing as volja/воля across different Slavic languages), or "mood" as in "in a good mood".

My first thought was to link it to the German-derived root meaning "thank", since in Pannonian there is the verb дзековац (dzekovac) which is akin to Polish dziękować or Ukrainian дякувати (djakuvaty), and also дзекуєм (dzekujem, “thank you”). But I looked at both Old Polish dzięka and Old Slovak deka and the associated vďaka, and semantically neither of those really map properly onto the definition that we have in Pannonian. Any ideas of an etymon that I might've missed?

Update: in one last-ditch effort I searched up the Old Slovak dictionary for just dzeka, and there it was, stating the definition as vôľa. Okay, so we know the Pannonian term comes from Old Slovak. The question now becomes where did Old Slovak get it from? Is there perhaps anything similar in Old Czech? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:26, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Your thought in the second paragraph appears to be correct. See this snippet. Vahag (talk) 16:46, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

How does "gratefulness" become "will/volition" or "mood" though? That's the challenging part to me. The etymon itself makes sense phonologically, but I can't quite connect the two concepts directly. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 08:09, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Easy. When you are "grateful" to someone, you have the "willingness" or "mood" to do a favour for him. Compare English "be so kind as to...". Vahag (talk) 10:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Or even "please". It's not that crazy of a semantic shift. Vininn126 (talk) 11:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian salindia

Is it a neologism made from a phono-semantic matching of English slide? I mean, the usage of the word salin ("copy") with its phonological similarity with slide (s_l__d__) in it might indicate this. Udaradingin (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/ʾadam-

An IP user made this page before it was swiftly and speedily deleted. Why? Gallus lafayettii (talk) 16:53, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Gallus lafayettii: from what I can see, the entry was created by @Kumwawa, not an IP, and that user moved the entry to Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/ʔadam- because the original entry was misspelled. Thus, the redirect wasn't needed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:41, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: No, if you look at the edit history, the page was created by an IP user on 25 March and moved by Kumwawa on 4 April. Chuck Entz then deleted the redirect earlier today. Unfortunately, the redirect was deleted without anyone noticing that it was still linked to by both entries of the page 𐤀𐤃𐤌, leaving them with red links instead of links to the reconstruction page. I'll go fix that now. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: OK, thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:56, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

ok Gallus lafayettii (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

tatta (for now)

From Hindi, apparently. A kind of bamboo frame, seemingly still used in India today. What is the original Hindi term? Vilipender (talk) 21:21, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Nordic pall, pallr, English pallet

Norwegian pall (“pallet; podium”) is given as from Old Norse pallr (redlink); and Faroese and Icelandic pallur, although both have an {rfe} tag, also point to an ON pallr. This is all consistent so far.

Yet Swedish pall (“stool; podium; pallet”) is given as coming from English pallet, where the warehouse platform meaning ostensibly comes from the straw bed meaning, from (Old) French paille. And if the Swedish did, unlike its Nordic colleagues, come from English, it did so by reanalysing the last syllable as the definite article and dropping it.

I can't guess whether that's even plausible or what actually happened. Can someone more knowledgeable cast an eye over this? --Hiztegilari (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

According to SAOB and Elof Hellqvist, the Swedish term seems to be an older word than the modern English pallet, although I guess some phono-semantic match might have played a part. Wakuran (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I've made some updates. Please have a look Leasnam (talk) 04:04, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

ναρί

Any idea what the specific Egyptian etymon is? - -sche (discuss) 22:01, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The word is supposed to be Egyptian because the gloss of the ancient editor says so.[8]

I asked one AI bot for the first time and was positively surprised, but cannot decide, is it just hallucinating or is the inferrence correct? The reasoning is sound: the word may have refered to perfumes, aetheric oils, pleasent smell. In a broader search beginning with nḥ* there are different words having to do with oil, smell or breadth, and one unidentified, theophoric Nḥꜣ "Neha-Pflanze" (TLA 2), nomarchs named Nḥr.i, and different words of questionable etymology that could be pleasent, which is going too far. I consider it overall more likely that the word entered Greek from a different language. At least that would explain r corresponding to ꜣ. Real references would be prefered, of course. Hr. Mine Schatsu (talk) 17:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

