Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2016/December

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drahoma

Anyone know the Greek etymon? (See also Talk:drahoma.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

It's Greek τράχωμα (tráchoma, “dowry in cash”), which is different from homonymous τράχωμα (tráchoma, “trachoma”). According to Greek sources, the ultimate origin is τραχύς (trakhús, “rough, coarse”). The sense development is unclear to me. --Vahag (talk) 09:54, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Based on some sources I've found (247 for example), it seems that a dowry would be officially Church sanctioned and the trachoma would not. I could imagine that the semantic shift went something like “roughness, coarseness” > “some coarse deal” (“coarse” being figurative for secular actions similar to the meaning of “vulgar” as it relates to the Church) > “a secular dowry”. This, however, is idle speculation on my part. —JohnC5

@JohnC5: According to modern Greek dictionaries, the intermediate step is Byzantine Greek τραχύ (trakhú, “silver coin”, literally “rough, uneven”). According to The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, "The word means basically “rough” or “uneven” and was apparently applied to the concave coins in the sense of “not flat.”" See also Trachy (currency). Still, your explanation may have influenced the sense development. --Vahag (talk) 09:42, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Dang, I wasn't very close. :( —JohnC5 01:28, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

linx in PIE appendix

I asked CodeCat, but I rather hear everyone's opinion before desisting. Are we interested in transforming this into something like this (the beginning, and saving errors)? Or at least include the links without the display in columns, and also order the descendant languages always in the same whatever way (typological, code or English name). Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 22:48, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Really the huge lists of descendants, however formatted, seem like the least appealing part of either layout to me. They can already be found thru the PIE entries themselves anyway (where these exist…), and I feel like those should be the primary location of PIE data; appendices should IMO be limited to

Whoops, forgot to finish a paragraph here. What I was going to say is: appendices for reconstructed languages should IMO be limited to displaying generalizations that can't be seen from the individual entries. For plain indexing, things like Category:Proto-Indo-European roots and its subcategories already do the job. Things like Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots are a legacy feature of sorts, based on the model of paper dictionaries that cannot include a full treatment of the PIE lexicon for space reasons. As our coverage of PIE entries grows, they're becoming increasingly superfluous. (I have added e.g. a list of Proto-Uralic roots myself, but it's in userspace and not very rounded out because I think of it as a to-do list, not an index in itself.) --Tropylium (talk) 11:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Some other options would be:

• prune this to just a few representative descendants (for example: English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hittite). The exact selection is going to be contentious though, and liable to slippery-sloping back towards the current state.
• give major proto-branch terms for further clicking-thru options (so essentially: PCelt, PGmc, PBS, Latin or PIt., Greek or PGk, PII, maybe PAnat.)
• give just the distribution & instruct readers to click thru to the proto-terms

Here's an example of the last; the check marks etc. could be linked to the branch-specific descendants. What this would also enable is comparison between different lexemes: given two rows for similar concepts, such as the various competing 'fire' or 'water' roots, it would be easy to compare which languages retain which. This is pretty much impossible with sprawling lists. --Tropylium (talk) 12:34, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Tropylium. --WikiTiki89 15:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Tropylium Which is PII? Tocharian? Armenian? Albanian? Indo-Arian? Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 21:34, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-Iranian. --WikiTiki89 21:36, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

The same question prompts/pops when dealing with this. (I realised later while sleeping, I didn't know there is a explicit theory for a common root of Avestic and Sanskrit. What about the other 3 Arm/SQ/Toc I mentioned?) Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 12:27, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Armenian, Albanian and Tocharian are usually considered their own branches, and the first two are usually considered not very significant for PIE reconstruction (so probably not particularly illustrative in lists like these). There's some support for a Greek-Phrygian-Armenian grouping, or a wider one with also Indo-Iranian ("Indo-Greek"), but I've never seen anyone propose reconstructions for that specifically — and it would probably end up being very close to PIE anyway. --Tropylium (talk) 11:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

We should also mention the very popular w:Italo-Celtic family, though it has not gained full acceptance. Also, in Armenian's defense, it is one of the few languages (along with AG and Hittite) where *HC- produces a vowel. —JohnC5 15:55, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

hercisco, herctum

Does anybody have an etymology for these Latin words? De Vaan doesn't mention them. --2A02:2788:A4:F44:2D60:EA59:36A3:DDA3 13:52, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

