Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2018/October

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Hebrew abstract suffix -ות: doublet of the plural suffix? (Evidence in Phoenician & possible fossilized remnants in Hebrew)

See Krahmalkov's Phoenician-Punic Grammar (pp. 136-137), beginning at "4. Abstract Noun Expressed by the Plural Noun": https://books.google.com/books?id=DbC9CwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA136&ots=a6iqxBV3wH&pg=PA136#v=onepage Krahmalkov says that in Phoenician the plural was commonly used with an abstract meaning, whether it was the plural in -ūt or -īm, and this seems very well-attested.

Krahmalkov goes on to give Hebrew examples, such as Jeremiah 3:19: אֲשִׁיתֵ֣ךְ בַּבָּנִ֔ים. Chabad translates this as "place you among the sons," but Krahmalkov is arguing that it means "place you in sonship" -> "adopt you as my son." These are compared to examples Krahmalkov gives in Phoenician: "W’P B’BT P`LN KL MLK", "And every king adopted me as his father"; "B`LYTN QMD’ ’Š `L’ BBNM ’T M`QR BN G`Y", "Balitho Commodus, who was adopted in sonship alongside Macer son of Gaius")...

He also points to ימים meaning "time" as another fossilized remnant in Hebrew.

All of which brings me to the question, is the Hebrew abstract suffix -ות simply a generalization of a more archaic form of the plural in -ot? פֿינצטערניש (talk) 12:28, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Rudolf Meyer writes in his Hebräische Grammatik § 56, 2a): “Das alte Abstraktafformativ -ūṯ, das sekundär im Hebr. mit einer F.-Bildung der Stämme III ו auf -t zusammengefallen ist (§ 41, 5b), hat erst unter aram. Einfluß zunehmend an Bedeutung gewonnen.” And § 41, 5b he writes that the abstraction suffix -ūṯ exists in Akkadian and presumably Ugaritic (not seen well in the writing). And in § 41, 5c he mentions an Abstraktafformativ -ōṯ that is “sehr selten und fraglich”. And in the few forms where it is found like חָכְמוֹת (ḥāḵmōṯ, “wisdom”) Prov. 1,20 according to him there could be Phoenician influence. Also he mentions an abstraction suffix -iṯ.

Anyway which “archaic form of the plural in -ot?”? The feminine plural suffix in Semitic is -āt from which by the Canaanite vowel shift Hebrew has -ōt. Fay Freak (talk) 13:32, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the information/clarification. I am not a Semiticist or a linguist, just a casual fanatic. I didn't see any etymology given for the abstract suffix, so wanted to ask the question. פֿינצטערניש (talk) 13:53, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Definitely not going to be an archaic form. The Proto-Semitic form of the feminine plural is "-āt", which is raised to "-ōt" in Canaanite. In Phoenician it is raised again to "-ūt". According to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, the abstract "-ūt" is an independent suffix which already has that form in Proto-Semitic (and probably staying distinct in Late Punic as well as Hebrew, with Late Punic apparently fronting inherited u/ū > i/ī meaning the PSm endings "-āt" & "-ūt" > Late Punic "-ūt" & "-īt" and Hebrew "-ōṯ" & "-ūṯ". Unfortunately, given the relative lack of matres lectionis until very late in the Phoenician corpus (and even then, mostly restricted to non-native words), it's difficult to be confident of the vocalisation of Punic. The examples given in Krahmalkov of feminine plurals being abstracts don't have vowels specified so can't be distinguished from an inherited PSm "-ūt" (which is supported by its presence "-ūt" in Akkadian where the feminine plural is still "-āt"). The masculine plural examples could be abstracts but it seems simpler to say it's a form of metonomy (so I'd side with Chabad's translation as closer, albeit possibly sounding overly literal). Tristanjlroberts (talk) 00:36, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

