> Where male goes back to Latin masculus, female comes through French femelle from Latin femella. The eventual overlap in pronunciation was accidental.
Latin was masculus and femella, old French was masle/male and femelle/femaile, modern "English" is male and female. We didn't take one from Latin and one from French -- we took both from French. It doesn't make any sense that "male" was taken from "masculus" when "masle" was already in use.
-- if 'masculus' comes from (Sanskrit) 'marya', then it means "a mortal". The implicit meaning is evident in the more direct Latin form "maritus" (see English 'to marry'), the husband, meaning "you now have a role in which you shall behave aware of your mortality - i.e., as an "adult"".
-- 'femina' comes from the nourishing ability of giving milk, ex 'felo' (the act of sucking, related to "fecunditas" (the condition that allows it - implying the ability to host a "fetus") and giving "felicitas" ("happiness" in the typical derived meaning, of the /pleasant/ occasion)).
But easily, 'male' and 'female' then adapted to similar form being used for polar concepts.
'masculus' does not seem to come from the Sanskrit 'marya' (both may have come from the same root), and 'marya' does not seem to mean mortal but rather young man. 'martya' (from a different root) does mean mortal, though, which is where you may have become confused.
But they seem to have the same meaning. The identified root seems to be "mṛ", that of mortality, and they may (/may/, with relevance to the content this paragraph) come from it; that one term in Sanskrit in inherited by Greek and then Latin is the «come from» I meant.
> and 'marya' does not seem to mean mortal
So where does it come from? According to some authors, 'marya' comes from "mṛ" just like 'martya', which you state has a different root. Edit: disambiguation: of course 'marya' is used for "young man". But it seems to mean "a "mortal", someone ready (initiated, young man, no more a child) to develop his defined (limited) path of life".
It may come from the same Proto-Indo-European root *méryos that became 'marya' in Sanskrit. But whatever it is, a borrowing from Sanskrit is highly unlikely.
In which sense? Most of the content of post-Latin languages seems to be post-Sanskrit. Not necessarily as a direct derivation, but as a full appearance: you normally can see the Sanskrit dropped into Greek dropped into Latin (whatever the path, descendants or siblings).
The idea that European languages or that a sizable portion of their vocabulary descended from Sanskrit is quite outdated. It was understandable that some people in 18th century could hold such views because they didn’t know better, in 19th century it wasn’t held by most if not all scholars, in 20th century it was disproved beyond reasonable doubt, in 21st century it can only be regarded as pseudoscience.
Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter?
Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it; hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which is the important thing. You could say that if they were unrelated, it would be the most extraordinary coincidence, and if their relation is not of «descende[nce]» that has much more relevance for historians than for language users, kind of mandated to know said language in depth.
In fact,
> pseudoscience
with all that scindere, do not forget the point which is that of understanding phenomena to better know them, activity more of needles than of scissors (don't overcut, the purpose is different).
>Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter?
I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from".
>Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it;
There is no such evidence in modern linguistics.
>hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which is the important thing. You could say that if they were unrelated, it would be the most extraordinary coincidence, and if their relation is not of «descende[nce]» that has much more relevance for historians than for language users, kind of mandated to know said language in depth.
They are related. Latin, Sanskrit, Russian, English, Greek, German, Persian, Bengali, etc are all descended from Proto-Indo-European. Knowing one is not any better than knowing any other in terms of awareness of meanings in other Indo-European languages.
> I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from"
Thing is, we do not have Proto-Indo-European. So, we have to somehow reconstruct it in the investigation of terms. Sanskrit just seems to be a close enough derivation of PIE to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages.
> They are related. Latin, Sanskrit, Russian, English, Greek, German, Persian, Bengali, etc are all descended from Proto-Indo-European. Knowing one is not any better
Of course they are related. The comparative consideration of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit reveals a network of meanings propagating in all those derivations. Without such consideration, awareness is bound to remain poor - you are losing pieces of the puzzle. Persian and Bengali, I do not know (almost at all); others, I have explored but have not found the same productive richness in light shedding over the matter. English: well it is to understand English (and French, Spanish etc.) that you may want to undertake the endavour, and the awareness comes from considering 'knowledge' out of jñāna, gnō̃́sis and gnosco (but especially jñāti, diánoia, nobilis) - it is not a matter of knowing «one». For those who have familiarity with Latin and Greek, Sanskrit appears to be a very important piece, to reconstruct the network of meanings and better define their common core meaning.
>Sanskrit just seems to be a close enough derivation of PIE to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages.
