Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 237920 times)

sarcasticmuppet · « **Reply #150 on:** February 28, 2006, 05:30:08 PM »

No, he's just with the Committee On Experimental Charms

saxon75 · « **Reply #151 on:** February 28, 2006, 05:46:09 PM »

You know, I want to respond in a funny way but there's actually a semi-interesting discussion to be had about so-called "magic words" that, unfortunately, doesn't really fall under the category of linguistics.

Plus I can't think of anything funny.

Brinestone · « **Reply #152 on:** February 28, 2006, 08:49:00 PM »

Did Jon Boy just make a Harry Potter joke?

Porter · « **Reply #153 on:** February 28, 2006, 10:15:54 PM »

What am I, Kosher Chopped Liver?

rivka · « **Reply #154 on:** February 28, 2006, 10:27:54 PM »

No, I'm pretty sure that's Ela.

Jonathon · « **Reply #155 on:** March 06, 2006, 10:57:17 AM »

Another etymology to blow. your. mind.

do, v.

From the Old English dón, from the Proto-Germanic dæ-, do-, from the Proto-Indo-European dh?-, dh?, meaning "to place, put, set, lay." In Latin, the Indo-European /dh/ sound eventually became /f/ (through the intermediate stage /?/). This yielded the Latin facere, which shows up in various forms in Modern English, like fact and -ficent.

Interestingly, it is also believed that do reflects the only surviving word in English that used reduplication to form its simple past form. That is, the stem was repeated (Proto-Germanic deda, "did"), whereas today we typically use a suffix. And even more interestingly, it is believed that this is the source of the Germanic past tense suffix. In other words, early Germanic speakers took the reduplicated -da and started using it on other verbs to mark the past tense.

And the last interesting tidbit is that do was one of the last words in English (well, in Old English, anyway) to use the -m suffix for the first person present indicative. This suffix survives in only one place: the word am.

Porter · « **Reply #156 on:** March 06, 2006, 11:01:58 AM »

Can you tell me where the Spanish ser comes from? Is it from facere as well?

Jonathon · « **Reply #157 on:** March 06, 2006, 11:24:36 AM »

Back on GC 1.0 I did a long post in which I explained the various "to be" words, but alas, it is lost and gone forever.

In a nutshell, ser is an extended form of the Proto-Indo-European *es, from whence we get am, is, and are. It's not related to facere.

Jonathon · « **Reply #158 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:18:36 PM »

Inspired by Porter's post on the Discoveries thread:

million, a. and n.

From Middle French million, from Italian millione, from Classical Latin mille 'thousand' + one, a noun-forming suffix. Later forms like billion and trillion are intentional back-formations using Latin prefixes to replace the first letter or two of million.

These words originally referred to powers of a million, so billion was a million millions, not a thousand millions, and trillion was a million million millions, not a thousand thousand millions. Then French arithmeticians started grouping numerals into threes instead of sixes, so the definitions changed to match. The US gets its usage from this tradition, while Britain retained the original sense.

Porter · « **Reply #159 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:23:53 PM »

Quote

The US gets its usage from this tradition, while Britain retained the original sense.

Huh?

Jonathon · « **Reply #160 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:25:14 PM »

In the US, a billion is 1,000,000,000, while in Britain, it's still 1,000,000,000,000, which was the original meaning.

Porter · « **Reply #161 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:26:17 PM »

How do the Brits say 1,000,000,000?

Jonathon · « **Reply #162 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:29:51 PM »

A thousand million.

Porter · « **Reply #163 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:33:36 PM »

Jonathon · « **Reply #164 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:35:35 PM »

I know. It's like a foreign country over there.

saxon75 · « **Reply #165 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:48:39 PM »

It's also sometimes called a milliard in the UK, although I believe that's a somewhat archaic usage. But I'm led to understand from one of the European guys in my office (a German guy who is fluent in French) that the French still use a word like that--when he said it it sounded like "miliarde," but I'm not really sure how it's spelled.

Porter · « **Reply #166 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:50:54 PM »

In Portugese, "mil" means 1,000 and "millao" (that augmented version of "mil") means 1,000,000.

saxon75 · « **Reply #167 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:57:23 PM »

In Spanish, it's mil and millón.

Japanese is interesting to me because they group by fours instead of threes. So 10 = jyuu, 100 = hyaku, 1,000 = sen, and 10,000 = man. There are no names for powers of ten higher than that, as far as I'm aware; 100,000 = jyuuman, 1,000,000 = hyakuman, 10,000,000 = senman, etc.

saxon75 · « **Reply #168 on:** March 13, 2006, 02:58:23 PM »

Also, I believe that in the UK they don't say "a thousand million" but, rather, "a thousand millions."

Jonathon · « **Reply #169 on:** March 13, 2006, 03:32:46 PM »

Milliard is "billion" in French.

And I believe you are correct, Mike. Those Brits just keep getting weirder and weirder.

Jonathon · « **Reply #170 on:** March 20, 2006, 10:52:43 AM »

can, v.

As I said before on this thread, can is related to know. It comes from a class of Germanic verbs called preterite-present verbs, meaning that the present tense stem was formed from the preterite (past tense) of another verb stem. Can comes from *kunnan, which was the preterite of *kennan or *kinnan, which was a variation of the stem *kno that leads to our modern know. This means that the original sense was something like "I have learned" and then moved to "I know how" and then finally to "I am physically able."

may, v.

From the Proto-Germanic *mag-, meaning "to have power" or "to be physically able," from the Proto-Indo-European *mogh-/*megh-, "power." The word mighty comes from the same stem. It is possibly also related to the Greek mekhos, mekhine, "contrivance," Latin magnus, "great," and English much, though these connections are apparently tenuous.

The thing I find interesting about these two verbs is how much they have moved around in the last thousand or so years. Can used to express mental ability or know-how, while may expressed physical ability. Now can has taken over both senses while may has moved into the realm of possibility or permission, and can is even encroaching on the sense of permission. We frequently "correct" children who say things like "Can I go to the bathroom?" even though may makes no more sense than can, historically speaking.

pooka · « **Reply #171 on:** March 23, 2006, 07:05:54 AM »

I heard a good blonde joke the other day. The blonde's boss is reading the paper and says "oh no! There has been this tragedy in Brazil! The fans rioted and 26 Brazilians were killed!"

"That's terrible!" replied the blonde. "How many is a Brazillion?"

Porter · « **Reply #172 on:** March 23, 2006, 07:16:24 AM »

Noemon · « **Reply #173 on:** March 23, 2006, 07:18:02 AM »

By the way, Jon Boy, I've been emailing my parents excerpts from this thread. My mom described your discussion of "can" and "may" as being just what she needed to get her out of the bad mood she'd been in (yes, I come from a family of geeks).

Brinestone · « **Reply #174 on:** March 23, 2006, 07:20:11 AM »

For some reason, the thought of someone getting out of a bad mood because of an etymological discussion really, really makes me grin.