phylogenetics

RFV of the etymology. Isn't it from phylogenetic, phylogenesis or phylogeny? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:35, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I’m fairly convinced the word phylogenetics was formed to have a noun for a branch of study involving phylogenetic relationships. The existence at the time of the older term genetics will have helped to make the new coinage respectable. The word occurs in an 1899 article by William Morton Wheeler in The American Naturalist on the life and writings of the German-American zoologist George Baur (“Thereupon he went to Leipzig, and during the winter of 1880–81 and the following summer semester studied comparative anatomy with Leuckart, geology with Credner, and phylogenetics with Carus.”).  --Lambiam 18:56, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I have been bold and brave, and changed the etymology to state that it is a back-formation from phylogenetic.  --Lambiam 20:35, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Are you sure it should be a back-formation? Back-formations usually remove a supposed affix, not add one. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:16, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Oxford Dictionaries defines it as “A word that is formed from an already existing word from which it appears to be a derivative, often by removal of a suffix”. Wikipedia and Wiktionary give a stricter definition in which affix removal is the sole possibility. When I rewrote the etymology section I applied the broader notion. I am pretty sure that the genesis process went Phylogenese +‎ -isch → phylogenetisch → phylogenetic → phylogenetics, so the word phylogenetics was derived from the already existing word phylogenetic.  --Lambiam 06:45, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

After rethinking the issue, I’ve changed the etymology to phylogenetic +‎ -ics. While our current definition of back-formation may be too narrow, the way I used it was too broad. I like this definition, found on the Web [1]: “A back-formation is a reverse derivation. E.g. if X is a back-formation of Y, this means that we invent X as a putative form from which we suppose that Y could have been, but wasn't, derived.” It is not so narrow as to insist that the supposed derivation process is suffixation, but not broad enough to cover phylogenetic → phylogenetics.  --Lambiam 12:09, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Washington

RFV of the etymology.

Are either Hwæssingatūn or Hwæssa actually attested? Or is this a reconstruction? --Lvovmauro (talk) 11:26, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

It appears to me that this etymology was copied from the Wikipedia article Washington Old Hall or from any of several websites copying this from Wikipedia and is lacking a usable source. On Wikipedia this started with the claim that “the estate is of Saxon origin, being "Hwaessa", "Ing" and "Tun", Hwassa's family lands.” This was gradually embellished to the forms in which it was copied, also stepwise, to Wiktionary. Most of the time the claim on Wikipedia went uncited, except for some time when it was circularly cited.  --Lambiam 04:54, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

PIE #h₃- > PAnat. *dʒ- > Hit. š-

I paper was just published on the development of PIE #h₃- to Proto-Anatolian *dʒ- in the vicinity of a labiovelar, http://journals.ed.ac.uk/pihph/article/view/2827. Anyone have any thoughts to the veracity of this claim? @Tom 144, JohnC5, Mahagaja? --Victar (talk) 00:17, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Phonetically, I hate it. Do we have any other cases of the correspondece represented by *dʒ, perhaps in substrate words?

To veer off established PIE reconstruction, what if labiality of seemingly caused by the *h₃ is instead somehow correlated with the following labiovelars and the initial is a disappearing segment unrelated to *h₃.

To add another example to strange sound changes-at-a-distance corpus, there's Manchu *t>s before č/j. Crom daba (talk) 14:24, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

I found it a bit insouciant of the author to wholly discredit the possibility of an s-mobile, a long supported theory, just because it isn't found in other languages. It could also simply be that #sh₃{R,V}- has a different development in Anatolian than other languages. --Victar (talk) 15:48, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that is a weak spot, but why don't we have any examples of this in combination in words that don't have labiovelars in them? Crom daba (talk) 17:31, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

True, but you could argue that not all those words require labiovelars, i.e **h₃óngʷn̥ (“fat, butter, oil, salve”), when it could be *sh₃ónǵ⁽ʰ⁾n̥ (cf. Kloekhorst *sónǵ⁽ʰ⁾-n) > Hit. šāgan, Luv. tāῑn.