Sanskrit is one of the languages that was used by comparativists to reconstructed PIE. Trying to use Sanskrit "to shed invaluable light over the kernel meaning of the elements of these languages" is no better than using those languages to shed light over Sanskrit.
Fair enough, but masle in Old French comes from the vulgar latin masclus, so the article isn't wrong, it's just that the lineage is indirect. It seems a very minor nit to pick.
Except the author is not claiming that Latin's masculus and femina/femella are unrelated, but instead that English's male and female are unrelated because "one is taken from Latin and one is taken from old French." That the French words are inarguably related and the lineage all leads back to the definitely-related Latin words, would mean the English versions are also related.
Given the article's premise of words being unrelated, I'd say that's more of a massive plot hole than a "nit."
I posted a comment noting that some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words, even though they are etymologically unrelated.
I am ironically amused to note that the comment appears to have offended somebody or something sufficiently to make it disappear, even though it did not contain any actual offensive words.
...Can no longer be used without fumbling into people that assume the rest intends to speak demotic, "Fixed That For You".
> some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words
I find it very interesting on a specific historic case that the original group, of difficult pronunciation for Europeans, in the Gulf of Guinea area, "n·gr", meaning "big river", naming the Niger river and nearby countries, happened to be so close to the Latin for "black" - which is already in a way offensive, with its potential as some "reduction to appearance". (Of course, the Republic of the Niger and the Federal Republic of Nigeria correctly just shrug the coincidence off.)
Sadly I think those words have died, as victims of semantic pollution, through no fault of their own. Even though no dictionary will attest to an offensive meaning, they share enough phonemic material with malwords to trigger an immune response, which is not something you generally want to do to your readers.
> trigger an immune response, which is not something you generally want to do to your readers
In general, you expect readers not live «immune response[s]». It is called "sensation", and you either expect readers to be mature and having learnt to manage it as much as they learnt all other physiological and emotional and intellectual control, or if not mature you want to expose them to the world of serious adulthood for their awareness [rephrased: you do not hide adult behaviour: example must not be missed] - in which "sensation" has no part, replaced by distance, reflection and cool and objective consideration.
It is very odd to consider readers as "prone to sensation" (and that they could be legitimately so).
Depending on what you're writing, sensation might well be the entire purpose of the writing. So words that trigger the wrong sensation should absolutely be avoided, and not used to test the reader's maturity or anything like that.
However, these sensations are extremely cultural. As a non-American, it's funny to see Americans trying to impose their cultural sensitivities on other countries and cultures. Like criticising crayon brands for using the word "negro" on their black crayons. Or criticising people for using an online name that vaguely looks like a forbidden American word.
I also remember from many years ago an American interviewer trying to interview a black British athlete what it was like for him as an "African American". He corrected her that he's British, and she corrected to "African American Brit".
It's absolutely great that Americans are trying to rid themselves of racist slurs, but combined with American cultural imperialism it can lead to weird situations that can ironically come across as quite racist again, because other cultures refuse to play by the new (entirely justified) American sensitivity rules, because in those other cultures the words lack the racist connotation that they have in the US.
> I also remember from many years ago an American interviewer trying to interview a black British athlete what it was like for him as an "African American". He corrected her that he's British, and she corrected to "African American Brit".
Ah this is an old internet rumour. Either a) no footage of it survived to be on the internet or b) it was always a rumour.
Here's some discussions respectively from 2015 (trying to find it) and 2000 (stating a slightly different version of it):
It probably stems from before Youtube. Not everything on TV ends up on Youtube.
I've been googling this a bit, and I found a lot of people remembering seeing it on TV (but that's not conclusive either, because we can create fake memories about this sort of thing), but no link to a video. Best we can probably hope for is a confirmation or denial from Kriss Akabusi himself, but then someone has to ask him.
> Depending on what you're writing, sensation might well be the entire purpose of the writing
That would be immoral... Pornography is supposed to be an exception, a consensual experiment - not the standard of communication, on the opposite. When you deliberately try to make the reader lose control (e.g. for manipulation, or paternalistic trickery), that IS immoral.
> So words that trigger the wrong sensation
In whom? What makes "sensation" legitimate? How can you assume a reader will get that "sensation" - which, also, is not supposed to have in the first place? You say it yourself: «...trying to impose their cultural sensitivities on other countries and cultures...». There seems to be an attempt to create a "standard demotic" - but it remains demotic, and with extremely weak foundations without grounds for universality.
> not used to test the reader's maturity
No no no no no no no no - that was never meant (why should one do that? That is perverse, and something akin was the whole point). What was expressed is that you do not hide adulthood to children - otherwise, they will remain children.
