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Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2021/May

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The etymology of Πᾰραιτόνῐον (a Greek toponym in Egypt) edit

I wonder if someone has studied or came up with etymology of it? It looks Greek and Egyptian at the same time but i couldn't find it in any etymological dictionary. My only guess is πᾰρᾰ́ + Ἴτανον "contrary to Itanos" but i don't know if this construction was possible in Ancient Greek. --ⲫⲁϯⲟⲩⲉⲣϣⲓ (talk) 18:26, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Julius Valerius's translation of the Alexander Romance says this: Ipse autem rex cum forte in agro, ut adsolet, spatiaretur, cervam intuitus pastui occupatam unum ex his qui destinandis sagittis sollertior habebatur iaculari bestiam iubet. Qui cum rem non ex opinione praeiudicata fecisset leviusque ictum animal evasisset, exclamare Alexander fertur, Graeco scilicet verbo, quod remissior arcus intentio sagittam imbecillius exegisset, παρὰ τόνον istud factum videri. ex eoque dictum Paratonium; etiam post frequentatae urbi nomen indidem datum. (The gist of it: that Alexander the Great saw a good archer miss an easy shot there, and he said it was because the bow was badly strung rather than the fault of the archer. "Because of stringing" is para tonon.) But that seems like more of a folk etymology than a real one if I had to guess.Isaacmayer9 (talk) 22:47, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aristotle's etymology of Italy edit

Aristotle says in the Politics that "there was a certain Italus, king of Oenotria, from whom the Oenotrians were called Italians, and who gave the name of Italy to the promontory of Europe lying within the Scylletic and Lametic Gulfs". Is this alternate origin of the word "Italy" worth mentioning the etymology, or has it been discredited? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:47, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is likely that Aristotle based this on the same sources as Thucydides, who wrote earlier, in Book 6 of The History of the Peloponnesian War: Εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἐν τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ Σικελοί, καὶ ἡ χώρα ἀπὸ Ἰταλοῦ βασιλέως τινὸς Σικελῶν, τοὔνομα τοῦτο ἔχοντος, οὕτως Ἰταλία ἐπωνομάσθη. (Also now there are Sicels in Italia, and the region was named Italia after Italos, a thus-named king of the Sicels.) The differences (Th.: Sicels; A.: Oenotrians) suggest that A. did not simply copy this from Th. For what it's worth, OEtymD gives several tentative etymologies ("Perhaps", "Traditionally said to be", "Or perhaps"), including the "Italus" theory without indicating its provenance.  --Lambiam 23:52, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
According to legend named for a king Italos. Like that? ApisAzuli (talk) 05:01, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would say something more like, "According to some ancient Greek authors" rather than "According to legend," but I think it's worth noting in the entry. I'll add it in. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:56, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Following the links to Ῑ̓ταλίᾱ (Ītalíā) > Ῑ̓τᾰλός (Ītalós), the mention of Thucydides was effectively there already.
I am by the way not clear what "reanalysed" means in this context (see Ῑ̓ταλίᾱ). Seems it wanted to suggest--in the wrong place--that Ῑ̓τᾰλός was a backformation. The interpretation of "Ῑ̓ταλίᾱ" itself is suggested in a foregone conclusion, suggesting that calquing was correct, when it is attributed under the current hypothesis to be glossed {{bor|grc|osc|𐌅𐌝𐌕𐌄𐌋𐌉𐌞 (víteliú)||land of young cattle}}, although "land of" is not really warranted by the lack of surface analysis unless, that is, if -𐌉𐌞 corresponded remotely to -ίᾱ. ApisAzuli (talk) 04:23, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That would make Italy a doublet of veal. Odd, that... Chuck Entz (talk) 04:48, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Source for etymology of Akkadian wardum edit

Anyone who could help with this? See wardum. Sartma (talk) 14:17, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sartma: The source is the head of Profes.I. (talk • contribs), in the entry where you removed it from, as usual with native Semitic lexemes, like I have to explain the plainest words in Arabic like إِبِل (ʔibil) and أُهْبَة (ʔuhba) myself, due to the lack of any etymological dictionary and the taciturnity of mentioners of words in literature – it’s a job of thinking. It makes sense to me. w-r-d seems to have meant originally “to follow”, in application to the way down that water goes, so wardum means Gefolge, Gedinse. Does this answer satisfy you? Fay Freak (talk) 23:35, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak: Thank you for your reply. I didn't know that source in the head of {{user}} was an acceptable source, and it makes sense to me a desirable method of investigation. Is this common practice here on Wiktionary? Is there any documentation that endorses this approach to etymologies you can refer me to?

route edit

Wouldn't normal Latin be via rupta, not rupta via? --Espoo (talk) 19:03, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The dictionaries i was able to check all have rupta via, even lexico.com, whose content is supposed to be produced by Oxford Dictionaries, but https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/08/route.html says that the OED has via rupta. --Espoo (talk) 19:27, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn’t make any difference though, as with torta, but indeed the natural (for a Roman) order is via rupta. Fay Freak (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is used by Quintilian as an ablative in that word order here, which seems perfectly natural (to me).  --Lambiam 00:14, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In context it does, because one stresses the ideas in a certain way. But let’s say the citation form of a noun+adjective phrase is first noun then adjective in Latin. Fay Freak (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

spigurnel edit

RFV of the etymology. I can't find evidence of "Saxon" (Anglo-Saxon, i.e. Old English?) spicurran except in 18th-century dictionaries as the etymology of this very word. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:25, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mahagaja: It looks to me like it might be corrupted from Latin *expignorellus, from expignorō (“to redeem from pawn; to seize as a pawn, distrain”), from pignus (“pledge, mortgage”). --{{victar|talk}} 04:23, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis has entries for spigurnellus, to which the variant form spigornellus refers. The attestations having an English context, the earliest being from 1275, this is probably a Latinization of an existing English term. I have a problem with the semantic gap between redeeming from (or seizing as) pawn and sealing a writ. Also, the metathesis in gorn < gnor is somewhat unusual. The word is seen as a surname around the same time;[1] it may have arisen as a vocational name. In a footnote in an article in The Harvard Law Review the term occurs with a capital letter and without article as if it is a proper noun, but judging from the context it refers to an official having that function.  --Lambiam 13:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let's look at the circumstantial evidence: the bulk of older legal terminology comes from Anglo-Norman Old French, and the overall shape of the word is reminiscent of Anglo-Norman Old French. The problem is that Middle English spigurnel and its Anglo-Norman/Medieval Latin etyma refer to a plant. Also of interest is that, as mentioned above, this is both a surname and a title, with early occurrences of the same person bearing both the name and the title. The latter fact could be explained by it being an occupational surname, but what about the reverse? What if the title came from the surname?
I'm just guessing here from limited knowledge, but there doesn't seem much to go on. I was surprised not to find anything for the title in the MED, given that the office dates to the Middle English period. Of course, everyone in the courts spoke Anglo-Norman Old French and Latin, but you'd think it would make its way into Middle English somewhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the word *is* from Latin, it most likely started with expig-, so ex-pign- is definitely the best guess, especially given it has to do with legal contracts. One could venture a reconstruction like *ex-pign-urn-ellus, but that lacks more precedence. I really want it to be from *expignorārius, as that makes most sense construction-wise, but that's maybe a harder sell. --{{victar|talk}} 16:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I find no evidence of a Latin verb expignorō having been used before the 14th century. The footnote in the article in The Harvard Law Review refers to “(Y. B. 20 & 21, Edw. I. no)”. Searching there for Spigornel gives 48 hits;[2] his role seems to be that of an advocate, often making pronouncements concerning writs. The later Year Books 32 & 33 Edw.1 only refer to a Justice “Sire Henri Spigornel”,[3] whose surname is also spelled Spigurnel.[4][5] I can find no clear information that he and the 1292 Spigornel are the same person, but it appears rather likely. I also spotted the variants Pigornel and Espigornel, for which British History Online refers to Spigornel. A search there on the latter term produces 43 hits.[6] One entry in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward I, dated Westminster, Oct. 20 1276, refers to “the office of the king's chapel and spigornels”.[7] The source does not provide the original Anglo-Norman, but, presumably, the rendering in Modern English faitrhfully mirrors a plural form, identifying the use here without question as a common noun. If the common noun derived from the surname, it must have been earlier than the uses identified in the Year Books.  --Lambiam 10:22, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Latin, the verb from pignus is pignero with an "e"; is there an expignero attested in post-Classical Latin? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:35, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Records of the Corte Pretoriana (the court of the town of Palermo), the oldest surviving documents of which date from the second half of the fourteenth century, contain the forms expignorasse (at least 9 times) and expignorata.[8]  --Lambiam 11:48, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Affixing ex- to a verb really isn't that big of an innovation. I wouldn't get hung up on the attestation of expign-, --{{victar|talk}} 07:21, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably the same person is variously referred to, in the 49th regnal year of Henry II (1255 or 1256) as Nich. le Epigornell, Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire,[9] in 1262 as Nicholas le Espigornel, and in 1265 as Nicholas Spigornel.[10]  --Lambiam 11:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The likely scenario is that the surname derives from the occupation, as most surnames do. --{{victar|talk}} 07:21, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is true, however this source [[11]] states that the occupation was first named after a man Galfridus Spigurnel (some other sources say Geoffrey Spigurnell), which other sources link to the occupational derived English surname Spickernell (as you say). The ultimate origin of the surname Spigurnel(l), though, remains unclear, yet if this etymological account is true, it need not be derived from any word meaning "seal up" or "inclose"...it could merely be from the flowering plant Leasnam (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are also several variants, both of the surname and occupation, that display -gn-: espignorel (1282), spignorel (1287), spignurel, spignorell. --{{victar|talk}} 15:23, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
One would presume that Geoffrey Spigurnell is the same G.S. as Geffery Spigurnell mentioned here, the great-grandfather of Justice Henry Spigornel. Are there sources, independent of Bailey's Dictionary, that state he was Sealer of Writs?  --Lambiam 11:54, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Does the Tagalog word "sampo" come from an earlier "isang pulo" edit