Side note: The more I read his paper, the more I'm put off by his mocking attitude towards previous works -- really unprofessional. --Victar (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144, I'm surprised I never heard back from you on this. --Victar (talk) 00:56, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Victar: I'm sorry, I forgot about this conversation. I don't buy this either. I personally don't think *h₃ was labialized, specially because there are etymons such as *h₃ep-, and *h₃érō which are expressed in Hittite as "ḫ" instead of "ḫu". Besides, I find the sound change *ʕʷ > *d͡ʒ quite difficult to believe. It would make sense if this change was triggered by a front vowel or a glide, but dissimilatory labialization doesn't seem very convincing. I found the arguments pretty thin, given that šakuwa- already has an stablished etymology, and in my view the labiovelar in *h₃óngʷn̥ should be preserved in Hittite. I reject the delabialization rule proposed by Manaster Ramer of a labiovelar before an *m, *n, *l or *s. As counter examples I could think of *négʷ-ment-s > ne-ku-ma-an-za, e-uk-ši < *h₁egʷʰ-si. The only thing that I find a little disturbing is the constant š ~ t Hittite-Luwian correspondance. Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 14:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tom 144, any theories to the š ~ t problem? --Victar (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

stubborn

How obstinate are swine ? are they characteristically known to be so ?

Because I have thought long and hard over the years about the etymology of stubborn, where it always seemed blatantly obvious to me that the second element (if it's actually a compound word) is borne or born.

I used to think that it might be equivalent to stow +‎ borne, as in "place-borne, carrying a place" => "not movable" => "stubborn"; but "place-borne/place-carried" doesn't really make much sense...

However, the earliest attestations of this word are as stibourne, styborne, stiborn, where it seems apparent that the initial vowel was originally long i (written variably as y) and that it gradually became short, since the word originally possessed three syllables, with stress on the initial syllable. So an Old English reconstruction might be *stīborene, or *stīboren, which on the surface looks exactly like sty-born (“born in a (pig-)sty”), and would naturally have been a derogatory adjective (compare English pig-headed (“obstinate, stubborn”).

So back to my original question, to those who may have grown up on farms and been acquainted with the ways of pigs: are pigs characteristically stubborn ? Leasnam (talk) 23:16, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

I did not grow up on a farm, but I watched a documentary about a pig named Babe, and that pig was indeed stubborn in a determined way, but at the same time inordinately polite.  --Lambiam 20:55, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Portuguese sino, ensinar

Anyone have any idea what Portuguese sino and etymologically related words like ensinar are as far as inheritance or semi-learned-ness? From Latin signum we have both Portuguese senho (archaic) and sino, which despite not following phonetic rules took on the specialized and different meaning of bell, one shared with apparently inherited cognates in older Catalan or Occitan. We also see the more commonly used senha from Latin signa. When it comes to ensinar, most of the other Romance cognates, like Spanish enseñar, turned the Latin -i- in insignare into an -e-, with the exception of some southern Italian languages where that's not expected. Maybe it was a case of being originally inherited but later modified somewhat to reflect the Latin? There's also desenhar, which some Portuguese dictionaries list as coming through an Italian intermediate and others as straight from Latin. Word dewd544 (talk) 22:16, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

I don‘t know the answer but want to point out that there is also sinal from Latin signale, so the phenomenon is rather widespread. And then there is poetic or obsolete dino from Old Galician-Portuguese digno from Latin dignus, and similarly malino.  --Lambiam 08:58, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

True, there are also those words. Considering that many of these Portuguese words share the same semantic development as inherited Romance cognates in other languages, I'm tempted to think they were maybe popular terms but partially altered later. But it's hard to find good concrete info on this. For now, just to be safe, I'll use the 'derived' template, since it's a bit ambiguous. Word dewd544 (talk) 16:36, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

fiscaliteit

RFV of the etymology, which supposes a Latin fiscalitas. (Note that the supposed Latin etymon originally read fiscalité, but I've Latinised the form because that was an obvious error.) ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:58, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

If Dutch fiscaliteit is from French fiscalité, for which all sources say that it is from fiscal + -ité, we don’t have to involve any supposed Latin terms.  --Lambiam 20:13, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

 Modified accordingly.  --Lambiam 07:58, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

پلاس

Why should this be connected with Swedish and Faroese? Any other evidence or references? DTLHS (talk) 01:32, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Obviously BS etymologies by Irman should be removed on sight. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:37, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Ditto to that. --Victar (talk) 02:22, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Nek aan nek