According to the "Elementary Latin Dictionary", they would come from a verb hercio which is not attested in Latin, and ultimately derive from the same root as in "heredity" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Albanian etymologies check

The user Gerald992 (talk • contribs) has been making a bunch of changes (~50) concerning Albanian etymology which I do not have the information to evaluate. Could someone take a stroll through them an make sure they are legit? I'm not really sure whom to ping about this (@Embryomystic?) —JohnC5 16:24, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Hello John,I am familiar with Albanian etymology and am going to check it up

@JohnC5: Well,they all look legit to me,except "lirë" etymology

mice

As is well-known, the synchronically irregular plural mice directly continues the Old English consonant-stem plural mȳs, which itself directly continues Proto-Germanic *mūsiz. But I thought inflectional forms besides the citation form do not usually receive their own etymology sections. Are there exceptions for highly irregular forms? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:09, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of a rule that stated that they cannot have an etym section. Am I mistaken ?. I oftentimes do add them, and mice would be a perfect candidate in my book Leasnam (talk) 00:13, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I added an etymology there Leasnam (talk) 03:33, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

If the term is simply a form resulting from the regular application of transparent inflectional morphology, there shouldn't be an etymology. When there's something interesting going on, as there is here, it may be worth the risk of inconsistency between the lemma and the form entries (note, for instance, the disagreement between the etymologies at was and are on the origin of are). That's especially true for suppletive paradigms made up of a number of completely unrelated roots and fossilized sound changes/morphology (e.g. be/been, is/am, are, was/were). Chuck Entz (talk) 05:59, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Ah, good to know. That certainly makes sense. By the way, add art and wesan to the inconsistency-fest. At the very least we should acknowledge both possibilities equally, because both have their advocates, and there doesn't seem anything even close to a consensus. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I prefer the etymologies of inflected forms, when necessary, to be placed on the lemma. That is why I introduced the {{nonlemma}} template, to be used as a substitute etymology for nonlemmas. —CodeCat 00:41, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with CodeCat that it would be better to have the etymology of both the singular and plural at the lemma entry mouse. --WikiTiki89 14:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I think so too. Kolmiel (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe that's something best decided on a case-by-case basis. In this case I agree. When there are suppletive stems, however, it might be sensible to have separate entries at non-lemma forms. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:22, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

moitié

There's not only very surprisingly complete chaos in the opinions on the etymology of moitié and moiety in all English dictionaries i've checked, including those on onelook.com, but even more surprisingly none agree with http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/moitié, which is no doubt the most reliable and most carefully edited. --Espoo (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

bordello / brothel

Is it really true that these both come from the same PIE etymon? This is currently claimed in these lemmas' articles but neither the other word nor the common origin is mentioned in either article. --Espoo (talk) 13:27, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

It does appear to be true. As such, what a striking coincidence ! Leasnam (talk) 18:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I am actually very surprised that the nearest common ancestor of words of such a similarity has to go all the way to the PIE--Dixtosa (talk) 21:52, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there a reason intervocalic /þ/ remains voiceless here? Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 10:18, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Eh, I'm extremely sceptical regarding these root-anatomical speculations. FWIW, Kroonen gives PG *burzda- < PIE *bʰr̥zdʰo- for the "board" word *burdą and connects it with PG *barzda- (his reconstruction for *bardaz) < PIE *bʰorzdʰo- (I don't want to go into the details of his reasoning here, but this connection makes me wonder, keeping in mind that he does not give a PIE verbal root, if PG *burstiz is related, which would suggest that all the formations in question are derived from a root *bʰers- combined with a dental suffix that might possibly be ultimately identified with the root *dʰeh₁-, or with *-tis in the case of *burstiz). As for *breuþaną, this verb does not have any precise comparanda outside of Germanic. *bʰrews- fits semantically but not formally, but LIV lists a root *bʰrewH- (“aufbrechen”) from which it derives *breutaną, and I wonder if *breuþaną and *bʰrews- perhaps too might go back to the same root (though *bʰrews- is only compatible with that root if it does not contain a laryngeal after all). But even if that is all correct, what we get is a root *bʰers- "to prick" (?) at the origin of bordello and a completely different root *bʰrew(H)- at the root of brothel. So, unfortunately, this does not seem to work out when we avoid Pokorny-era style root anatomies (LIV does list a root *bʰerH- (“mit scharfem Werkzeug bearbeiten”), but I doubt it helps). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:26, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Paris

RFV of the etymology:

From herb Paris, from French herbe paris, from Latin par (““equal””), in reference to the regularity of its leaves, petals, etc.