I know that "pulo" is a word for ten many many Philippine languages (Source: I also speak Cebuano). Here's my explanations

  • The loss of "i" is caused by apheresis.
  • The change of "ng" to "m" is caused by nasal assimilation.
  • "l" is lost somewhere along the way. eg. tl. "baon" vs. ceb. "balon" (packed lunch)
  • The next multiples of ten follow the same pattern. — This unsigned comment was added by XXtarrareXX (talk • contribs) at 06:41, 4 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]
Tagalog sampo points to sampu, which seems to suggest a derivation similar to what you describe. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:35, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

海關 edit

Although there isn't concrete evidence, I think the Chinese term of 海關 (Customs) derives from the government departments responsible for external trade in Qing Dynasty (such as 粵海關 and 江海關). Can someone else confirm this?廣九直通車 (talk) 10:39, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

jurma edit

@Tropylium, Rua I have no idea where this is from. There seems to be a cognate in Votic (jurma), but this may be a misidentification of Ala-Laukaa Ingrian or simply a borrowed term into or from Votic. Does anyone have any idea? Thadh (talk) 20:50, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My first guess would be to consider it an alteration of Proto-Finnic *julma. In Finnish julma (SMS) does seem to mean 'brave' in southeastern dialects, including Ingria. This seems hard to defend in any more detail without a plausible reason for the -r-, too. Possibly juro which likewise means 'brave' in SE Finnish (SMS)? Unfortunately neither of these two "building blocks" are attested by themselves from Ingrian, and I'm also not sure if this latter one should be even considered the same word as the widespread juro meaning 'sullen, silent' (though perhaps bridgeable by Finnish–Karelian–Votic jura (“tough, hardy”)).
The complete loss of the meanings 'angry', 'brutal' and the introduction of the polar opposite meanings 'tame', 'safe' would in any case have to be left as unique local developments too.
In Votic the word seems to be attested widely enough, five Western Votic villages per {{R:vot:VKS}} (given also with "cf. julkõa", not that that solves anything), that's it's certainly not just misidentified Ingrian. The very local distribution clearly suggests a loanword in either direction of course. --Tropylium (talk) 16:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mägiste recorded julmistua though, which suggests *julma once existed in Ingrian; I guess that makes the possibility *julma > jurma less likely. Don't know about jurV though.
By the way, the term is widely attested in northern Soikkola, so that makes borrowing from Votic less likely IIUC. I personally interpretated the semantic shift as "brave" > "brave for an animal" > "tame" (referring to an animal's approach to humans; "safe" is undoubtedly related to this sense), not sure if that makes sense. Thadh (talk) 18:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

arango edit

The etymology given here is "native name". Good luck finding which language this is from! Yellow is the colour (talk) 23:05, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to this book, the word "figures in documents about Malagasy (Madagascar)", most of whose inhabitants speak Malagasy, and supposedly means "long". While the entry mg:rango has been twice deleted by Jagwar (the sole contributor to the Malagasy Wiktionary), it has plenty of links to it that seem like form-of entries. We could try to ask @Jagwar if he has any clues.__Gamren (talk) 01:35, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, also. From their talkpage here, I found this dictionary, which translates "rango" as "long et maigre" -- long and thin. Seems to fit together well?__Gamren (talk) 01:48, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

grog (ground ceramic material) edit

What's the etymology for this? Probably not the same as the alcohol?__Gamren (talk) 01:15, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In French, the terminology of gros grain is used in this connection,[12] making it is a plausible donor term – which would give it the same etymon as the ultimate etymon presented for the drink. — This unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) at 11:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]

is it merkʷ or mergʷ? edit

we have a PIE root merkʷ "dark" that gives us the Greek word for lead, μόλυβδος, but the word that leads to English murky is listed as mergʷ. also, we have Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/morkъ tracing back to the form with gʷ. Slavic also has mergъ "brown" although we dont have a page for it. Im sure someone has tried to untangle this mess before, but can we at least decide whether there is one root or two? thanks, —Soap— 12:12, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would take μόλυβδος (mólubdos) out of the equation, as it barely looks like an Indo-European word at all, and certainly doesn't look like it comes from a root containing r, since r doesn't just spontaneously become l in either Anatolian or Greek. (The Mycenaean script doesn't distinguish them, but they are still separate phonemes.) But there do seem to be a lot of words from a root *h₂mergʷ-: Proto-Germanic *merkuz (> murky), Ancient Greek ἀμορβός (amorbós), Proto-Slavic *mergъ (“brown”), Lithuanian márgas (“colorful”), and Albanian murg all look like they probably come from it. The only thing that looks like it comes from something ending with *kʷ is Proto-Slavic *morkъ. Off the top of my head I can think of two explanations for this: (1) There's a basic root *h₂mer- which has two different consonant extensions, or (2) Proto-Slavic *morkъ has had some influence or other from Germanic. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:02, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Persian لاغر "thin" edit

Does anyone know the etymology of Persian لاغر (lāğar, “thin”)?--Tibidibi (talk) 22:41, 8 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tibidibi: Done. --{{victar|talk}} 03:07, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

geuz edit

RFV of the etymology. The tone doesn't match any of the Middle Chinese readings. Pinging @PhanAnh123. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 02:17, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The tone of the Zhuang word is A2 and the tone of Sinitic word is also A2 in many Min lects. The site doesn't seem have Yue and Ping dialectal forms unfortunately. The William J. Gedney’s Comparative Tai Source Book suggested connection with เคียว (kiao) which is more fitting tone-wise but I'm not sure about the semantic.PhanAnh123 (talk)
@PhanAnh123 The Min forms are mostly 陰平 (A1 [in Proto-Tai, same subsequently]). The only one that's 陽平 (A2) is 石陂, but Min Bei tones are very inconsistent (at least on a surface level). The Yue and Ping dialects are here (click on 12825) and here (click on 12825), respectively; most of them are 陰上 (C1), though this seems to be a literary reading. 鉸 in the word for "scissors" (鉸剪) usually has 陰去 (B1) in Yue dialects. It's also 陰去 (B1) in Nanning Pinghua. (It seems like 剪刀 is more common in dialects in Guangxi, at least according to 广西汉语方言研究.) I think it's better to go with a source like Gedney. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 03:26, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, if we're talking about the same set, I don't think Gedney lists geuz in the list provided for "scissors" because those forms are C2. The only Northern form cited is from Saek. This set has been connected to 鉸 by Alves. It's not clear if geuz is related to this set, though. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 03:38, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

English bhikkhu edit

@Inqilābī has just changed the etymology of this word to claim that it is a transliteration. As Pali is written in English, do we not need evidence that it was borrowed into English from another script? Furthermore, I would expect to see some statement of the script in this etymology (if it be true), probably using an invocation of {{pi-sc}}. --RichardW57 (talk) 05:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to the template {{translit}}, does the source need to be a word, or will a lemma do? --RichardW57 (talk) 05:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should we be converting old loans from Pali and Sanskrit to Thai to use {{translit}} instead of {{bor}} and the like? The cut-off point would be when Pali was switched from the Khạm script to the Thai script. @Octahedron80 Is that the right date for Sanskrit? Pali to Lao could be tricky - when does simplification stop the loan being a loan by transliteration? --RichardW57 (talk) 05:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is useless, and I oppose Inqilābī's edit. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 06:00, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57: Etymologies should be accurate. Any Pali or Sanskrit loan in a Southeast Asian language is obviously a learned borrowing, because Pali/Sanskrit is the superstrate on Southeast Asian languages. But on the other hand, English (or any other European language) transliterates from Pali/Sanskrit; it is not a case of borrowing because borrowings imply loans that come through direct contact between two linguistic communities. The difference is important. And bear in mind that Pali is also written in sundry native scripts, so just because our Pali entries are in the Latin script does not make any exception about the English word being transliterated. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 06:13, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My local temple (Hertfordshire, England) produces chanting books - for chanting in Pali. The Pali is in the Roman script - they don't seem to produce anything in Thai or Sinhala, even though the lay congregation is a 3-way split of Thai, Sinhalese and British, and by lineage the monks are Thai forest monks. (Abbots are native English speakers.) The Pali Text Society publishes in the Roman script. Pali texts in the Roman script seem to be popular in Sri Lanka - perhaps the Sinhalese actually do find it easier to read than their own script! At present, the Roman script is in third place for Pali usage on the Internet, with Thai without implicit vowels in first place and Thai with implicit vowels in second place. Pali text books written in English use the Roman script for Pali. In short, Pali is now also written in the Roman alphabet. RichardW57 (talk) 06:54, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57: That’s all right, but you would certainly agree that if we did not have romanised Pali entries, then there would have been no controversy about using {{translit}}. Maybe the best option is to display the Pali word in the Brahmi script (in etymologies) to solve the problem? -⸘- dictātor·mundī 07:47, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I might then have propose that we should record bhikkhu as being derived from the Roman script form of the word. Now, it may be that bhikkhu is directly taken into English as a transliteration - we need to document the start of the usage of the word in English and dig into the history of Pali in the Roman script to find out. The research might be inconclusive. It did strike me that {{translit}} was a way of ducking a decision as to {{bor}} v. {{lbor}}. Like @Metaknowledge:, I'm not persuaded that {{translit}} is useful; it looks as though its useful functionality has been taken over by {{bor}} and similar. --194.74.130.171 11:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose there might be some consistency in making Brahmi the main script for both Sanskrit and Pali, but it would be a bad idea. (There might even be spelling questions for Sanskrit in Brahmi, as in Grantha.) The logical script for Pali would be Thai were Roman is ruled out, even though it's been a major Pali script for well under two centuries. Thai script users outnumber Burmese script users. We'd probably chose the Sinhala script for Pali so as to maximise user inconvenience. --194.74.130.171 11:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: Your argument on superstrate status is wrong. Norman French was a superstrate of Middle English, but that doesn't make words like beef a learned borrowing. I also be doubt that words like buddha and rājan (“king”) are learned loans into Southeast Asian languages. And there have been learned communities speaking Pali in South Asia. It happened similarly with Latin in mediaeval Europe. As a dying gasp in England, Newton's 'Principia' was published in Latin in 1687. And there was a time when European aristocracies spoke French, (War and Peace mentions Russian aristocrats being taught Russian!) and hasn't English recently had a similar role in South Asia? --194.74.130.171 11:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @194.74.130.171: {{translit}} is but a special case of {{bor}} in which the loan is simply transliterated from the source; and in this age of globalization a separate form of etymology, namely transliteration, seems fitting. And I have not said all borrowings from a superstrate language are by default learned loans, though Norman French can also be regarded as an excessive adstrate influence (mark that only the Southern Anglic lects were the most affected from this adstrate language). -⸘- dictātor·mundī 11:42, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit confused about the usage of "transliteration", when there is no native script for Pali cited. Wakuran (talk) 11:55, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
All non-Latin scripts that have been historically/traditionally used to write Pali are native scripts. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 12:01, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So this excludes the Lao, Thai, Shan and I think Devanagari and Bengali scripts. By 'Shan' I mean the variant of the Burmese script used for Shan. We don't seem to have any attested Brahmi here - I don't know what the rationale for including it was. --194.74.130.171 12:33, 12 May 2021 (UTC) (i.e. RichardW57m (talk) 12:41, 12 May 2021 (UTC))[reply]
@Inqilābī, Wakuran:There are some rare cases where transliteration might be relevant. Pali သိက္ခါ (sikkhā) (currently undergoing RfV) may have an etymology of Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) mistransliteration of sikkhā (ironically in the relevant texts a transliteration of သိက္ခာ (sikkhā)); it might also simply be a conversion failure between Unicode 5.0 and Unicode 5.1. In general, should we insert an etymology for the lemma-like Thai script Pali entries to record a transliteration from the Khmer script form to the Thai script form? (Unicode has not proclaimed any disunifications between the Cambodian and Khạm varieties of the Khmer script.) Likewise for Lao script, a transliteration from the Tai Tham script? I'm not sure how secure the latter would be. I suspect some Lao script Pali text has been converted from Thai text Pali. Similarly, when I find equivalent Thai script and Tai Tham script Pali side-by-side, I must suspect that one is a transliteration of the other, and I would not be surprised if both turned out to be a transliteration of a Roman script version. Transliteration has been going on for centuries. I can certainly imagine a Thai script version being prepared from a Khạm script version which in turn is a copy of a Sinhala script version. RichardW57 (talk) 07:36, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Albanian dhi etymology 2 edit