Edit:
and by the way,
> However, these sensations are extremely cultural
Also the use of sensational language is "cultural", localized in some areas: you can see that it is found more frequently in some territories. It remains objectively immoral to attempt speaking to the visceral instead of the intellect. It is like tapping one's arm to steal from him. You communicate to provide further awareness, not to reduce it; to provide further abilities, not to lower them. If you did the latter, you'd be a criminal.
No. Again, no. "Sensation" is when people are open to be hit as if physiologically from what something suggests them (hence, 'suggestion') - it is lack of control. It is when a court accused Lenny Bruce of pornology when he used swearwords in his stand-up comedy performances - the accused him of eliciting arousal. You are not supposed to feel deeply overwhelming perturbances in front of swearwords: that is not how it works in adults - and if did, it would signal a problem. That is "sensation" (more common today in 'sensationalism'). It is when the Camelot knights faint in front of the "Knights who say 'Ni'".
Poetry and literature use language with mastery for the elevation of people who, since they have keys to appreciate it, must be expert enough to manage it - which means, all which is transmitted is mediated, digested. The ball is caught and managed, not taken in the face with strong notification from the nose.
Sensation is typical e.g. of the worse """political""" (multiply the bunny quotes there) speech and is allowed by those who want to "feel" instead of "consider". This attitude for the consensual receiver could be at most a "private time" activity which is like approaching «pornography[, ]supposed to be an exception, a consensual experiment - not the standard of communication, on the opposite». On the side of the proposer, those who attempt inducing sensation, it is immoral: it is degrading and damaging. Those who encourage the listener to rely on panic (lower, uncontrolled) responses instead of reflection, are criminals.
Also, about your misreading of my: «or if not mature you want to expose them to the world of serious adulthood for their awareness», to which I then added «[rephrased: you do not hide adult behaviour: example must not be missed]», nearby a member mentioned the idea of "avoiding the term 'homonym' ['homophone', 'homologue' etc.] just to be sure": because somebody may faint?! The rest should resort to crippled language?!?! You use 'homonym' and 'homophone' and 'homologue' because that is the language, the correct one, and all correct use is a model: you do not hide that to the immature (which would make them remain so), there is nothing like «test[ing] the reader's maturity», and to stop using 'homonym' because somebody may faint would be one apex of the absurd (and a dictatorship of the fools).
Seems to be un-deaded now, praise the mods! And on closer inspection there was one naughty word in there, although technically it's a homonym that happens to have the same spelling. (And "homonym" itself is probably best avoided.)
for comments that are 'killed' by user flags, other users can 'vouch' for the comment and I think if enough vouch flags are submitted, the comment re appear.
An unmentioned subcategory is words that that sound or look like taboo words, but are actually unrelated: "niggardly", "Gaylord", "fag" as in cigarette (from "fag end", unrelated to "faggot"), etc.
Yes, but this appears to be the origin of the pejorative: bundle of sticks -> an old woman collecting sticks -> a man who acts like an old woman -> homosexual.
My personal discovery: “testament” and “statement”. They are anagrams, and obviously have some semantic connection - “this is what I’d like to happen” vs. “this is my opinion on a topic”. But no shared root (known to me) or other relation.
Being an anagram has no value: not only switching the order of sounds is not a mechanism in the evolution of terms (at least, I cannot think of a single example), but more relevantly the sounds do not overlap with their symbols - terms are in general transliterations (so the "character" has little importance, being a mostly referencing simplification).
> switching the order of sounds is not a mechanism in the evolution of terms (at least, I cannot think of a single example),
This is an extremely common way for pronunciation to evolve, usually known as metathesis. An example familiar to most Americans is "ax" for "ask" heard in certain dialects.
For a hundred more examples, see the Wikipedia page.
> some even use [metathesis] as a regular part of their grammar, such as Hebrew and Fur
, but I wonder how much that is part of the evolution of the language /in use/, and how much that mechanism involves language itself. So, for example, the Spanish may use 'palabra' ex 'parabola', with the seal of approval of the philologist as a codified expression, but that remains a "familiar" (small circle, irregardless if enormous) terminology implying a wink: "you used a metathesis", we forgive it but know it.
The semantic connection is as much of a coincidence as the fact that they're anagrams. Testament is from a Latin word meaning "witness"; statement is from a word meaning "stand" or "standing".
They are, if you dig far enough. The first is from the latin status (state, position) [1], the result of the verb stare (to stand), from the proto-indo-european root sta/ste. The latter is from the latin testis (witness, c.f. testimony) [2] which deconstructs into ters (third) and -stis (the act of stare), meaning quite literally "a third party standing by".