[by Sarri.greek Dioscurides and his transcriptions from Latin and Egyptian.] M @-sche. w:Dioscorides always names his plants in Greek (that is tlb=Koine), and continues the Romans call it, some xxx, others yyy, Egyptians zzz. This ναρί is from codices RV^{Conspectus codicum} at RV1. (p.5-6 / cf @scaife) Ῥωμαῖοι ῥάδιξ μου[τῇ]ρικάτα [p.6], οἱ δὲ γλαδίολουμ, οἱ δὲ ὠπερτρίτις, οἱ δὲ κονσακράτριξ, Αἰγύπτιοι ναρί. All these are PoS=Transcriptions of Latin, of Egyptian. En.wikt has PoS Romanization at WT:ELE#Part_of_speech but does not have the reverse: Hellenizations. A certain editor has been adding such Hellenizations as 'Ancient Greek' Nouns. They are not Koine Nouns. They are just transcriptions of the pronunciations as perceived by Dioscurides. Please, could you propose a PoS of your choice that would mean 'some kind of transcription', which does not index them at all in the language? Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 10:04, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Delete on the model of Talk:gangaba, the Dioskurides interpolator explicitly says the Αἰγύπτιοι call it that way, which means there is no way it is Greek but a transcription of Egyptian; it did not mean Egyptiots, as we know the text. (Sarri would have to inform us how ancient Greeks called Egyptiots.) There is a lot of transcription stuff that often for textual as well as phonemic uncertainty doing justice to the actual language should not be entered otherwise we have to deal with messy mainspace presentation; unfortunately this is different from reconstructions where the segments, of a language otherwise known or a language of a language group otherwise known, are certain enough to be entered, sometimes as attested reverse-transcriptions even in the mainspace instead of the reconstruction-space if also supported by an ancient glossary (it is a witness, testis, so attestation), as I have done with a few Punic phytonym transcriptions supported by other Semitic languages. Even if I could add entries in such cases I didn't since it was too marginal and an appendix was more informative, Appendix:Aramaic terms only attested in borrowings, where I explicitly distinguish the need for another appendix of words in treatises in ancient or medieval languages other than Aramaic that may merely mention or transcribe—often affected by corrupted readings—Aramaic terms, as in the example of the quote in the scorpion جَرَّار (jarrār). I admit this is too complicated not to be merely entertained by power users, but only these even end up at such terms. Fay Freak (talk) 10:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I like the idea, suggested on that talk page, of shunting these to one or more appendix pages. We already have dictionary-only terms in an appendix, and reconstructed terms. - -sche (discuss) 01:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₁epi

Rfv for etymology as locative of unattested root noun *h₁eps. I doubt there is a source for this. Exarchus (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, Mayrhofer mentions the possibility of a root noun, so rfv simply for the proposed original meaning "back". Exarchus (talk) 20:44, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Slovak aj

Univerbation of a +‎ i? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 04:55, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, these words follow each other in this sense easily: contrastive a + i (“and”) =~ ‘but even’. The Polish entry has to be split into two etymologies, it has been overlooked. Fay Freak (talk) 14:00, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

cantillate, cantillo

1. cantillate and cantillation, both currently {{rfe}}, are ultimately from cantillo, yes?
2. When cantillo glosses its etymon as "hearth", this is an error, no?
3. We define cantillo as "hum, chirp", but other sources provide glosses like "sing", in line with its etymon and descendants. In (modern) cites like this, it is explicitly "sing" ("primus designat musicam sive rationem cantus apud Judæos, qui textum Biblicum non legunt sed cantillant. That is, [...] the first designates musick or the manner of singing among the Jews, who do not read but sing"); in earlier cites it is used of birds singing, which is perhaps what someone meant by "hum", but is "sing" a better gloss? (If anyone feels like creating an entry, cantillatio / cantilatio get enough hits on Google Books; I haven't tried to ascertain if it's only modern or also Classical.)
- -sche (discuss) 05:36, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Birds singing in earlier cites, that is when Latin lived, was just canere, including of cocks, in the same fashion as Russian пѣть (pětʹ)—being given by us two glosses “to sing” and “to crow” apparently with the intention of leaving no confusion to English readers though it is technically incorrect to split what is one uniform sense in the perspective of the speakers of the language in question into two to accord with likely English translations—, is used for all birds, which is apparently the Proto-Slavic state then later split by Polish śpiewać vs. piać, and gave us in particular пѣту́хъ (pětúx, “rooster”). The Germans seem to have largely had a distinction in more or less late Antiquity based on our reconstruction Proto-West Germanic *krāan (“to crow, shout”). Latin cantillāre really intends some reduplication, hence of rows of—not always most proficiently harmonious—human adults in church. I neither see the sense in the gloss “hearth”, you see how much providence was put into it. Fay Freak (talk) 10:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