Any idea where Albanian dhi meaning "to shit" comes from? The etymology is currently missing. Could it possibly be related to dhanë, participle of jep, or to dhe meaning "Earth"? MGorrone (talk) 10:46, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's an etymology given at dhjes, which I'd guess is the same. Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

海參崴 edit

@Justinrleung, Frigoris, LibCae, Bula Hailan RFV of the etymology. As far as I am aware, the first attestation of Chinese 海參崴 is found in 西伯利東偏紀要 (1885). Is there any source supporting the claim that 海參崴 is a phono-semantic matching of a Manchu word? RcAlex36 (talk) 14:19, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RcAlex36, It's insanely difficult to find an accurate map of the area before Vladivostock became a thing. The place appeared to be very obscure within the Qing self-memory and the Manchu/Chinese name could have referred to a very small place only known locally. Here's a map from 1832 that showed no towns or villages there. This navigation map from 1799 identifying what later became Peter the Great bay (then Tayamousaha) showed no such place either. Anything interesting from the Bonne map? --Frigoris (talk) 18:53, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bula Hailan Does ᡥᠠᡳᡧᡝᠨᠸᡝᡳ actually mean small seaside village? RcAlex36 (talk) 07:14, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36: I couldn't find any Manchu word with this sense. I personally think that 海參崴 is from Chinese, or maybe from other languages that were once spoken in that area. Bula Hailan (talk) 12:28, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Frigoris, LibCae, Bula Hailan Is there any Chinese or Manchu attestation of 海參崴 earlier than the one in 西伯利東偏紀要? RcAlex36 (talk) 06:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(also @沈澄心) I seem to be able to find attestations in parts of 清實錄光緒朝實錄 dated to 1880 (光緒六年). RcAlex36 (talk) 07:15, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36, I guess the chance of finding anything pre-1860 is pretty slim. --Frigoris (talk) 08:02, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36: I will check if there was any attestation of 海參崴 before the Convention of Peking, but I agree that the chance is slim. Bula Hailan (talk) 11:31, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Latin daughter edit

@Rua and anyone else familiar with Proto-Italic: if Proto-Italic *fuɣtēr had gone into Latin, what would it be? fūter, fūtris? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:14, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All IE reflexes seem to be found on Wikipedia: [13] Wakuran (talk) 15:48, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing anything there about PIE *-gh₂t- or Proto-Italic *-ɣt- in Latin. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:40, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are there other Proto-Italic reconstructions containing ɣt, or even ɣ followed by a non-liquid? Do we understand the reasoning that retains the PIE laryngeal in the Proto-Italic reconstruction?  --Lambiam 10:46, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose Oscan 𐌚𐌖𐌕𐌝𐌓 (futír) is more likely to have come from *fuɣtēr than from a *fugtēr, which would presumably have instantly become *fuktēr and then retained its -kt- in Oscan (not that I know anything about Oscan historical phonology). —Mahāgaja · talk 15:46, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Oscan and Umbrian, original *kt shows up as <ht>. The h is often lost altogether in Umbrian. This means it's not really possible to distinguish original *gʰt from *kt, since *gʰ shows up as <h> regardless, as in Latin. —Rua (mew) 21:01, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rua: OK, but my original question was about Latin. Since vectus shows that *gʰt became ct in Latin, can we assume that *ɡh₂t did the same, and that Proto-Italic *fuɣtēr would have given Latin fucter if the word hadn't been replaced by filia? —Mahāgaja · talk 22:01, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We reconstruct the ancestor of Latin vectus as *wektos, but the ancestor of Oscan 𐌚𐌖𐌕𐌝𐌓 (futír) as *fuɣtēr, following De Vaan (note the difference in consonantism). I'm unsure whether this is a slipup of De Vaan's or something that's meant to be significant (if so, it could affect the Latin outcome). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 04:30, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
De Vaan too notes that 'h' is expected, "[...] but not so problematic as to raise doubts about the etymology".
He doesn't say it directly, but the Celtic evidence should be significant too when subscribing to an Italo-Celtic node (cp. *duxtīr).
Note that the laryngeal "apparently [...] remained unvocalized in Sabelic" before *-TC-. This is difficult to reconcile with vocalization attributed to Italo-Celtic if I read that correctly ("*CHC > *CaC"), while the Celtic daughters are ambivalent about it. I think this is what Lambi was asking, if *h2 is expected to be retained.
Overall, I am not sure what you mean by "replaced". The lexeme would not need replacing unless it had become submerged beforehand due to weighty reasons, or if it is secondary since the verbal base of fille looks to be well comparable (*dʰeh2-, *dʰegh2-) and *-ter could have spread after reanalysis. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean by "replaced" is that the descendant of Proto-Indo-European *dʰugh₂tḗr stopped being used at some point between Proto-Italic and Latin and instead the feminine of fīlius (an unrelated word coming from *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck”)) was used for 'daughter' instead. As for Celtic, we can't really use it to determine anything about Italic, since there was no proto-language from which Italic and Celtic both descended to the exclusion of the other branches of Indo-European. "Italo-Celtic" is just a regional grouping that has some features in common but no unique, provably shared innovations. That said, I was also under the impression that laryngeals between obstruents became a in Proto-Italic, so that I actually expected the 'daughter' word to be ×fugatēr, but apparently it isn't. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:19, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, I must have meant *dʰewgʰ- where *dʰugh₂tḗr is a tentatively noted possibility. The confusion is, I hope, understandable because of the significant semantic overlap in the reflexes. This is not widely accepted, and I concure, but the possibility cannot be rejected outright. ApisAzuli (talk) 05:34, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yanbian Korean 위글 (wigeul, “Uyghur”) edit

This is pretty strange, not being the natural transliteration of either the Mandarin or the Uyghur. Any idea where it comes from?--Tibidibi (talk) 19:20, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tibidibi, possibly influenced by Yuan Mongolian? The word in Yuan Mongolian was transcribed in Chinese characters as 畏兀兒 (Early Modern Mandarin pronunciation /*ʔui (ŋ)uʔ ɻ/, sans the tones). --Frigoris (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tibidibi, it might help to clarify what you believe a natural transliteration of the Mandarin or the Uyghur would be.
I can't speak for Yanbian Korean, but in standard Korean there's no way to write a word to end with an /r/, yet when combining the existing "위글" with many common suffixes the "ㄹ" will be pronounced as /r/ as part of the following syllable. See, for instance, "위글어" (wi|geu|reo, “Uyghur language”) listed under Derived Terms. Arguably this is 'more natural' than ending with a vowel ("ㅡ")?
—DIV (1.129.106.0 05:15, 17 June 2021 (UTC))[reply]