The Dutch equivalent of neck and neck is nek aan nek, mainly used in the compound noun nek-aan-nekrace, but also adverbially in, e.g., nek aan nek gaan. I wonder if it is the etymon of the English term. The literal meaning of the Dutch term is “neck to neck”, which makes more sense semantically; compare also French coude à coude, German Kopf an Kopf and Portuguese pau a pau, all of which mean literally “neck to neck”. Phonetically, with unstressed aan and and, the Dutch and English expressions are almost the same, /nɛkəˈnɛk/. If the English was copied from Dutch, this would explain the anomalous connective and. All together, I feel that my conjecture is plausible. But is it plausible enough to record it at our entry neck and neck?  --Lambiam 13:52, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

What are the earliest known uses of the two expressions? DTLHS (talk) 16:07, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

The oldest cite I could find for Dutch was from 1845, in a translation of Disraeli's Sybil,[2] with another cite soon after shown here. It becomes a common phrase in written Dutch in the 1880s. It's also absent from the WNT. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 07:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

According to the entry Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “neck”, in Online Etymology Dictionary., the idiom neck and neck is attested from 1799. I found a Dutch occurrence of the collocation, in the archaic but then prevalent spelling neck aen neck, in a 1634 tragedy entitled Dido. However, in the context (an early-morning hunt), the sense there is not the idiomatic sense of a close race, but of dogs forced to move neck to neck in tandem, being bound by reins.  --Lambiam 09:37, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Apparently the entry Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “neck”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. has been changed because it no longer mentions this expression. According to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neck%20and%20neck the first known use is from 1672, in this meaning and form (and this agrees). --Espoo (talk) 05:23, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Polish żer

This term needs an etymology.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 03:21, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

colonel, lieutenant

Could someone add an explanation of how these words ended up with the pronunciation they have (the R sound in "colonel" and the F sound in one pronunciation of "lieutenant")? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:02, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

The r in colonel is due to its originally being coronel. The f in lieutenant isn't quite so clear. It's possible that the u in lieu was pronounced by at least a few people as something like a v at some point, in which case the following t in the compound would have caused it to devoice to an f through assimilation. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:56, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

hutta

hutte and Hütte give different etymologies for hutta. --Espoo (talk) 07:32, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

我

RFV of this part of the glyph origin added by an anon: "Some have suggested a contrast with 爾, interpreting the latter as a weapon with tip pointing outward." — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 23:53, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

What did they mean by this? 爾 represents a loom, There's plenty of examples of oracle having arrow-like glyphs but representing something different. Lucasgoode (talk) 18:04, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not really sure. I think they're comparing it to 爾 just because it's used as a pronoun, like 我. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:46, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

The "young woman" sense of English dell and Dutch del

Was wondering about the second etymology of Dutch del when I noticed that the English sense "young woman" over at dell is added under the same etymology as the landform. I was wondering what this was based on? There seems to be a big semantic difference. Also note the different etymology I added at the Dutch entry, which I took from M. Philippa's Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands (http://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/del2). If that derivation is correct, the Dutch and English terms are related to dol and dull, respectively (see http://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/bedillen). I'm finding it a bit difficult to find any definite info, though, and am not sure whether this could then be traced back to Proto-Germanic or whether it may be a loan? — Mnemosientje (t · c) 18:09, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Mnemosientje All the English dictionaries I checked that had the sense "wench" also split the etymologies, so I think you're good to go as far as splitting goes. The sense was added in 2012 (diff). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:53, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

fideo

The Spanish has an Andalusian Arabic term, but its spelling is very odd. Could anybody check? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:28, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

I find an Arabic term فداوش for noodle in a recipe, stating that its etymon is فيداوس (the odd spelling) citing a book by Ibn Rezin Al-Tajibi (إبن رزين التجيبي), but unfortunately not identifying the book further. The Spanish Wiktionary has the Romanization fidáwš. According to the French Wiktionary, the Spanish term was borrowed from Catalan fideu. The Catalan Wiktionary gives no etymology for fideu, and only the sense conger eel. The Etymology section for fideu in the Catalan Wikipedia cites the book Catalan Cuisine, which states that the term “apparently derives originally from the Arabic word fada, meaning to be abundant or to overflow (...), and seems to have entered the Romance languages ... by way of Mozarabic (...) and then Catalan.”  --Lambiam 12:55, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