This generic name was published by Linnaeus in 1753, but can be found as herba Paris in Latin herbals by not just English and French authors, but Italian and German as well, going back to at least the mid-1500s. Given that Linnaeus was Swedish and wrote in Latin, and that the works he cited were in Latin, as well, I find it odd that it would derive from English. The fact that the whole etymology aside from the link to the English term is identical down to the language codes with the etymology of that English term doesn't exactly inspire confidence, either. It would be nice if we could confirm the other steps in the etymology, too- the English could have come from the Latin, and the Latin source would seem to be the genitive singular form of an adjective, though folk etymology was no doubt involved. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:52, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree, but I don't know how to sort it out. See “Paris”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC. and “herb paris”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.. DCDuring (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

feminism

No-account newbie here. I was about to post this in the discussion page of the entry for feminism, but it suggested I try the Information desk and Tea Room. I found the Etymology scriptorium and it seems like the right place to post this.

The Etymology section of feminism currently states that it comes from French féminisme, which comes from Latin fēminīnus, which comes from Latin fēmina.

However, the entry for féminisme contains an external link to a source with an etymology, “féminisme” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language), and that source says that féminisme comes directly from Latin fēmina, and does _not_ pass through fēminīnus ("Dér. du rad. du lat. femina (femme*)").

This seems to make a difference to me, as fēmina is the noun, 'woman', and fēminīnus is the adjective, 'womanly' or 'feminine', thus making the idea something more like 'woman-ism' rather than 'feminine-ism'. Actually, I used to assume feminism came directly from modern French femme, which also would have made it 'woman-ism'.

I realize it's only one source, and maybe you all know whether it's highly reputed or not. Maybe more sources should be gathered before a change is made to the Etymology section?

Also maybe I misunderstand what the Etymology section of feminism is actually saying or should say. Or maybe the community does not view this as a significant matter. I leave it to you more experienced Wiktionary editors to decide, as I figured that were I to make an edit myself, it might be rejected for not going through discussion first, or else I might click the wrong button and break the internet.

Peace! — This unsigned comment was added by 75.115.90.84 (talk) at 03:59, 12 December 2016 (UTC).

First of all, having no account doesn't make you no-account.

As to your question: the TLFI is a good source, and in this case it looks like it's correct. I notice that the Online Etymology Dictionary's entry says " from French féminisme (1837); see feminine + -ism", meaning that those entries would have more information. It would be very easy to mistake that for saying that French féminisme was literally the result of combining some form of feminine with some form of -ism. It's always easier to explain direct derivation than it is to explain why it would have come from a form with an extra "-in", and how the "-in" then disappeared.

As for the procedure to make corrections: you're as welcome as anyone to edit the entry, but if your edit is wrong, or it seriously messes up the formatting, it may be corrected, undone, or rolled back. That doesn't mean you're in trouble, it just means you made a mistake- like we all did when we got started. Of course, if you make a whole lot of mistakes and keep on making those mistakes after having them explained to you, that might be a problem- but you don't seem the type to do that. I'll leave a welcome template on your talk page (User talk:75.115.90.84), so you'll have the information you need to edit here. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that it doesn't make historical sense either to derive feminism from feminine. Feminism grew out of the women's rights movement, and was initially concerned only with people assigned female at birth (to use the contemporary term), or perceived as female by society's elites and ruling classes, regardless of their self-conception or feminine expression. It was not concerned with feminine or effeminate men (whether gay/queer or not), nor (initially, at least) with transgender people assigned male at birth, or perceived as male (in intersex people birth-assigned and perceived gender – by anatomical criteria – are not necessarily the same, that's why I'm differentiating here). Many feminists, especially in the second wave, were butch lesbian women – feminae – and had a dim view of what society defines as feminine, not only because they were themselves disinclined to it, but also because what society defines as feminine is considered inferior by very many people – a prejudice they replicated. It is only now that feminists, especially trans women like Julia Serano, want to "put the feminine back into feminism", as she puts it (given that anti-femininity prejudice and anti-women prejudice cannot really be separated: for example, there's nothing inherently "weak", "shallow" or "silly" in the colour pink; it is deemed so because it is associated with women, and that's a quite recent cultural development), but etymologically speaking that's not really accurate. Feminism is straight derived from femina, so a thoroughly unfeminine woman is still etymologically in the domain of feminism (leading to complaints that the term is supposedly "sexist" and "anti-men"). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: Did you forget about definition #2 at feminine? --WikiTiki89 21:23, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Be that as it may, my basic argument stands: feminism has long been primarily concerned with women's rights (intersectional feminism being a recent development), so for that semantic reason (apart from the formal argument) it's most straightforward to derive feminism from femina. It's not about the rights of the abstract quality of womanhood, but concrete women. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Modern Greek in Module:etymology languages/data