Portuguese iá edit

Said to be from Afrikaans. Two questions: (1.) Is it Germanic at all? It could also be from Spanish "ya", which apparently means "yes" in certain contexts. For the development "already" > "yes" compare German "schon". (2.) If Germanic, then why in God's name Afrikaans? Thank you. 90.186.83.177 11:16, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology from Afrikaans is the one given here, though I have no idea how reliable that site is. Was there contact between Portuguese settlers in Angola and Mozambique and Afrikaners in Namibia and South Africa? There's a little bit of discussion at Portuguese South African as well. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:31, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand it correctly, it's assumed to have passed from Afrikaans into Ronga before ending up in (African) Portuguese. Spanish "ya" generally seems to correspond to Portuguese já, and the examples where it's used equivalently to "yes" seem to be so rare and secondary, that a borrowing appears unlikely. Wakuran (talk) 14:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t know if it’s rare and secondary. The German schon (“already”) is actually very prominent in such sense, however does not “seem” immediately to have this sense if you look on the web or from a foreign country. More, Proto-Germanic *ja is believed to be etymologically the same word as Latin iam (“already”) and thus Spanish ya (“already”). However the German ja has been very popular in borrowings, source of standard terms Latvian jā and Slovene jā, the latter also deemed “colloquial”, like the Portuguese, so in view of the likelihoods the Spanish is secondary enough still and the Portuguese iá is more sensibly from Germanic. Fay Freak (talk) 15:48, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it comes down to the reliability of the source claiming it comes from Afrikaans via Ronga. If infopedia.pt can be trusted to have researched its etymologies, then we should go with what the source says rather than with what our intuition says is more likely. Maybe there's even a "paper trail" showing that iá was used in Mozambican Portuguese before it was used in European Portuguese, which would then make the Ronga-Afrikaans hypothesis more likely than the Spanish hypothesis. Personally, I'm inclined to believe the Ronga-Afrikaans hypothesis precisely because of its bizarreness: it must be true, because no one would ever dream up such a far-fetched etymology. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:40, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. So Afrikaans is indeed a possibility. It does seem (based on my Dutch experience) that slang terms often come from colonial use. On the other hand it's hard to prove, and the word might just as well have come from Germanic sailors in Portuguese harbours. The Ronga bit doesn't really convince me, though... As to Spanish "ya" I didn't necessarily advocate that theory, just wanted to name it as another possibility. 2A01:598:B102:721A:1E78:E7A6:D9FA:994F 17:46, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a digression, but in Finnish 'ja' seems to have been borrowed from Germanic twice, first a long time ago from Gothic 'jah' meaning "and", and around the last centuries from Swedish 'ja' meaning "yes". Wakuran (talk) 19:32, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I have some memory of hearing a Finnish speaker using "ja" similar to English "yeah" or "uh-huh", but looking it up, I might have been wrong. Finnish used juu and joo (from Swedish) similarly, though. Wakuran (talk) 19:48, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not really related, but whatever: It is considered "rare" at jaa, but I've been watching this Finnish crime series (what's its face) and I've heard it several times. Finnish speakers? 77.183.238.14 02:49, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lotus words in Chinese and SE Asian languages edit

There seems to be some interesting comparables

Any references on such words? Coincidence? --Frigoris (talk) 12:10, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

發, Chinese, to bloom edit

發 (OC *pad), /*Cə.pat/, related to PST *b/s-wat (STEDT #2185)? --Frigoris (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

hakapik English, gaff edit

Surely from Norwegian hake and pigg or the corresponding Old Norse referenced on these pages cf. https://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakapik

Pardon formatting errors: new here.— This unsigned comment was added by Summerbelr (talk • contribs) at 22:38, 15 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Seems like Norwegian sources would agree with you. [14], [15]. P.S. In the future, please sign your posts with four tilde: ~~~~ Wakuran (talk) 00:33, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Or from Norwegian hakapik, from dialectal variants of the above. I can find entries for hakapik in both Bokmål and Nynorsk dictionaries online, but I don't know (either) Norwegian well enough to create an entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:41, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hake seems pretty obvious as a cognate to hook, but I'm a bit unsure of the pik ending, I guess it could be from a Germanic root that's cognate to either peg, pick or pike, or possibly having occurred through various conflations. Wakuran (talk) 11:04, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:Todo/Native name edit

I compiled a basic list of some pages that contain "from the native name" in the etymology section. Curious editors might want to be a bit more specific. Indian subcontinent (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for generating this. - -sche (discuss) 03:33, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Even a region would help in many cases. DCDuring (talk) 03:56, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Βαΐαι and Baiae edit

The Ancient Greek and Latin claim each other as derivatives. — This unsigned comment was added by 72.76.95.136 (talk) at 19:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Arguments supporting the theory of the name originally being Greek:
  1. Many Ancient Greek place names have a plural form: Ἀθῆναι (Athênai), Αἰγαί (Aigaí), Βαλανέαι (Balanéai), Βάτναι (Bátnai), Βρυσειαί (Bruseiaí), Γάγαι (Gágai), Γαθέαι (Gathéai), Γλαφύραι (Glaphúrai), ... The plural was in most cases preserved in the Latinized name. Original Latin names do not show this tendency; most Latin place names ending on -ae have a Greek origin.
  2. The singular form βαΐα (baḯa) is an existing Ancient Greek common noun meaning “nurse”,[16] and is also a female proper noun.[17]
  3. The Ancient Greek words βαϊνή, βαϊνός, βάϊον and βάϊς also begin with βαϊ-. Latin baiulus and its derived terms start with bai-, but no words other than Baiae begin with a bisyllabic baï-.
 --Lambiam 23:29, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Strange expected Cantonese reflex of some Chinese characters edit

The Cantonese readings of the characters 邪 (MC *jia), 野 (MC *jiaX) and 夜 (yè) (MC *jiaH) are je4, je5 and je6 respectively. However, according to the Wiktionary module, the expected Cantonese reflex of these characters should have been we4, we5 and we6 instead. Is this really the correct expected reflex, or just a mistake from the module? StrongestStrike (talk) 05:53, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@StrongestStrike, this looks really weird. Could @Graphemecluster help? --Frigoris (talk) 14:00, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Justinrleung, Suzukaze-c. RcAlex36 (talk) 04:57, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graphemecluster If I'm not mistaken, w- is the expected reflex of MC 以母 only for 止合三 and 臻合三. RcAlex36 (talk) 05:22, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@StrongestStrike, Frigoris, RcAlex36 Thank you for reporting. This is due to the wrong labialisation_inducing_yue list which list all 合口 finals. Just correct the list and it should be fixed. (Or should we use the labialisation_inducing list used by predict_cmn directly?) --Graphemecluster (talk) 05:48, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that although the previous version should work correctly, it requires the openness and deng parameters from ltc-pron (which are raw data extracted from zh/data/ltc-pron), thus it requires changes to ltc-pron, which I strongly discourage. Instead just modify both the labialisation_inducing_yue and the palatalisation_inducing_yue lists. --Graphemecluster (talk) 06:14, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graphemecluster: Thanks. Please do what you think is best to fix it. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 06:26, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Justinrleung I am only an amateur, and I will have no time double-checking the list, so I hereby request anyone for help. Let me place the list here:
labialisation_inducing_yue: 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 95, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 132, 135, 146, 148
palatalisation_inducing_yue: 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 100, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112, 115, 116, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158
Check along with the Rhymes section here. --Graphemecluster (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graphemecluster Why is there a separate labialisation_inducing_yue? And what does palatalisation_inducing_yue do? RcAlex36 (talk) 10:32, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graphemecluster: The final I have been concerning about, final 100 (ia), is listed as labialisation inducing, but that final is actually a third division open final, so no labialisation should occur. Other than that, I see no problems in the list. StrongestStrike (talk) 11:18, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36, StrongestStrike labialisation_inducing_yue should list all 合口字 plus the 模韻. It seems that the labialisation rule labialisation_inducing for Mandarin reflex is more complicated. So I currently keep it a separate list, but I doubt its necessity either.
palatalisation_inducing_yue should list all 三四等字 for determining if the j- initial should present for 影云以母. The variable name palatalisation_inducing_yue is just a convention following the variable for Mandarin reflex palatalisation_inducing.
Is it really OK to only remove final 100 from the first list? Is there any final missing? How about the second list? --Graphemecluster (talk) 16:39, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that I am not the original author of the predictor — the original code written by Ayaka is here. --Graphemecluster (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graphemecluster: I just noticed that final 24 (ɨo), a third division closed final, is also missing from the first list. I also double-checked the second list — it looks correct to me. StrongestStrike (talk) 17:53, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Great. If there aren’t any further changes needed, I will modify ltc_pron/predict in a short time. --Graphemecluster (talk) 02:29, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Fixed. Notify me if there are any other mistakes. --Graphemecluster (talk) 08:27, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Quinsay edit

I find the derivation from 京師 (MC kjaeng srij) rather not very probable. During the Southern Song it was highly politically incorrect to refer to 臨安 (MC lim 'an, “Hangzhou”) or 行在 (MC haeng dzojX) as 京師. Later travellers would have even less chance to hear the native speak of the city as 京師.

Can the Marco Polo sources be cited? --Frigoris (talk) 09:53, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Vox Sciurorum who added the etymology. RcAlex36 (talk) 07:13, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Frigoris: I don't remember clearly what led to my etymology (though I do remember discussing the history with a Chinese friend who recognized the word 行在). I must have found two possible words and put the more likely one first. For the attribution of the romanized form to Polo, online Britannica[18] says "on another occasion he visited southeastern China, later enthusiastically describing the city of “Quinsay” (now Hangzhou) and the populous regions recently conquered by the Mongols." Maybe searching the writings of Marco Polo would shed some light on this. I ran out of patience looking for a combination of an early edition with clear printing and searchable text in a language that made some sense to me. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:30, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

gerhardtite edit

Charles Frédéric Gerhardt after whom gerhardtite is named is not an American chemist. He is a French chemist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Gerhardt Regards Cuneyt sarac — This unsigned comment was added by 178.233.212.45 (talk) at 17:31, 19 May 2021 (UTC).[reply]

*maskwǭ + /-Vr/ or else edit

@Rua, Victar: For cleaning up, not to say solving, masca’s etymology, which many people look at these years, what is the derived term or the suffix from which the Romance forms maschera, máscara, màscara and so on derive? Probably there is a productive way in Proto-West Germanic (unless Visigothic or Ostrogothic) explaining them? Since they have the very same meaning of “mask” I do not doubt that it is the same word, and it is to be suspected that Romanists lacked a Germanist to understand the formal relation. “Mesh netting over the face as a mask to filter air” is now a familiar enough occurrence to explain the “mask” word from this ur-Germanic word, the origin is not that much uncertain as mask makes it appear. The Arabic derivations are of course to be discarded because of the attestation of masca as early as 643. The sense of a “witch” is also visibly the same, connected via the idea of any nightmarish appearence, as many words in many languages have such meanings uniformly, e.g. German Larve and Fratze.