@Lambiam Thanks a lot for that. فداوش certainly is in widespread use as Maghrebi Arabic at least, so that's probably where the spelling comes from. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:15, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

The Diccionario Crítico Etimológico de la Lengua Castellana by Coromines affirms a Mozarabic origin, but seems to suggest it came from a Mozarabic verb fidear, from Arabic. He doesn't say it entered Spanish via Catalan. It's a long entry and someone who actually knows Spanish could find a lot in it. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:31, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Dozy, Reinhart Pieter Anne (1881) “فِداوش and فِداوِيش and فِدَوش”, in Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes‎^[3] (in French), volume 2, Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 245.

I cast doubts upon the derivation from فَاضَ (fāḍa). Emphatics and non-emphatics don’t just switch; however close they might appear to non-Semites, they aren’t close. Dictionaries also list a terribly uncommon and hardly attestable فَدَشَ (fadaša) “to break, to crack”, but that noodle-word does not seem to be Arabic proper anyway, the shapes are no derivational form I know of. Maybe @Profes.I. knows what it is. Fay Freak (talk) 13:00, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

audio, video

It seems like there's more to these than simply direct borrowings from the Latin verb forms, see [4]. DTLHS (talk) 22:55, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Based on the sources mentioned at that link I think we should say that audio is from the prefix audio-, which is from the root audi of Latin audio + -o-. For video we should say it is from the root vide of Latin video + -o-, formed in analogy to audio. That these forms are the same as the Latin first-person singular present indicative is a coincidence, just like Dutch volvet is not from Latin volvet (“it will roll”).  --Lambiam 09:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

I’ve made these changes. I have used {{clipping|audio-|lang=en}}, which is not quite proper since there is, arguably, a change in part of speech, and no phonological change (otherwise it would be an apocope), but I couldn’t find a better fit.  --Lambiam 07:43, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

What about calling it a backformation? DTLHS (talk) 19:59, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I don’t know. To be a true backformation, the backformator ought to have supposed the prefix audio- to have been derived from an earlier stand-alone audio, which is possible but unsubstantiated. My (equally unsubstantiated) theory is that what we have here arose as a generic clipping of a bunch of words prefixed with audio-, such as audiosignal and audiocircuit, satisfying a need for a better noun for the collection of things related to recording and reproducing sound, or transmitting sound signals, than audiostuff.  --Lambiam 07:14, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

oiseau

The page states:

From Old French oisel, from Late Latin aucellus, contraction of Vulgar Latin *avicellus, diminutive of Latin avis

But the diminutive of Latin avis is avicula; and avicella is the diminutive of avicula, not of avis. Just like bucca -> buccula -> buccella. Second, the gender change needs explanation (why avicellus and not avicella), because avis (and avicula) is feminine, and diminutives in Latin regularly inherit the original gender (like latus -> latusculum, caput -> capitulum, rex -> regulus, manus -> manicula, cor -> corculum, pars -> particula, moles -> molecula, navis -> navicula etc.), despite really very few exceptions (masc. canis -> fem. canicula, fem. rana -> masc. ranunculus).

Regular when? Although we treat Vulgar Latin as part of Latin, it was the beginning of a stage of massive transition and transformation, where all the rules were starting to break down and new ones were developing. It wouldn't be surprising for a gender change to sneak in here and there, especially when the gender isn't obvious from the ending. If you look at the translations for bird, there are lots of words like Catalan ocell, Friulian uciel, Italian uccello, Neapolitan auciello, Occitan aucèl, which are all masculine and which point to a common origin from Late Latin aucellus/Vulgar Latin *avicellus. There are also descendants of Latin passer and feminine descendants of Latin avis- but nothing from Latin avicella. French oiselle exists, but it's a rare poetic variant of oiseau. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:27, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

If you suggest that avis has changed the gender (following whatever VL new and developing rule), then the statement above is wrong anyways. It should say something more like this: from LL aucellus, contraction of VL *avicellus, diminutive of VL *aviculus, diminutive of VL *avis, a masculine variant of L avis. Just because, as I wrote already, avicellus in itself cannot be a diminutive of avis, for two reasons: a) wrong gender, b) wrong morphology (correct L. dim. of avis is fem. and it is avicula).