Why is this necessary? Someone just used the code at cindynics for what appears to be the first time. DTLHS (talk) 19:53, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

It isn't necessary, and I'm removing it. cindynics is certainly from the Ancient Greek word anyway. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:46, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

etymology of early

Someone competent cud add the following info, alternative forms, and educated guesses from https://www.dwds.de/wb/eher to early and Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂eyeri: ie. *ā̌ier-, *ā̌ien- ‘Tag, Morgen’. Zur Wurzel ie. *ā̌i- ‘brennen, leuchten’ --Espoo (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Those are the same reconstruction, just written differently. —CodeCat 22:36, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, very confusing as far as the alternative forms are concerned.

But *ā̌i- ‘burn, shine’ is missing from both the lemma "early" (ere) and the lemma "h₂eyeri". --Espoo (talk) 23:24, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

graze

Currently it says "From Old English grasian (“to feed on grass”), from græs (“grass”)." Isn't it more likely that there was already a verb in Proto-Germanic? German has grasen and Dutch has grazen. --WikiTiki89 15:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

The German is from Old High German grasōn. Do the stems match? At first, I thought the Old English would have to be a different stem, but macian corresponds to mahhōn, so I don't know. (I don't know very much about Old English.) Kolmiel (talk) 21:21, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

The Deutsches Wörterbuch calls it an "Old High German formation", though this need not be intended to rule out that it's even older. Kolmiel (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

OE -ian should correspond to OHG -ōn. Do we have an Old Saxon/Old Norse cognate? Crom daba (talk) 21:42, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Old Norse has grasa (“to collect moss”) and grasaðr (“prepared with herbs”) whose attested forms (grasaði, grǫsud, grosudum) are in line with *grasōną. —JohnC5 05:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we can reconstruct a PGmc *grasōną (“to feed on grass”). A lot of older entries stop at OE because we didnt really reconstruct Proto-languages at that time, and many need to be reviewed Leasnam (talk) 15:59, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

architectonic etymology wiki request

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/architectonic See further https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CF%81%CF%87%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%AD%CE%BA%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD#Ancient_Greek

Etymology:

1. REDIRECT [[1]]

link to correct etymology not explained

Please fix forebear. --Espoo (talk) 23:08, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

fel

Questionable derivation phonetically... Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 02:56, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

If you think that's problematic look at bilis. Crom daba (talk) 22:11, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Mongolian мэлхий (melxii, “frog, toad”) meaning cancer

So Mongolian dictionaries define мэлхий сар (melxii sar, “toad month”) as "July in the western zodiac", I couldn't find any uses of this on the Internet, but I did find that many horoscope sites do indeed use мэлхий to denote cancer (some use the more expected хавч (xavč, “crab”)), does anyone know any parallels to this in the oriental languages? Crom daba (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe @Wyang will have the answer. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:07, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Crom daba, Metaknowledge Tibetan ཀརྐ་ཊ (karka ṭa, a Sanskrit loan), which refers to the constellation of “Cancer”, is represented by the frog (Tibetan སྦལ་པ (sbal pa)) in Tibet. It may be the source of the Mongolian use. Wyang (talk) 02:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Περσίς

It is odd that Old Persian 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 (Pārsa, “Persia”) yielded Ancient Greek Περσίς (Persís) (from which Persia), with the long ā changed to e. I would expect a more faithful transliteration: *Πᾱρσίς (*Pārsís). I wonder if there is a missing link in the etymology (a language in which for some reason the name of Persia had the vowel e), or if there's a Greek sound change, or quality of the Old Persian phonological system, that I'm unaware of? The OED doesn't offer any explanation. — Eru·tuon 23:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Ionic raising + Osthoff's shortening? Although I don't get why it wasn't shortened before raising. Crom daba (talk) 23:54, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