Or a Vulgar Latin suffix, @Brutal Russian? The /i/ in terms like ēscāria, ēscāriola, because one just adds various meaningless endings for sheer expressiveness typical to language of proximity, is prone to careless omission, but the stress does not fit. On the other hand in a “learned” borrowing stress rules could be ignored due to not knowing morae. Fay Freak (talk) 22:45, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak: Maybe corrupted from *mask-tr-ā, from *maskā +‎ *-þr +‎ *-ā. --{{victar|talk}} 01:30, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Enid Welsford, who covers various theories in The Court Masque, considers it impossible for maschera to derive from masca (some other books consider it merely questionable), and says Meyer-Lübke regards máscara and maschera as "unquestionably Arabic in origin", though Welsford agrees masca cannot "be left out of account [...as] the two words were connected in the mind" of speakers. She (and some other sources, going back a century to Auguste Scheler's 1888 French dictionary) suggest that the words with r could derive from speakers connecting and assimilating the Arabic word (or another r-having word), in the context of masked festivities/entertainment, to masca. In turn, the loss of the r when going from maschera to French masque might be explained (Welsford says, citing the NED) as (further/again) assimilating maschera to masca. Personally, I think Fay Freak's speculation that the -ar- could be an extraneous Vulgar Latin affix is also very plausible, perhaps there was a verb with -are (meaning "blacken" or "mask"?) or a noun or adjective with one of the senses of -aria/-arius ("masker", "masking event"?), and the -ar- from one of these was mistaken as part of the base word. - -sche (discuss) 08:42, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For the sake of completeness, btw, Welsford also mentions that "A. Horning has conjectured that máscara may be derived from marásca, a man-woman (by metathesis and influence of másculus) and *marásca may be derived from mas [...] plus the derogatory suffix -asca. Körting mentions this as an ingenious but improbable suggestion, and indeed it does seem rather unnecessary to resort to a hypothetical form when an existing Arabic word can serve the purpose." (Or an existing Latin masca.) For the semantics, Horning's theory relies on the idea that earlier maskers were men dressing as women, and so an unattested, and then metathesized, word for "man-woman" then got generalized to mask. This seems like too much of a stretch, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 19:57, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
> perhaps there was a verb with -are (meaning "blacken" [... ?]
Law of large numbers says yes, eg. Ruß (“soot”), cremo (“burn”))), versus Catalan mascara (“soot”)), but this would leave the development yet to be explained.
>... or "mask"?
See Reuse (“fish-trap”), which is usually netted; notably uncertain of origin.
I could speculate for days pages, but I come to an impass because first of all the Germanic word doesn't instil confidence. PIE **mezgʷ- does not at all conform to our reconstructions and the single, Baltic comparand does not regularly match, does it? Secondly, the Arabic line of reasoning is missing an intermediate in which either the Arabic refered to dye, or the Latin refered to play (if cos-play is the supposed connection).
Incidently, when you look up scarlet for another color word, there is سِقِلَّات (siqillāt) ("denoting very expensive, luxury silks dyed scarlet-red", s. v. scarlet). Scharlach cites an older theory with Persian سقرلات (saqerlât) and sigillum instead. Suppose the Italian etymology of Scharlatan (“quack”) be folk etymology, then we have another problem. Not to miss Masche (“mesh; unlautere Handlungsweise, Dreh, Trick”) (or 'scheme, cp. mauscheln), for which pejorative sense Pfeifer reluctantly cites Yiddish mezio.
As regards the entry, would it be a good idea to call it uncertain or debated, name each words once and move the rest of the description into footnotes with references below the fold or into the respective entries? ApisAzuli (talk) 16:06, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The further etymology of the Germanic term is of little significance if we are sure already there was such a Proto-Germanic term. Due to meaning difference and formal reasons (Old Norse mǫskvi, and regard Old English mæsċre) it is unlikely to be just from a Romance term for “mask”; besides the first quote is in the Edictum Rothari in reference to Germanic practices, and probably the next quotes are often too. And no, it is not a “single Baltic comparand”, only one mentioned one. We have Latvian mežģīt created and just before tackling this mask word I created Proto-Slavic *mězgyrь, an archaism for a tarantula. The voicedness discrepancy is not jarring; though a PIE not be ascertainable one can no less contend one. Neither have we Proto-Baltic Slavic forms for Proto-Slavic *emela and *uklěja, but the Baltic forms are so obviously related that formally ambiguity is no reason to decline common inheritance.
The root for “blackening” given before and on Catalan mascara conforms to even less standards. Your comparison with German Reuse is funny, since if it is primary a trapping term there can be all kinds of other explanations more likely than a vague relation to “soot” or “blackening”. Why you refer to scarlet is incomprehensible to me. I don’t find that anything would need to have referred to a dye. “The Arabic line of reasoning” is unconnected to the “blackening” story and mentioned as a supposed secondary influence, the “laughing-stock” meaning supposedly being transmitted by fools or folk festivals or something like that: anyway you see it is extremely unlikely to have had any influence because it cannot be imagined. Fay Freak (talk) 16:55, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak: Thanks for your response. My idea was focused on obscurus and coloring, concerned primarily with mascara, and then with *maskwo in the case that the netting sense could be secondary. I can't pay much attention to the Arabic etyma, that was just coincidence because of scarlet. Hence bringing it you, because I thought the question already presents itself, could the vexing sound changes involved in the two middle eastern words (and the variants which you added) have gone in the opposite direction (or are they precisely dated and entirely regular); Could there be a way to relate those to the principle problem at hand?
I have noticed later that we are also citing Old French mascurer (“to blacken (the face)”). ApisAzuli (talk) 04:07, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

dern edit

There are four etymologies given for English dern, but they don't seem obviously different to me.

  • Etymology 1: From Middle English dern, derne, from Old English dierne (“secret”)
  • Etymology 2: From Middle English dern, derne, from Old English dierne (“hidden, secret, retired [etc.]”)
  • Etymology 3: From Middle English dernen, dærnen, from Old English diernan (“to keep secret, conceal, hide [etc.]”)

Aren't these just different parts of speech of the same Old English root? Does that count as separate etymology? (Compare Proto-West Germanic *darnī.)

For what it's worth, Etymology 4 is "uncertain". Cnilep (talk) 01:55, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, from what I can tell the parts of speech are different, so Etym 1 is a noun ultimately derived from the adjective (?). Etym 3 is the derived verb. Leasnam (talk) 05:36, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's been disagreement in the past about this kind of thing: some users would prefer to say "The noun is from the Middle English noun, the adjective is from the Middle English adjective" etc under one etymology, and some users would prefer that each have its own etymology section. The adjective and the noun appear to have always been homographic, in Middle English and in Old English, so the utility of splitting is low(er), IMO. The verb has apparently been separate since PWGmc times, when it had a different form from the adjective (from which it was, however, derived), so people might feel there's more of a case for keeping it separate. - -sche (discuss) 09:09, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Prefixes and Suffixes edit

I think there are a zillion entries missing in prefix and suffix categories, but that may have more to do with my not knowing enough about what those categories should contain. Perhaps their naming is misleading. For example,

I've seen manual categorizations elsewhere, but I can't find guidance on project pages for prefixing and suffixing. Dpleibovitz (talk) 20:19, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wiktionary:Information desk#English words w/suffix "-ible". =possible addition= visible.  --Lambiam 09:46, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, we do not report inflectional suffixes as such in etymology sections, nor do we categorize accordingly. So, for example, nuggets is simply stated to be the plural of nugget, not as being formed from nugget +‎ -s, and not listed in the category of English words suffixed with -s. The word oversimplifying is an inflected form of the verb oversimplify, and the suffix -ing is inflectional. The lemma form oversimplify is included in English words prefixed with over-. It is not always possible to determine unambiguously how a form came to be; for example, the adjective oversimplified can be explained both as the intensification over- +‎ simplified of the adjective simplified and as the adjectival use of the past participle of the verb oversimplify. I hope I have not oversimplified this treatment of the issue.  --Lambiam 10:05, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen a similar issue with discontinuously and discontiguously. There is no reason why one should be construed as dis- + root and the other as root + -ly. Really they should be both added to the dis- and -ly categories, while not being circumfixes either. Sitaron (talk) 06:26, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

chout edit

Needs more Marathi Indian subcontinent (talk) 09:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Fay Freak (talk) 20:08, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

what's the antonym for "etymologically"? edit

--Kautr (talk) 01:25, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"unetymologically". —Mahāgaja · talk 06:54, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

pan "loaf of bread" edit

Is the sense "a loaf of bread" from etymology 1 (as currently presented), same as the cooking vessel from *pannǭ? (Presumably the development is then from the vessel to the loaf baked in it.) Or is it related to all the Romance pan ("bread") words from panis? Neither the Middle English Dictionary nor some modern English dictionaries I checked has this, so they're no help. I don't have time to search thoroughly, but google books:"a loaf of pan" finds some examples where it's part of a longer phrase which is clearly code-switching or a loanword from the Romance "bread" word, as well as instances of "a loaf of pan bread" where "pan" simply means the vessel. - -sche (discuss) 16:03, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A pan loaf is simply a loaf of bread baked in a loaf pan. I imagine that in a context in which it is clear one is referring to loaves of breads, this may be shortened to pan, which (IMO) is not sufficient to define “A loaf of bread” as a sense of pan – not even considering that this is insufficiently specific. I also see uses of the term pan bread in recipes for a bread baked in a Dutch oven. I recommend posting a request of verification for a generic sense of “bread loaf”.  --Lambiam 12:22, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In Middle English, the term borrowed from French and ultimately from panis was Middle English pain (“bread”), as in pain-demeine, etc. Don't know if this helps or not. Leasnam (talk) 01:12, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Leasnam: Is obsolete Modern English pain (“bread”) inherited from Middle English or re-borrowed from French? J3133 (talk) 01:16, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The obsolete modern word is indeed inherited from the Middle English sense 2, "a kind of pie with a soft crust" :) Leasnam (talk) 01:32, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Calque translation of "international" terms edit