Some difficult English spellings differ from their original ones. The original spellings were more logical. They changed as a result of some mistaken beliefs about those words' etymologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_refo...
Wedlock comes from Old English wedlác, where lác was a suffix that formed an action noun out of another noun. Other suffixed words were brýdlác (nuptials), réaflác (robbery), andfeohtlác (warfare). Wedlock is the only one we still use today.
Not true; I've seen the word "bridelock" used in modern English.
Not long ago I accidentally found out about a pair of these words in Spanish:
1. pelo (=hair)
2. peluca (=wig) and its derivatives peluquero, peluquería (=hairdresser, hairdresser's).
The word pelo comes from the Latin pillus, but peluca came from the French perruque, and this from the Lombard parruca of unknown origin [0]. As Spanish used an "L" in the word for hair, it contaminated the imported perruque due to its proximity in meaning.
For contrast, the words for wig and hairdresser('s) in standard Catalan (perruca, perruquer, perruqueria) did not cross over with the word hair (pèl) and kept their original "R".
This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology.
- “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab.
- A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meaning long chair, the second word confused with the existing English word “lounge” meaning waiting or relaxing. Especially funny since the word order is swapped.
- “Cockroach” from the Spanish word for the insect, “cucaracha,” mistakenly identified with English words “cock” and “roach” (a type of fish, apparently)
-“Island” is from Old English “igland” which goes via Germanic back to PIE for “water” + “land.” But the spelling with the silent “s” comes from confusion with “isle,” an unrelated word from Old French.
- "Hangnail" used to mean a corn on the foot, from Old English "anguished" + "nail." Somehow the spelling got mixed up to "hang" and it started referring to a piece of skin/nail hanging.
It looks like English had some word pairs where in Latin the noun was roughly the verb plus “-ion,” like “opine” and “opinion,” but we recognized that pattern and erroneously applied it to other English nouns ending in “-ion” by dropping the suffix to create a noun, without actually inheriting the second word form from Latin. The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin, but I guess it’s just notable because in English it spawned much later from the existing English word rather than actually making its way organically to English from Latin.
Also “asset” and “assets” is from the Anglo-French singular noun “assetz,” mistakenly interpreted as plural because of the “s” sound at the end. There are tons of examples like this where the ends of words are incorrectly identified as suffixes and thus new words are formed by removing the fake suffix, like “edit” from “editor.” False positives in human pattern recognition.
This is the garden path thing of placing the parentheses in the wrong places, except for roots and affixes within a word, rather than within a sentence.
We erroneously included the Arabic word “al” (meaning “the”) in a bunch of nouns: algorithm, algebra, alcohol, alfalfa, alkaline, alcove, alchemy. Then in the 1500s this Agricola guy became obsessed with etymology, recognized the mistake, and corrected it to “chemical.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_chemistry. It wasn’t until the 1700s that “alchemy” started referring to bullshit supernatural chemistry.
The same thing happened with “alligator” from Spanish “el lagarto” meaning “the lizard,” then we humorously overcorrected and stumbled onto “gator.”
Other rebracketing examples:
- “Cybernetics” is cybern+etics, so “cyber-” is a mistake
- “Helicopter” is helico+pter, so “heli-” and “-copter” are mistakes
- The dog breed "labrad•oodle" (a cross between a Labrador Retriever and Poodle) has been rebracketed to "labra•doodle" leading to the "doodle" ending in other poodle crossbreeds such as the goldendoodle and Aussie doodle.
Random interesting things:
- “varsity” is just a 17th century shortening of “university”
- “Fancy” is a 15th century contraction of “fantasy,” and “fan” as in “sports fan” may have come from it and/or the unrelated “fanatic”
- Seems odd that “etymology” is the only English word from the Greek root “etymon” meaning “true sense”
- “Gross” meaning “disgusting” is from 1950s teenage slang, presumed to come from its prior meaning “total” (as in “gross revenue”), which was more commonly used with negative descriptors, e.g. “gross negligence” and “gross stupidity”
My favourite example of rebracketing is the origin of the word "orange".
European languages got the word from Persian or Arabic. But in Persian it's "narang" and in Arabic it's "naranj". (And in the languages they got it from, the word also begins "nar-".) So what happened to the initial "n"?
Answer: rebracketing, not as with "alchemy" from an article present in the source language but with an article that isn't there. You start with "naranj", import it into (say) French: "une norange". A bit of elision and it sounds the same as if that initial "n" weren't there, and after a while people forget about it.