All the ancient languages had a there, see here, pages 16–17, so I would look for an explanation inside Greek. --Vahag (talk) 09:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting. I guess I considered the possibility that the sound change went thus: Pārs- > (non-Attic–Ionic) *Πᾱρσ (*Pārs) > *Πηρσ- (*Pērs-) (Ionic raising) > Περσ- (Pers-) (some kind of shortening). @Crom daba, I wouldn't have thought Osthoff's shortening would be operative so late in the history of Greek, but interestingly, I searched for the sequence ηρσ (ērs) in LSJ entry names, and there were only two results, both of them augmented aorist verb forms. (I imagine there are more examples that don't have their own entries.) So perhaps there was another later rule prohibiting certain types of over-long syllables like */pɛːr.sis/, except in verb forms where the long vowel was necessary to mark the past indicative. — Eru·tuon 19:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Keep in mind that, despite the attempts to extend the law to other Indo-European languages, Osthoff's shortening is primarily a Greek phenomenon, and might possibly be a more recent development check N. E. Collinge's "The laws of Indo-European" for details (a surprisingly witty abounding in stuff you don't normally find browsing the Internet) Crom daba (talk) 20:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

abgeschmackt

I'm going to guess the etymology here, but I do not have a proficient knowledge of German, so please correct me if I am wrong:

ab- + geschmackt, from ?schmacken? related to Geschmack and schmecken, cognate with English smatch ("taste, flavour") and smack ("to taste").

I can't help but feel that that etymology is faulty somehow, but I don't know where. Can someone with a better knowledge of German help here? Tharthan (talk) 19:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

You're close. I would say that it is from ab- +‎ Geschmack +‎ -t, as it has an older variant form in abgeschmack. Leasnam (talk) 19:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• After edit conflict...

The etymology in the Duden entry derives abgeschmackt from older abgeschmack of the same meaning, and suggests a comparison to noun Geschmack and verb schmecken.

Geschmack means flavor and taste, as in good taste and bad taste (currently covered by sense #2 at taste). The prefix ab- can mean off. So abgeschmackt would literally mean off-taste, and idiomatically mean tasteless, in bad taste, off-color, vulgar.

(My German comprehension isn't the best, but the sense details in our entry at abgeschmackt seem somewhat deficient compared to what's at Duden.)

@Tharthan, does that answer your question? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Mostly, but where does the -t come from? It makes sense with schmecken (geschmeckt) because it is the past participle, but Geschmack is a noun. We don't seem to have a German entry for -t, nor does the German Wiktionary. The French Wiktionary has an entry for it, but even after reading it, I still don't see how it applies in this usage. Is it an excrescent? Please forgive my ignorance here. Tharthan (talk) 20:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd say that -t was added as an analogy with the past participle, presumably because that is the context in which ab-ge- occurs most commonly. Crom daba (talk) 20:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

DWDS agrees. Crom daba (talk) 20:35, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Duden's etymology seems to be correct, which is not always case. (We should always rely on Pfeiffer and Kluge.) Just note not that the verb schmacken (“to smack”) does exist. It's regional, but a generally known derivative is Schmackes (“power, vigour”). Kolmiel (talk) 00:55, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Stems of tenses of Catalan poder

I'm puzzled by the forms of Catalan poder that have a stem containing in g (or c from final devoicing), including puc and pogut. The Latin forms (from *potere) have t, and d would be expected due to lenition. Many forms have d (as do all the forms in the Spanish inflection table), but some have g. Where on earth did this consonant come from? It would make sense if there were another related verb *pocere, but there isn't. Or maybe it's some odd sound change: I was considering the possibility of dissimilation, but there's no clear motivation.

It's also odd that it only occurs in certain TAM forms: first singular present indicative, preterite, subjunctive, imperative, past participle. The rest are more law-abiding, as far as their stem is concerned.

Anyway, I would appreciate an explanation if there is one, and the etymology section would also appreciate it. — Eru·tuon 09:31, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

German Leberkäse and w:Leberkäse#History

Does anyone know what "Slavic quas" is referred to here? Also "an obsolete usage of Käse to denote any pasty food formed in a mold (cf. English "case")" on wikipedia sounds suspect, could someone provide a citation (and add this sense to our Käse) or dispute it? Crom daba (talk) 14:37, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

"Slavic quas" is presumably Proto-Slavic *kvȃsъ, but it doesn't mean "feast". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:06, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

The true meaning of Käse has always been that of a dairy product. But since it was a very common and affordable food, other things (food and non-food) that were somehow similar to cheese were compared to it. I don't think this is surprising and I don't think it's obsolete either. Now, I don't know the exact etymology of Leberkäse, but our own entry simply says that the word Käse was used because Leberkäse "resembles cheese" (i.e. it comes in loaves, is cut in slices, has a smooth, light-coloured surface). This would seem obvious. Of course, obvious things are sometimes wrong. Kolmiel (talk) 20:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes but the insinuation of there being a second sense meaning specifically things made in a mold cognate with English case and thus presumably cognate with Latin capsa is nonsense right?