Is there a way to document calque translations of international terms (like telephone, chromosome, fascism) in the etymology section, without referring to a specific source language? Is there such a thing as "internationalese" in Wiktionary ;) ? Sitaron (talk) 06:22, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Like German Fernsehen and similar? Wakuran (talk) 00:48, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This example still refers to the source language (here French). But there are many cases where you can't trace back to a single source language, because the word is used internationally, like "chromosome". I realize that my question also applies to direct loans. Is Finnish kromosomi borrowed From English, French, German? demokrasi the Malay entry says it's from English, the Indonesian says it's from Dutch (but both via French)? While the Spanish entry says it got it from Greek directly? So if a single source is not identifiable, how should we handle it? Sitaron (talk) 14:37, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The English and German Wikipedia have articles on internationalisms. Not sure if that concept could be useful. [19] [20] Wakuran (talk) 20:09, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But international terms like this were almost always coined in some specific language on the basis of Latin and Greek roots; "chromosome" was originally coined as German Chromosom by Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, so we should say the English word is borrowed from German, while not denying that it is simultaneously chromo- + -some. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:15, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Scientific terms usually have a plausible traceable path to English. The plausibility is based on the belief that the relevant English-peaking and -writing scientific community had read works written in the language of coinage (often from Latin- or Greek-derived morphemes as Mahagaja notes) very shortly after their publication. Even so, I doubt that we can really exclude intermediate languages. I have even less confidence about traceability in other languages where attested first use was after several other influential languages had similar terms. It's easy to claim that the language of the relevant imperial power was the source, but how often can one be sure? Terms not originating in a scientific community are probably harder to trace through intermediate languages. DCDuring (talk) 17:43, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

vampire / unjust rollback edit

Two days ago my edit on the Wiktionary page 'Vampire' has been subject to a rollback by the Wiktionary admin user:Surjection. The rollback wasn't elaborated in the logs and the talk page of the article. I had to go ask him myself on his talk page why my edits with an academic source were subject to a rollback without initial discussion or whatsoever. I thought rollback should be used for vandalism or other sorts of unwanted edits that need immediate attention. All I did was nuancing the ethymology of vampire using a source. The explanation I got provided was vague and not really specifying the reason as though why my edit was rolled back. After a few messages back and fourth I was suggested to take a non-issue to an "ethymology discussion page". In my honest opinions this is unnecessary but apparently there is no page on Wiktionary for disputes with Admins.

My edit on the 'vampire' article included a new piece of ethymology acquired from an academical paper. What I would expect at least is a proper discussion on the talk page of the article before rolling back my edits. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=vampire&diff=62599744&oldid=62598864 TheGroninger (talk) 20:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For some context, there seems to be very little dispute about the fact that the term originates in its modern form in Proto-Slavic, and the source added in the diff does not dispute this either - it proposes a Turkic etymology for the Slavic word. I noticed that the Proto-Slavic entry (*ǫpyrь) had multiple theories about the origin, I rolled the edit back, and when asked about it, replied that it should be added to the PS entry instead to avoid giving it undue weight in relation to the other etymologies that are already present in the aforementioned PS entry, yet still this user insists it needs to be mentioned in vampire itself. By the way, talk pages for entries are rarely used on the English Wiktionary and centralized discussion rooms (like this) are the preferred option. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 21:38, 26 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Another piece of context of a different sort: this word and dhampir have seen recurring attempts to add or emphasize people's pet theories or remove theories they disapprove of.) - -sche (discuss) 03:55, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

талқылау edit

What is etymology of Kazakh талқылау (tаlqylau)? Is it related to Russian толковать (tolkovat)? Also English talk has similiar meaning to both of them. Kutkar (talk)

According to the etymology given for English talk, this term is not related to Proto-Indo-European *telkʷ- (“to talk”), from which, via Proto-Slavic *tъlkъ, Russian толковать (tolkovatʹ) is derived, with surface analysis толк (tolk) +‎ -овать (-ovatʹ). Since Kazakh is not an Indo-European language, descendence of a component талқ- (talq-) from telkʷ- can be ruled out. It remains possible that Kazakh талқылау (talqylau) is a partial calque of (the surface analysis of) Russian толковать.  --Lambiam 11:14, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning stems in etymologies edit

This is more of a technical question... at acersecomes I have given the second component of the word as the "Epic aorist stem" ἔκερσ- (based on [21]). However, I can't use {{m}} to link to this, since there will never be an entry for ἔκερσ- (ékers-). But when I use {{lang}}, there is no automatic transliteration, so I have to add that manually.

Is there a better way to achieve this result? This, that and the other (talk) 02:46, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like J3133 answered my question by using {{m|grc||ἔκερσ-}}. Very clever, and I don't think this is documented at Template:mention/documentation. This, that and the other (talk) 07:55, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Germanic second person of the verb wesan-, eart/ert edit

In the declension table of Proto-Germanic *wesaną the second person is listed as *izi. However, Old English has eart, and Old (West) Norse has ert. So where do these forms come from, and why are they not listed on the Proto-Germanic page?

Forgot to sign Mårtensås (talk) 07:24, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Prima facie same as -est, reanalyzed from a following pronoun (e.g. goes=thu, goest-thu), perhaps in analogy to bis, bist (see *biusi).
A quick search ("Old English eart") finds an en passant opinion by Ilse Wischer (2008, The use of beon and wesan in Old English), cf. page 225, "[maybe ...] very early North Germanic influence, maybe already on the Old Anglian and Jutish dialects". I think that's plausible, because the other Northsea-Germanic lects only show bis, bist, but historically uncertain, to say the least. Earlier in the text a head-nod to Celtic is given.
Donald Ringe and Ann Taylor agree that North Germanic might have stayed in contact even after West Germanic began to diversify (2014, The Development of Old English; cf. page 10 with further references). In which brief mention is made of eart (pp. 113, 372), that Mercian and Northumbrian retained an archaic theta (earþ, arþ) whereas West-Saxon has leveled the default ending, in the defective preterite-present *ar-. Howbeit I have not worked through the introduction of vowel changes or anything leading up to this section. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:00, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Further More, Ringe references Bammesberger, as does Heidermanns for a quick summary (in German, 2007: 58-60) and surely many more. Basically, the preterite-present like the strong preterites should come from the PIE Perfect, but it is not entirely clear (to me) when or how it became displaced. ApisAzuli (talk) 20:13, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it is from a defunct present-preterite verb (and I do believe that it is), it is aligned to the Old English earon and Old Norse erum/eruð/eru which appear to come from the same past-tense stem as indicated by the Old English ending -on on earon. If memory serves, I believe the defunct verb meant "arise, become", which 'you arose/you became' easily can change to mean "you (now) are" Leasnam (talk) 03:25, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is a strong reason to doubt this; in early Old Norse inscriptions we find the consonant r in eru written with the ʀ rune; Kvinneby amulet: kuþ iʀu untiʀ hanum auk yfiʀ hanum; "gods are below him and above him." This must come from a Proto-Germanic *z, not an *r, and can thus not be from a verb *iraną, like listed on the entry for art. Mårtensås (talk) 12:08, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good to know; I've always been suspicious of that theory. The only problem with assuming the relevant forms are inherited from PGmc. is the vocalism in Old English; we'd expect Old English *eorun, *eort, not earun, eart (the vocalism of eom, eam is also unexpected, but it could be levelled in from the other forms). This could be due to the Proto-Germanic /z/ in these forms (but compare hurds, hards < OE heordan); alternatively, our PGmc reconstructions could need revision. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 15:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think ea- in earun/eart is actually further proof of these forms not being from *ir-/*er-, since vowel-broken *ea before */r/ becomes Old English *eo, assuming the full merging of Proto-Germanic */r/ and */z/ in Old English happened after this sound change. The chronology would look like:
1. *eʀun - *hert-
2. *eaʀun - *heart-
3. *eaʀun - *heort-
4. earun - heorte
Do you know if this was the case? Mårtensås (talk) 18:25, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with your argument is that the relevant plural forms would've had /i/ in Proto-Germanic/Proto-West Germanic, because they were analogically created off of the 2p singular. Therefore, the expected outcome would look like this:
1. *iʀun - *hertā
2. *ioʀun - *heartǣ
3. *iorun - *heortæ
4. *eorun - heorte
A potential solution would be to posit a change ioʀ > iaʀ. This /ia/ would fall together with /ea/ (= [æɑ̯]) at some point prehistorically:
1. *iʀun - *hertā
2. *ioʀun - *heartǣ
3. *iaʀun - *heortǣ
4. *iarun - *heortæ
5. earun - heorte
However, such a change would be somewhat ad-hoc; an alternative solution would be to deny that these forms had '/i/ in PGmc (any such solution would need to account for the ON facts). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 04:12, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Referring back to the ominous notion of Celtic influence (after reading on Mutation in Breton), I came to wonder assimilation of *w in SV order (in contraction, see also: not). I shouldn't mention it except for the vocalism, but do note that it would foreshadow you're. More over, where intervocalic b affricated, it would parallel bis(t). In a similar vein, -t works as excrescent stop.
If I' m arguing for a diversified approach without all eggs in one basket, there remains room for *ar-, too. It's good that we have it, because it's not directly obvious in the very popular coursebook. — This unsigned comment was added by ApisAzuli (talk • contribs) at 03:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC).[reply]
I'm afraid I don't find your suggestion compelling. As far as I know, there's no contemporaneous parallels for the contraction (stuff like nought ← nāwiht, hauk ← hafoc, and heed ← hēafod is much later). More glaringly, contraction of *wiʀ beum would probably result in *wiʀum, which has the same problematic vocalism as the accepted etymology; it's actually worse since it has a w- that needs to be explained away. Finally, it'd need to be generalised to the 2p singular and plural. While this isn't impossible, it's a additional explanatory hoop that's best avoided. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:42, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Appologies for the misunderstanding. I was instead thinking of "thou" and a w-verb, and have noticed the same would work with intervocalic b from b-verbs in univerbation. I hadn't payed much attention to vowels because loss of the labial would seem irregular so that there is of course no expected outcome.
Unfortunately, I can't really see that being much good; you end up having to assume a whole bunch of irregularities. Contrastingly, deriving earon from *iʀum only has the one irregularity (in the vocalism). The ideal etymology would have no irregularities; this the advantage of the *ar- etymology (the trouble with it is that it conflicts with the Runic evidence; less importantly, it requires an ad-hoc assumption about the existence of a preterite-present). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 14:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I reject the notion that not and a fist full of West-Germanic cognate(?) lexemes were much later innovations, each from independent, isolated developments, but this would be different questions. Hence I didn't mean to argue a case. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not suggesting that the developments were entirely independent; there was most likely mutual influence. However, not, niet and nicht are phonologically irreconcilable with each other, so the contraction of *ne aiw wiht must've occurred independently in each language (Proto-West Germanic *ne aiw wiht could've still been a phrase like modern English not in the least, though it was probably well on the road to univerbation). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 14:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly, excrescent stops lack contemporaneous parallels; I don't see the problem with the standard explanation that the -t of the 2p singular is influence from the preterite-presents. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:42, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am not talking about phonology but typical phonetic aspects, based on native speaker intuition. If -t is as frequently elided as it is, it could also be added by way of hypercorrection, which would have only further the chance of analogy. I' m not sure how relevant the notion of total sound-change really is, while the class of function words is typically a closed class, limiting the sample base. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't think there's much in the way of evidence that final /st/ could be elided to /s/ already OE. Of course it's impossible to rule out the possibility, but the only evidence I can think of that this was a active process during the OE period is is ← *ist. One word is hardly sufficient basis for a hypercorrection. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 14:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is somewhat peripheral to the discussion, but as I've said before, I follow Ringe in disagreeing with the traditional derivation of -est from -es ϸu → est ϸu. Instead, I think the -t was generalised from the preterite-presents, such as ϸu wast (“you know”) and ϸu most (“you can”). Forms such as ϸu ahst (“you own”), ϸu anst (“you grant”), ϸu canst (“you're able to”) are unetymological, but probably were the first forms to be affected by the spread of -est before it spread outside the preterite-presents. Of course, preterite-presents like magan, sculan, etc. resisted the tendency to generalise -st; even today, archaic shalt remains (though shalst is not unknown), no doubt due to the influence of wilt. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, I agree with this. I think having *es in the 2nd singular and *est in the 3rd for wesan would have seemed strange and, really, incorrect to speakers, hence them switching the two forms. We do have Proto-Norse ᛁᛊᛏ (ist) from the around the 400s though, and uilin is þat on the Rök runestone from the 800s, which gives us an approximate period for the change. I think that, like vowel breaking, this is possibly a shared change between Old English and Old Norse. We know they had contact in the Vendel period, which is defined as from the 500s to the late 700s, so it fits chronologically. Mårtensås (talk) 10:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, it now seems that the entries for English are and art mention two different etymologies. I'd suppose they should be analogous. Wakuran (talk) 11:27, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hypothetically speaking it's not impossible, though unintended, to read it as though the stems had developed independently from independent roots in the two branches and subsequently converged, somehow.
As is, it is guaranteed to confuse virtually everyone. Those who care will know not to take anything for granted, so it shouldn't be a such a huge problem. We had better serve discussion in a #reconstruction section in the reconstruction space, because screen real estate unlike virtual memory is very limited. Suppose we might consolidate discussion of *ar- under a certain suppletive paradigm. Not the most elegant solution, but hopefully in line with the expectations. ApisAzuli (talk) 07:13, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Where in the world did San Diego come from? edit