PS. and for "regular when?" the answer is very simple: regular for whatever we call "Latin" proper. Not VL or LL.

Could a VL feminine *avis have an irregularly masculine diminutive *avicellus?  --Lambiam 07:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps. All it would take would be someone mistakenly borrowing the ending from a similar word such as panicellus without being aware that they were supposed to go through a -cula /-culus intermediary and overlooking the mismatch of genders. With the empire expanding, there had to be lots of non-native speakers who didn't quite have the language mastered and simply guessed to fill in a gap here and there. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree. The -(c)ellus diminutive suffix didn't always have to necessarily go through a -(c)ulus form first, and seemed to be the preferred or more productive form in later Vulgar Latin, which led to Romance. It may be that in many cases it did, but the intermediate form wasn't recorded. Or more likely, as Chuck mentioned, they were constructed analogically by those who didn't have full command or mastery of the language; as you can see by many unique words in Romance descendants, new words were being formed fairly often in regional variants of VL. I guess VL didn't have the same hard rules that the CL register did. Word dewd544 (talk) 17:54, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Esperanto 'genro'

Is the original sense of this word from French genre? This would have been a particularly bad way of borrowing it, orthographically instead of phonologically, but there are a number of similar cases attested (e.g. furzi instead of "furci"). Is there a more likely candidate? You could generously call it a clipping of Latin generis, but I don't know. פֿינצטערניש (talk) 16:00, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

almidón

This Spanish entry (and the RAE) state that the al- is from the Arabic article, but Latin amylum says that it's a case of alpha privative. Can either development be sourced? Ultimateria (talk) 20:14, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

It is attested in Cato Agric. 87 – as amulum –, how can it be from Arabic? Fay Freak (talk) 20:26, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

A possible explanation and reconciliation is that almidón < al + (a)midón, where the first component is the Arabic article, and the second from Vulgar Latin amidum < amylum < ἄμυλον, with aphaeresis of the initial a, making it a sadly deprived alpha privative.  --Lambiam 21:26, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

For what it’s worth, the Catalan word for starch is midó.  --Lambiam 21:46, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

track, trac, traque

We link Old French/Middle French trac with Old Norse traðk in the entries for track and traque. But we say that it is of unknown origin in trac's entry. Some sources that I have seen merely suggest that track has Germanic origins, one directly links it instead with Dutch trek (rather than Old Norse traðk) [suggesting that both the French and Dutch words are of Old Frankish origin, I guess], and others limit the listed etymology to just going back to Old French/Middle French.

If we are unable to clear this discrepancy up, can we at least determine how we want our entries to present the etymology, for consistency's sake? Tharthan (talk) 23:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Our entry for French traquer also lets Old French trac come from Middle Dutch treck. This was proposed by Diez; le Trésor de la langue française informatisé prefers an onomatopoeic origin (the sound made by marching people, as also stated by Rabelais), considering a Dutch origin “less probable” in view of the geographic area and chronology of the earliest attestations.  --Lambiam 11:09, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Different dictionaries cite different origins for Old French trac, usually either Old Norse traðk (“track, path, spot”) or from a source related to Middle Dutch tracken, trecken (“to pull”). In the majority of cases, however, it is cited as possibly to probably of Germanic origin, specifically which Germanic origin remains unclear. Leasnam (talk) 21:54, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

toast (English noun)

We currently have a single etymology for toast which seems very nice. However we have six senses, and my guess is that the current etymology only applies to two or three of the senses directly. The other senses are likely closely related to the first sense, but indirectly. Here are the senses and my guesses as the etymological breakdown:

1. Toasted bread (from current etymology)
2. Salutation/cheers (from toasted bread in drinks?)
3. Esteemed individual (from the above?)
4. One who is to be destroyed/finished (alluding to being burnt to a crisp?)
5. Jamaican poem/rap (?)
6. Pop-up notification (from bread emerging from a pop-up toaster?)