Even better, in 19th-century Scots we find "nirrange" where the word has gained an initial n- again via another rebracketing from the indefinite article "an".
(Also, a nitpick: "etymology" isn't the only English word from "etymon", not only because of "etymologist" and "etymological" and the like but also because "etymon" itself is an English word, though not a common one.)
That’s a good one. I’ve heard that referred to as “faulty separation.” “Apron” was supposed to be “a napron,” not “an apron.” “Umpire” was from Old French “nonper” (meaning not even, i.e. an odd-numbered person to settle a dispute between two even groups).
> The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin
Not really; if the verb were taken from Latin it would be "resurge", not "resurrect".
Compare "surge", which is not "surrect". "Translate" has a similar problem where if you took it from Latin it would be "transfer". Though in that case translate appears to have been a verb independent of transfer already in French.
> We erroneously included the Arabic word “al” (meaning “the”) in a bunch of nouns: algorithm
Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force"
> Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force"
I thought the part of his name that led to the word “algorithm” was “al-Khwārizmī” which just means “the person from Khwarazm.” Is that not right?
> The concept of the algorithm is named for the person, al-Khwarizmi, and not for the place, Khwarazm. Why would you remove the al-?
Well, the word does not refer directly to that person, so the fact that its etymological origin happens to be the nisba suffix of that person's name doesn't mean it's not a mistake to include the article. Of course, we can presume that most of the people involved in the gradual coining of the English word "algorithm" (via the Latin translation of his Arabic book, followed by some mistaken association with the Greek arithmos) never even considered the etymology at any step along the way.
> the word does not refer directly to that person, so the fact that its etymological origin happens to be the nisba suffix of that person's name doesn't mean it's not a mistake to include the article.
I can't follow you. Go back to the van der Waals force. Just like Arabic al-, Dutch van and der are grammatical particles; Johannes van der Waals is "John the Walloon". The capitalization is exactly what this would lead you to expect.
And of course the van der Waals force is no more a direct reference to Johannes van der Waals than the algorithm is to Muhammad al-Khwarizmi or the Eiffel Tower is to Gustave Eiffel. And also no less. They're all things that are named after individual people but are not the people themselves. Why aren't you arguing that the name of the van der Waals force was just a big mistake?
When you name something after someone, you use the name of the person being honored. You don't cut their name into random hunks and use those.
> The English word outrage is a loanword from French, where it was formed by combining the adverb outre (meaning "beyond") with the suffix -age; thus, the original literal meaning is "beyondness" – that is, beyond what is acceptable. The rebracketing as a compound of out- with the noun or verb rage has led to both a different pronunciation than the one to be expected for such a loanword (compare umbrage) and an additional meaning of "angry reaction" not present in French.
Brilliant. I'll need to make a point of pronouncing "outrage" to rhyme with "garage" from now on. "It is an oot-RAAZH!"
Interestingly, Swedish is closer to the Latin here. "Pensel" is a paintbrush, and both pen and pencil are called "penna". If necessary, they are distinguished as bläckpenna (ink pen) or kulspetspenna (ball point pen) and as blyertspenna, which comes from the German "bleierz", meaning "lead ore", due to a misconception that they contain lead.
Surely Etymonline (as also others noted nearby) - it is sequential (alphabetically of course) as much as hypertextual so it is equivalent to the text of a book;
from the actual "ISBN" titles, without too much of a system but as a preliminary scavenging read you may check:
Justin Cord Hayes - The Unexpected Evolution of Language
and
Nigel Rees - Why Do We Say
(Nigel Rees also being the conductor of the 500 episodes of the radio programme "Quote... Unquote". Very prolific writer, apparently, other titles from him could be relevant).
Also, if you are a member of a public library, you can often get free access to the full Oxford English Dictionary online, which has detailed etymologies.
I think there are limits to what anyone can know about ancient history. I think the ToB story was written so long ago that no one can know the origin of the word "Babel". "Babel" (בָּבֶל) could mean babbling, or it could mean Babylon (בָּבֶל), but how can anyone know either way?
It's intriguing though how the spellings בָּבֶל and בָּבֶל are completely identical, including which beths are beths, which veths are veths, and even their vowel marks!
So chances for Babylon:babbling are 95:5 for me. I'm not good at Hebrew though, so I don't know how to accurately assess the probabilities. Thanks for that!
Latin was masculus and femella, old French was masle/male and femelle/femaile, modern "English" is male and female. We didn't take one from Latin and one from French -- we took both from French. It doesn't make any sense that "male" was taken from "masculus" when "masle" was already in use.