I just reverted the removal of the entire etymology from San Diego, but I can see why @Srnec had problems with it. The issue of where Diego came from was brought up last November, but it went nowhere. I posted a reply giving context that might have been interpreted as dismissing the whole thing.

At any rate, our entries are either confused or contradicting each other:

  1. Saint James
  2. any of several places named after him, such as San Diego, California
and there is a link at the bottom to Wikipedia:Didacus of Alcalá (Our entries don't mention it, but the the California city of San Diego is named after Mission San Diego de Alcalá).
  1. a male given name, thought to be a diminutive of Santiago or, most likely, a contraction of the preposition "de" (of) + "Iago" (Galician for Jacob, which is pronounced "d'Iago").
The definition says:
  1. a male given name, sometimes confused or connected with the Spanish name Diego, which actually comes from Jacobus (“James”).

By the way: when people say Saint James, they're generally referring to the apostle James, not to the saint who lived in Alcalá.

So, it could be from:

  1. Santiago, with voicing assimilation followed by rebracketing
  2. de Iago contracting to Diago, then presumably assimilation of the back vowel a to the front vowel i
  3. Didacus, with loss of the d and intervocalic voicing of the c, etc.

Does anyone want to make sense out of this mess? Chuck Entz (talk) 05:14, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Talk:Diego#revert to October 2020?, where a similar change of mine on Wikipedia was reverted. I believe it has nothing whatsoever to do with James or Santiago. That's pure folk etymology. Diego comes from Didaco (Didacus), a name of possibly Iberian origin. Srnec (talk) 05:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See also Mission San Diego de Alcalá. The mission was named after the saint (obviously), and the city after the mission from which it grew, precisely as happened also with San Francisco < Mission San Francisco de Asís.  --Lambiam 10:35, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
However, the ES WP article for the name Diego itself at es:w:Diego mentions Medieval forms Didaco, Didago, and Diago, and states that the derivation is uncertain, with two main theories posited -- 1) ultimately from Hebrew יַעֲקֹב (Ya'akov), or 2) from a presumed Celtic proto-form Diacu ("slow"), from which presumably Welsh diawg and Breton dieg derive.
That said, I can't confirm the Welsh or Breton terms. The closest to diawg I can find might be diawch (“listless, uneager”) or perhaps diegni (“without energy, vigourless”). I have even less access to Breton resources. Is anyone else familiar enough with Celtic languages to guess at what the Spanish article might be pointing to? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 21:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Welsh word is diog (“lazy, indolent”) (Middle Welsh diawc /ˈdi.au̯ɡ/, Old Cornish dioc, Middle Breton dieuc), which GPC says comes from di- + Proto-Indo-European *h₁oh₁ḱus (“swift”). —Mahāgaja · talk 06:27, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

martyr – μάρτυρ – μάρτυς edit

The etymology section of martyr states that Ancient Greek μάρτυρ (mártur) is a “later form” of μάρτυς (mártus). Is there a basis for this supposed temporal ordering of these forms?  --Lambiam 14:42, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for as far as I can tell, the nominative μάρτυς is attested earlier and way more often than μάρτυρ. The original root does seem to be μάρτυρ-, according to Beekes. I do find it strange that the English entry calls μάρτυρ a "later form", while the entry for μάρτυρ says it's an Aeolic (dialectal) form of μάρτυς. Might just be in terms of attestation. AntiquatedMan (talk) 18:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible that the Latin singular martyr is not derived from Aeolic μάρτυρ (mártur), but is instead a back-formation in Latin of an earlier plural martyres, where the latter is a direct loan of Ancient Greek μάρτυρες (mártures), being (also) the plural of Attic μάρτυς (mártus)? In a formula, martyr < martyres < μάρτυρες < μάρτυς? (The entry μάρτυρες (mártures) also has “μᾰ́ρτῠς (mártus) and the later μᾰ́ρτῠρ (mártur)”.)  --Lambiam 11:44, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Of the pages for the inflected forms, two call μάρτυρ an Aeolic form (those for the gen. sg/pl), while two call it a later form (those for the acc. sg and nom. pl). This may just be an error of consistency? As to your question: I don't know. For what it's worth, I can find hundreds of attested inflected forms and only a handful of attestations of μάρτυρ, mostly in dictionaries and later christian texts. To me, it seems very possible that the Latin nominative is derived from an inflected Greek form (perhaps a plural form), though I don't really have any scientific literature to back that up. AntiquatedMan (talk) 18:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a correct interpretation of Beekes. He says that martur from marturos is a "compromise" but rejects the PIE root in favor of either the Aeolic (Herodian around 200 CE) or Dorian forms, in particular a Cretan forms that he points to a non-Greek -tu-r. The nominative is cited as maitun (Simonides around 500 BC) though and I don't know what to make of that. ApisAzuli (talk) 03:32, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the correction! I should've read a bit more carefully. In that case, I'm not sure what to make of the chronology either. My version of Beekes' dictionary has "Cret. Epid. μαῖτυς (-ρς), -ρος, also μάρτυν [acc.] (Simon.)". Do you know in which Greek text/fragment I can find μαῖτυν? In any case, the form baffles me as well. AntiquatedMan (talk) 18:48, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

taking the piss edit

I think we should be less definitive in the suggestion that ‘Mickey Bliss’ is the origin of the phrase ‘taking the Mickey’ than we are in our entry. The idea that ‘taking the Mickey’ derives from the Cockney rhyming slang ‘Mickey Bliss’ is problematic for several reasons: the earliest attested form of the phrase ‘taking the Mick/Micky/Mike/Michael is the now very rare if not obsolete form ‘taking the Mike’, not ‘taking the Mickey’; the existence and significance of a person called ‘Mickey Bliss’ hasn’t been established and if it’s an entirely fictitious person then it seems unlikely the expression would have stood the test of time, like ‘Rosie Lee’ and ‘Tod Sloane’; there are various bogus etymologies that make use of the notion of Cockney rhyming slang, like ‘brass tacks’ meaning ‘facts’ and ‘Scapa Floe’ meaning ‘go’, so it seems to be part of a trend; and last but not least it seems to me that the first mentions of ‘taking the Mickey Bliss’ post-date the earlier forms by several decades. I think that ‘taking the micturate’ is also dubious for similar reasons though.