The gloss "hearth" was added by User:Isomorphyc, who hasn't made any edits since 2021. It should probably just be changed. Wakuran (talk) 16:26, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

This is a terrible gloss and I am embarrassed. I don’t know how it happened. Thank you for the correction. 50.172.62.230 16:30, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Latin -plex

I was looking into this etymology since simplex was word of the day for April 18, but it seems tough to understand. Can anyone cut through my confusion? First, I don't get why De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *-plek-s in his entry for -plex 'times' but reconstructs Proto-Italic *sm̥-plak- 'simple' in his entry for sem-, sim-. Did De Vaan intend to reconstruct two different forms (and etymologies?) for -plex in duplex and simplex (probably not, since the second is listed as a derivative in the -plex entry)? Is one of these a typo? Is the vowel something he changed his mind on in between writing the two entries? Next, is there any possibility of Proto-Italic -plak-s coming from PIE zero-grade -pl̥k-s, like Greek -πλαξ, or is that absolutely impossible? I know Proto-Indo-European *-l̥- generally became Proto-Italic *-ol-, but Schrijver 1991 argues that *-l̥- regularly became *-la- instead in Italo-Celtic in certain conditions, although from what I see, not ones that are met in this case: a., when followed within the same syllable by PIE medius/voiced stops, which Schrijver thinks were glottalized stops (compare flagrō) (pp. 477-485) b., in the context C_CCC (pp. 488-498). Third, Van Beek 2022 clearly rejects the connection of Greek δίπλαξ and τρίπλαξ with πλέκω, but I can't tell whether that means he rejects the connection of duplex and plicāre, or the equation of duplex and δίπλαξ. Urszag (talk) 06:27, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

FWIW I can find other reference works mentioning the etymon of plex as plek, but no modern ones mentioning plak (though some works from the 1800s and early 1900s mention it), so I would guess De Vaan meant plek in both instances. - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/biliz

Shouldn't this be moved to *bilaz? I found three sources for that reconstruction and none for *biliz. Exarchus (talk) 19:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian pahulja / пахуља

Any ideas? Doesn't seem particularly Slavic to me. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 07:13, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Seems perfectly Serbo-Croatian to me. The descendant of *paxnǫti and *paxati is pàhnuti (perfective), páhati (“to give off smell or specks, to give off, to blow off, to flake off etc.”, imperfective), with many other derivations, just look into {{R:sh:Skok:1971}}, see also púhati from *puxati. Fay Freak (talk) 12:26, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Etymology of exert

I deem it probable that the word was heavily influenced by Latin exercere, leaving little of the notion of exserere. If the former had been borrowed into English the way coercere was, it bore the form *exerce, almost matching exert phonetically, with the only difference being the last consonant's way of articulation. Imbricitor (talk) 12:05, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Our entry for exert is unfortunately lacking the oldest (now obsolete) meaning in English, 'to thrust forth, push out', which is pretty unambiguously from exserō. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:11, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Usconophrys

Usconophrys is the type genus of the family Usconophryidae. I know that ophrys means "eyelashes" but what does Uscon mean? Any ideas? Thanks for your help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not finding anything likely-looking in Ancient Greek or Latin. Perhaps, like so many protist genera, it's named after a person. Is there a microbiologist by the name of Usco or Uscon or Uscono or anything like that? —Mahāgaja · talk 16:29, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but so far I haven't noticed anything like that. Gerardgiraud (talk) 06:09, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Etymology of νωδός "toothless"

Beekes says it probably replaced *νώδων and consists of *n̥- and ὀδούς (odoús, “tooth”). But to me, this does not look convincing. An ντ-stem does not simply mutate into an ο-stem; that is a great morphological step. What if it were instead from the o-grade of *h₁ed- (“eat”)? Something like *n̥h₁ōdós ("not eating"), originally used to describe infants, with an easy semantical shift to "toothless". Imbricitor (talk) 16:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Our entry for *h₃dónts gives a more nuanced etymology for νωδός (nōdós), namely that it's from *n̥-h₃d-ós (*h₃ed- (“to bite”)), not directly from the nt-stem noun meaning 'tooth'. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

That definitely looks more convincing. If the syllabic n and the laryngeal suffice for greek ω we can put that formation as the etymon. Imbricitor (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)