I've also thought of kvȃsъ, but it didn't make any sense. Crom daba (talk) 02:24, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd think so, yes. Kolmiel (talk) 15:56, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

tatay

Directly from Classical Nahuatl? Wouldn't there need to be a Spanish intermediate? DTLHS (talk) 16:42, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

@Carl Francis added it, but it seems very unlikely to me. Words for "father" of this form have arisen independently many times, and you could just as easily point fingers at Sanskrit तात (tāta) or Yiddish טאַטע (tate) — but none of those are the origin. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:23, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I removed the etymology back in October but left out the one from Kaiser's Tagalog entry. The claims of a Nahuatl origin have been recurring in print though. Carl Francis (talk) 03:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

On what basis? When did Tagalog speakers come into contact with Nahuatl speakers? DTLHS (talk) 04:32, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Not to mention Spanish tata, said to be from Latin tata. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:12, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

turismo and kwentador, for example, sound and look Spanish but they aren't. As for the Spanish route, Spanish readily gets cited for the etymology when it was the poor Catalans who got sent to the Philippines. The Cebuano pinya could either be Spanish piña if not Catalan pinya. Same goes with Cebuano yaya, it is either from Spanish yaya or Catalan iaia. Carl Francis (talk) 03:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

piler

French piler ("to crush") is said to come from Latin pīlō, "to fix firmly", itself derived from pīla, "column, pillar" (etymology 2). But wouldn't it make more sense to derive it from another pīlō (I don't know if it's attested), derived from pīla meaning "mortar" (etymology 1)? --2A02:2788:A4:F44:D1C0:A14B:34FF:8038 22:29, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

lebkuchen

How much of this can still be trusted? --Espoo (talk) 22:15, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Ramm

Can someone explain how Middle High German raben becomes Luxembourgish Ramm?

Are we sure that the Luxembourgish word wasn't influenced by one of its Old Norse cognates, hramn? Tharthan (talk) 18:25, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Assimilation of root final obstruents to following -en is a very common German dialectal feature, see for example w:de:Bairische_Dialekte#Verben_mit_Auslautwechsel Crom daba (talk) 18:39, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

In Standard German, the plural Raben is commonly pronounced /ˈʁɑːbm̩/; it's not very far from there to the Luxembourgish form. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:29, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's that simple. First of all, such a phonetic development would be typical of many German dialects, but very untypical of West Central German, in which there are no syllabic nasals whatsoever. Then, the underlying form according to the dialectal variants given by the Rheinisches Wörterbuch is MHG *ramb(e). The word is also a feminine. Most importantly, the Luxembourgish cognate of Rabe is Rof, which is phonetically regular (except for a minor problem concerning the vowel). -- So if the two forms are related, it would seem most likely that Lux. Ramm continues an ancient contraction OHG hram, whose -m is directly from the PG -bn- in *hrabnaz. Kolmiel (talk) 03:06, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

PS: I now see that this contraction is also attested in Old Dutch, which makes it likely that this is indeed the origin. Kolmiel (talk) 03:12, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

PPS: I've adapted the etymology accordingly. Kolmiel (talk) 03:23, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Middle High German also has ram m, which I have added to the etymology line, despite the apparent difference in gender Leasnam (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

𨤡

RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:58, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

cushy

I find the etymology very dubious. Isn't it from cushion instead? --Barytonesis (talk) 18:16, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The Online Etymology Dictionary and American Heritage agree with us, but dictionary.com agrees with you. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

ganar

RFV of the etymology. Multiple things look iffy. Leasnam (talk) 16:34, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Gothic **ganan is spurious, but Holthausen in his Gotisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1934) tentatively reconstructs a Gothic *ganōn "gähnen" as possible source of ganar ("vielleicht in span. ganar 'gewinnen'"). However, even if the word were really attested, the semantic development would be completely obscure (at least I can't make sense of it) and unparalleled (as far as I can tell). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

kaylied

This is my first submission to Wiktionary, and would be glad of advice/comment.