Anyone want to take a shot at reorganizing the entry? - TheDaveRoss 13:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

The first three are related, according to the entry Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “toast”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. Sense #1 is from the verb, meaning to ”roast”. Chronologically next is sense #3, allegedly metaphorically related to a custom of dunking spiced toast in a drink. That sense then got transferred to #2, the act of cheering the esteemed person.

I’ve always assumed that the origin of sense #4 (not only people, but also things) to be from the slang among techies of an electronic circuit said to be toast after too high a voltage has been applied. (See also fry, sense #5.) Also, I think the entry for that idiom should actually be the verb be toast. I am not familiar with the last two senses, but this Google search shows that the explanation for the pop-up notification is generally assumed to be the likeness to a slice of toast popping up from a toaster.  --Lambiam 15:44, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and at least split the noun from the verb. This should help facilitate breaking it out further. Leasnam (talk) 23:12, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Quamoclit

I can't determine what Nahuatl word this is supposed to be a distortion of. --Lvovmauro (talk) 23:26, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Century Dictionary has it. DTLHS (talk) 23:47, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

That book isn't visible to me (even though it should be public domain, Google is weird like that). --Lvovmauro (talk) 00:45, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

@Lvovmauro: It says it's from quamochitl, from quauitl (normalised cuahuitl) + mochitl. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:50, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

kahle ("shackle")

How does derivation from "kahlata" ("to wade") make semantic sense? SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 14:30, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

I see a semantic connection between progressing with difficulty (sense #2 of kahlata) and wearing shackles, especially when applied to one’s ankles.  --Lambiam 19:22, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like someone has been reading etymological databases without care: it is not kahle in the meaning 'chains, shackles', but in the dialectal meaning 'open end of a dragnet, with ropes attached' for which this derivational etymology has been proposed. Some sources further take these to be a single polysemic lexeme, but others do not. --Tropylium (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Now fixed, though I have some doubt on if sense 2 can be really reliably attested (this might be a problem with many other etymologies eventually). --Tropylium (talk) 17:24, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Pops (father, dad)

I am curious about the morphology of pops (father, dad) --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps the word comes from Dutch paps (/pɑps/), which is, morphologically, pap (shortening of pappa / papa) + -s. Or else there was a completely parallel development from US English poppa.  --Lambiam 07:03, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

It's just pop with what our entry calls a hypocoristic suffix (-s#Etymology 5), which gives an informal, affectionately playful tone when used in direct address (though using such terms with someone you're not close to can be very rude). Other examples include moms, gramps, toots, Babs and homes. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

It also has an allomorph -sie (-zie?), unless it is -s + -ie, so in these lines:

2018, “Rolling Round”, HL8 and SimpzBeatz (music), performed by Sparko of OMH:

Can’t miss no dots
Every shot let caused I’m hittin
Used to bag it up in the toilet
My mumsie thought I was shittin
Ever seen a junky fittin?
Ever stepped in a room full of needles?
No I ain’t doin no nittin

I think it is somewhat productive in MLE, used for forming nicknames. One even prints t-shirts with the word ”mumsie” if you search for it. Fay Freak (talk) 10:35, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Compare also cutesie/cutesy, tootsie, toesies. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Now it’s curious that editors have added words with -sies as either plural-only or uncountable – it looks like just the plural-form of -sie. I don’t know however reference works about English suffixes of obscure or childish kind, and searching more such words, be they with -sie or -sies, is hard for multiple reasons. The spelling though if one comes to track those words down is probably with ⟨s⟩ and not ⟨z⟩ since the English noun plural suffix is spelled alike. Fay Freak (talk) 16:01, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I think in the case of "toesies", I think it's because it's formed from "toes" rather than "toe", and thus, the diminutive/childish form is also plural. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:27, 31 October 2018 (UTC)