I own a book called ‘Balderdash and Piffle’ which is based on a BBC TV series about the origins of words of the same name and in the book and the programme some very obscure and dated possible slang origins are mentioned, such as ‘Mike’ once being Irish slang for ‘penis’ and also an Australian term for a raging bull.

Perhaps the most plausible possibility mentioned in this book is the notion that ‘taking the Mick’ came from the xenophobic notion of treating someone like an ‘idiotic’ Irishman or removing the ‘Irish fighting spirit’ from them, the similarity in meaning and form of this expression to ‘taking the piss’ (perhaps from piss-proud but maybe from the way piss was used in industrial processes such as tanning, wool-making and gunpowder manufacture, as well as for ships’ ballast in the journeys carrying urine for industrial purposes) resulting in the two phrases mutually reinforcing and popularising each other.Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:54, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It’s just occurred to me that ‘Jimmy Riddle’ for ‘piddle’ is possibly an example of Cockney rhyming slang using a made-up name but then Wikipedia lists Jimmy Riddle as an American Country Music star, so it may just about be possible that the phrase comes from his name (though I’m not aware of him ever being famous in Britain)Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:37, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see nothing to be done here, was there a question?
Note that mygge and miȝen in the sense of Latin micturate do predate the phrase in writing, and by a lot. ApisAzuli (talk) 07:22, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It’s not so much that I’m asking a question but thinking out loud and seeing if there’s a consensus for listing other possible etymologies for the phrase ‘taking the Mickey’. Being as there seems to be no objections so far I’ll add that to the entryOverlordnat1 (talk) 00:26, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

all's well that ends well edit

According to American Heritage, the proverb is "from about 1250 [and] gained even more currency as the title of a Shakespeare comedy." So is our etymology (and categorization into "English terms first attested in Shakespeare") wrong? Imetsia (talk) 20:34, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

緬甸 edit

@Justinrleung, Frigoris, Bula Hailan, Suzukaze-c The only article that discusses the etymology of Chinese 緬甸／缅甸 (Miǎndiàn) seems to be ビルマ國號考 (1960). Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese. What are the current theories on the etymology of 緬甸? RcAlex36 (talk) 10:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@RcAlex36 The PDF itself is in English :D The text on that page is a translation into Japanese. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 11:06, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I look forward to seeing this answer and others like this. Keep it up everyone! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:12, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36: I read the article roughly. Here are some quotations from there:


...many scholars had asserted that the appellation of "Burma" was derived from the Sanskrit Brahma or the Pali Mran-ma (pron. Myan-ma) and that "Mien" might be their abbreviation.
and
其國部落曰甸・有大甸中甸等名, 故曰緬甸.
So probably Mien + 甸 = 緬甸.
By the way, click the red button (PDFをダウンロード) on that page and you can download the PDF which is in English. Hope this helps! Bula Hailan (talk) 13:14, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bula Hailan I've also read the article. So 甸 may be from တိုင်း (tuing:, “division; administrative unit”). RcAlex36 (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36, could the Shan word transcribed as möng in the article be မိူင်း (móeng)? --Frigoris (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Frigoris: I think it pretty much has to be မိူင်း (móeng). RcAlex36 (talk) 14:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36, If the 甸 comes from တိုင်း (tuing:) (which is translated as "division; administrative unit; military command" in the SEALang.net dictionary), it may be considered as a form of phono-semantic matching, since 甸 (OC *l'iːŋs) in ancient Chinese books referred to a kind of feudal title of nobility, and also the country under the dominion of such a feudal lord (see e.g. The Book of Rites). Coupled with the semantic meaning of 緬 (MC mjienX, “faraway”), the whole word may be said to be a phono-semantic matching ("faraway country"), possibly explaining the particular choice of characters. But this part is just my guess anyway. --Frigoris (talk) 15:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Frigoris: Thanks. It seems like the 甸 in 沙甸 (Shādiàn) and 中甸 (Zhōngdiàn) are unrelated to the 甸 in 緬甸. RcAlex36 (talk) 15:06, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology of Greek ἄκυλος edit

It seems to me that a connection of Gr. ἄκῠλος 'acorn' to PIE *h₂éḱru 'tears' seems at least plausible. Maybe we could reconstructs a form *h₂éḱru-l-os. For the meaning, we might say that the shape of the acorn is similar to that of a tear drop, or that the dropping of acorns by an oak conjured up the image of a crying tree. A potential problem is that I don't know if there exists a *-l(os) suffix that adds the necessary meaning. Also, the loss of the /r/ would need an explanations - though we could assume some influence from PIE *h₂éḱu- 'sharp', especially if the word got its meaning from the shape.

Alternatively, we could suppose some an admittedly simpler connection to English 'oak' Although here the root-final consonant would prove a problem, we do some interesting cognates in Du. 'eikel' and Germ. 'Eichel', which would at least suggest greater antiquity of the word.

Either way, it seems strange to me that in the entry for Greek ἄκῠλος, no mention is made of either explanation, not even of the surface-level similarity to 'oak, although I don't know of any source that proposes such etymology. AntiquatedMan (talk) 11:49, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And, for what it's worth, Theophrastus says of of particular kind of acorns (βάλανος) that they grow "οὐδ' εξ ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀλλ' ἐκ τοῦ πλαγίου τῶν ἄνωθεν ὄζων" ('not from the eye, but from the side of the upper boughs'), though ὀφθαλμός can also mean 'bud' generally. AntiquatedMan (talk) 17:13, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Beekes surmises it is “rather a substrate word”, since “-υλ- is a frequent Pre-Greek suffix”. It is easy to imagine some connection between *ak- in an unknown substrate language and Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyǵ-.  --Lambiam 11:00, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I guess. I just wish there was more there than 'we don't know, may be substrate'. But if it's the best we can do, it's the best we can do. AntiquatedMan (talk) 17:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I rather suppose there are many suffixes in Greek that are not understood, respectively unproductive traces of such Proto-Indo-European suffixes or other morphological processes; but Beekes declares everything not understood alien, instead of admitting that even the native or most familiar language can be foreign albeit of genuine stock, as man digs into the past. I have to stress that the sheer number of Pre-Greek claims exposes them as a meme. This can be seen because they are multiple times as many as with known substrates, e.g. Category:Arabic terms derived from Aramaic, Category:Arabic terms derived from Classical Syriac, some of which are learned: I have comprehensively covered, hunted down, the Aramaic loanwords in Arabic and scratch a number of 700, yet Category:Ancient Greek terms derived from Pre-Greek tells 1,446 total to date, without there having being Greek editors’ attempts to max them, but with some worst and disproven ones also claimed by Beekes (as should be ἴγδις (ígdis), if you look at mortar terminology in the Near East) removed. And Greek and Arabic are alike renowned for their purity. Fay Freak (talk) 01:37, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What my impression is, is that a lot of these suffixes are either based on a misunderstanding of the morpheme boundary, or simply variations of known suffixes. I mean, even within PIE we see very similar roots/affixes with variations like l~r, u~i, T~Dʰ etc. I'm not sure we will see a shrinking of the amount of words deemed 'substrate words' though. I rather think we should reconsider our ideas about how languages interact/ relate to eachother/ change within Historical Linguistics. Other than that, I find it strange that even words with cognates within/outside PIE are sometimes classified as 'pre-Greek'. AntiquatedMan (talk) 08:54, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Earliest attestation of German Kriegshetzer edit

I just created an entry for the Swedish word krigshetsare (“warmonger”). I was first going to add {{calque}} and say that it originated with the equivalent German word. However, Wiktionary dates the earliest attestation of Kriegshetzer to 1913, while SAOB mentions an instance of krigshetsare dating back to 1902. Does anybody have more on the full backstory of the German word? Gabbe (talk) 12:21, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a use of the German word from 1869. It is curious to see krigshetsare analyzed as krigshets +‎ -are, while Kriegshetzer is undoubtedly Krieg +‎ -s- +‎ Hetzer. The competing analysis Kriegshetze +‎ -er is formally possible, but German -er is not usually affixed to common nouns to form a new common noun. I expect this to hold similarly for Swedish -are.  --Lambiam 11:23, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see, thank you! Yes, you are right that perhaps a more natural breakup would be either krig +‎ -s- +‎ hetsare or krigshetsa +‎ -are, since the suffix -are can be added to verbs (e.g. krigshetsa) but not ordinarily to nouns. At the time of writing, neither hetsare nor krigshetsa has entries here, but that can of course be remedied! :) Svenska Akademiens ordlista currently lists the nouns "krigshets" and "krigshetsare", but not the verb "krigshetsa". It does have the noun "hetsare", but to be quite honest I don't think I've ever heard that word (outside of suffixes) in my entire life. Glancing through the online archive of Svenska Dagbladet, its two latest usages of "hetsare" (outside of compound words) were in 1994 and 1986, respectively. Gabbe (talk) 13:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t know about Swedish, but Kriegshetzer < kriegshetzen + -er seems impossible; a verb *kriegshetzen feels wrong; one should use zum Krieg hetzen.  --Lambiam 23:30, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

金剛山 edit

@Tibidibi and I recently discussed the etymology of 금강산 (金剛山, geumgangsan), the name of a mountain on the Korean Peninsula. The mountain probably got its name from the mythical mountain in Buddhsim with the same name, mentioned in 長阿含經. @Frigoris, do you happen to know the Sanskrit (or Pali) name of 金剛山 in Buddhism? Since the Chinese name 金剛山 is presumably translated from Sanskrit. RcAlex36 (talk) 15:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tibidibi, RcAlex36, Unfortunately that part of the 長阿含經 (世記經) doesn't have any known textual counterpart in the Pali canon. The CBETA gives Skt. वज्रप्रकारगिरि (vajraprakāragiri, literally “vajra-like-mountain”) in a different text but I'm not sure what to make of it, whether it is a reliable attestation or having anything to do with the name of the actual mountain. --Frigoris (talk) 15:56, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Or वज्रप्राकारगिरि (vajraprākāragiri, literally “vajra-fence-mountain”) according to this transliterated edition of Sanskrit Golden Light Sutra. --Frigoris (talk) 16:08, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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