The entry for kaylied is this:

Adjective[edit] kaylied (comparative more kaylied, superlative most kaylied) (Britain, slang) Extremely drunk. He got completely kaylied last night.

I would like to propose an etymology along these lines:

Possibly from the sweet once sold in northern England as "Kali". Cf "on the pop" as another euphemism for drunk. Kali was confected from coarse sugar crystals flavoured with citrus, and may in turn derive its name from a resemblance to the ashes of Glasswort [[2]] which, as used in glass manufacture, was also referred to simply as "alkali". To find a resemblance between alkali and alcohol may be stretching the point too far.

This book also suggests it comes from the fizzy drink called Kali. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:23, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

An excellent analysis. I’ve heard ‘kaylied’ on occasion in Birmingham and heard claims it’s used a lot to the North of there and didn’t know the origin but I didn’t know about ‘kali’ being another word for what are sometimes called ‘sugar crystals’ or ‘sherbe(r)t crystals’ until I looked at the Wikipedia entry for ‘sherbet’ and saw the accompanying pictures of what is purportedly ‘kali’. After a Google search I found out that not only Goodies of Lincoln (who make the crystals in the picture) but Pells of Birmingham still produce such Kali and on the talk page someone suggests a link with the term ‘kaylied’ and uses the fact that ‘sherbet’ is a slang term for ‘beer’ in support of this. Food for thought indeed (pun intended)Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:21, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

幼稚園

Etymology needing citation. ばかFumiko￥^talk 12:06, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• Added. See also the various entries at the Kotobank page for 幼稚園. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

stuurkunde a calque of English?

A calque is a word that is formed by translating the parts of a word. But the parts of cybernetics do not mean anything in English, their meaning is in Ancient Greek. So the calque is from Ancient Greek, isn't it? Except that the word didn't exist in Ancient Greek, so it couldn't be calqued from. How do we solve this? —CodeCat 15:06, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Good call, that's quite thorny. How about calling the word or its meaning derived from cybernetics and its components a calque of the Ancient Greek elements?

Judging from Google Books and DBNL stuurkunde was first mentioned in 1951 and first used in 1953 while the Dutch cybernetica was first used in 1952, so we can't really say stuurkunde derives from cybernetica. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 15:28, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's a calque of anything, because neither cybernetics nor its French and Ancient Greek ancestors has anything corresponding to -kunde (“-ology”). It's just a Dutch combination of sturen and -kunde, with sturen being a translation (or single-part calque, if there is such a thing) of κυβερνάω (kubernáō). We could say it's formed on the model of the English, perhaps, but I wouldn't call it a calque. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:58, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Well put. Leasnam (talk) 21:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

-kunde is more than just "-ology" but can also correspond to "-ics", like in natuurkunde (“physics”) and wiskunde (“mathematics”), or "-ry" in scheikunde (“chemistry”), and so on. —CodeCat 21:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't mean it always corresponds to -ology in the English translations of the Dutch words, but its semantics are those of -ology. Physics, mathematics, and chemistry are all ologies even though the words themselves don't end in -ology. But the fact that the words don't end in -ology does mean that natuurkunde isn't a calque of physics, and wiskunde isn't a calque of mathematics, and scheikunde isn't a calque of chemistry, and stuurkunde isn't a calque of cybernetics. But aardkunde could be a calque of geology or, more likely, geologia. (Incidentally, I never realized before that Dutch aardkunde and German Erdkunde are false friends, but they are: the German word means geography, not geology.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

時計

RFV of the etymology. ばかFumiko￥^talk 10:16, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• Shogakukan gives this:

（「時計」「土圭」「斗計」「斗鶏」「斗影」「辰器」など、さまざまの漢字が当てられるが、中国周代の緯度測定器で、後に日時計として用いられた「土圭」がもとであるという）

Daijirin gives:

〔「時計」は，中国周代に用いられた緯度測定器「土圭」の当て字という〕

That said, I cannot find any Chinese term 土圭 (tǔguī). @Wyang, any chance you can find this term? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 13:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

It is a valid Chinese term, attested plentifully in the Old Chinese period: [3], referring to a kind of sundial. Wyang (talk) 10:02, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you, Wyang and Shinji. I have updated the entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:57, 6 January 2017 (UTC)