Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 222461 times)

Noemon · « **Reply #575 on:** August 15, 2007, 12:24:07 PM »

I wish I were as smart as my subconscious.

Farmgirl · « **Reply #576 on:** August 28, 2007, 07:43:58 AM »

I just thought I would Post This because I thought Jon Boy might find it interesting.

Again, I realize how much, now, my years of being pounded on "AP Style" influences the way I speak and write. Without realizing that my paradigm of rules are "AP Style", not necessarily "proper English."

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #577 on:** August 28, 2007, 07:50:03 AM »

Insulin is from the same root as "insular", meaning that it is separated from everything else, like an island. And why? Because it is produced by the Islets of Langerhans, in the body. They discovered (and named) the anatomy before they discovered and named the hormone.

And if that's not a neat etymology, well, then, I don't know what is.

Porter · « **Reply #578 on:** August 28, 2007, 08:41:44 AM »

Peninsula == almost island

Jonathon · « **Reply #579 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:05:08 AM »

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but isle and island are not related, despite the similarities in phonology and semantics. Isle is the direct descendant in French of the Latin insula. In typical French fashion, most of the sounds disappeared, though one letter stuck around as a silent letter in English (in modern French, it's simply île).

The Old English form of island was igland (the g was pronounced as a y after an i). It would've sounded something like ee-land before the Great Vowel Shift. The ig bit actually descends from the Proto-Indo-European *akwa (like the Latin aqua), meaning "water." In Proto-Germanic, it became *ahwa. A couple vowel changes and spelling changes later, we end up at Old English. Fast forward several hundred years more, and someone decides that iland (as it was spelled in Early Modern English) must've come from the French isle + land, so the assumed silent s was stuck in. And we've been stuck with it ever since.

pooka · « **Reply #580 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:06:09 AM »

Penultimate!

Porter · « **Reply #581 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:13:50 AM »

Quote

Fast forward several hundred years more, and someone decides that iland (as it was spelled in Early Modern English) must've come from the French isle + land, so the assumed silent s was stuck in. And we've been stuck with it ever since.

Kinda like the 'b' in debt?

Jonathon · « **Reply #582 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:21:36 AM »

Except that the b in debt is actually etymological, because it comes from the word debit. But it was part of the same phenomenon of putting in letters that used to be there or that were assumed to have been there.

Porter · « **Reply #583 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:26:23 AM »

My understanding was that the etymological link between det/dete (later debt) and debit is a false link.

Jonathon · « **Reply #584 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:31:48 AM »

Nope. It's for real.

Well, to be perfectly precise, debt and debit are both descendants of the same root. Etymonline.com says that debt comes from debitam, meaning "thing owed," while debit comes from debilitum, also meaning "thing owed." It calls those both neuter past participles of debere, which doesn't make sense to me, but I don't really know Latin grammar.

Porter · « **Reply #585 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:36:18 AM »

Is it true that at one point the 'b' in debt wasn't there, but then it was added back in to make it more like the Latin word?

Jonathon · « **Reply #586 on:** August 28, 2007, 09:49:50 AM »

Yes. It dropped out in French, then the word was borrowed into English, then the English added the b back. The word in Old French was dete, just as you said.

pooka · « **Reply #587 on:** August 28, 2007, 10:17:02 AM »

Where's the bit about debilitam?

Jonathon · « **Reply #588 on:** August 28, 2007, 10:31:29 AM »

Whoops. I misspelled it—it should be debilitum. And it's here.

pooka · « **Reply #589 on:** August 28, 2007, 01:13:39 PM »

Debilitare is a separate verb, meaning to weaken. I mean, maybe it's turtles all the way down, but I recall you took the other tack when we were arguing "adulterare".

Jonathon · « **Reply #590 on:** August 28, 2007, 01:32:08 PM »

I'm not sure what you mean. What other tack? I'm just following what I know of phonological, morphological, and semantic changes. For the Latin grammar parts I just rely on what the OED and Etymonline.com say, because it's not like Latin grammar is really the subject of much debate. I mean, it's a very well-attested language whose grammar has been described for well over two millennia.

Debilitum is not related to debilitare. Its past participle was debilitatum. Debere is from de- "away" + habere "to have." Debilitare is formed from the adjective debilis "weak," which is from de- "away" + bilis "strength." Link.

pooka · « **Reply #591 on:** August 29, 2007, 06:09:01 AM »

Debilitum is related to debilitare in the same way that weak is related to weaken.

Latin is a language that come from something.

P.S. It is very old and established and effectively dead, but that doesn't mean it is elemental.

Jonathon · « **Reply #592 on:** August 29, 2007, 08:02:38 AM »

Quote

Debilitum is related to debilitare in the same way that weak is related to weaken.

No it isn't. Debilis is related to debilitare in the same way that weak is related to weaken. I still have no idea why you think debt is related.

Quote

Latin is a language that come from something.

P.S. It is very old and established and effectively dead, but that doesn't mean it is elemental.

I don't understand any of that.

Porter · « **Reply #593 on:** August 29, 2007, 09:00:06 AM »

My uneducated guess is that she's making reference to the fact that Latin comes from proto Into-European, and just because two words may not be connected to each other within the Latin language doesn't mean they're not connected at all.

Jonathon · « **Reply #594 on:** August 29, 2007, 09:13:43 AM »

I just don't understand why she thinks they're connected in the first place.

Porter · « **Reply #595 on:** September 04, 2007, 11:45:56 AM »

"To spruce things up".

Why spruce?

Jonathon · « **Reply #596 on:** September 04, 2007, 12:05:02 PM »

In Old French, the name of Prussia was Pruce. Somehow this became Spruce, but it's not really clear how. "Spruce" became an adjective for commodities coming from Prussia, like beer, leather, and wooden goods. This is where the tree gets its name—from an adjective used to mean "made of spruce wood." This is also where the verb comes from. Spruce leather was used to make smart-looking jerkins nearly 600 years ago, and within a couple centuries, "spruce" was being used to mean "to make trim or neat."

link

Farmgirl · « **Reply #597 on:** October 03, 2007, 05:39:03 AM »

Webster's Online:

Opacity {noun} "the quality or state of a body that makes it impervious to the rays of light; broadly : the relative capacity of matter to obstruct the transmission of radiant energy"

opaqueness {noun} exhibiting opacity : blocking the passage of radiant energy and especially light

So my son and I had a debate last night on these two words.

We were talking about a certain object and I used the term "opacity" when referring to it. He had never heard such a word and challenged what it meant, and I explained it referred to how opaque it was -- whether it let through no light, or some light, etc. (degree of transparency).

He insisted, then, that I must be meaning "opaqueness" (which I've never used), as he has never heard of opacity. I told him I got the word "opacity" from PhotoShop, where you can set the opacity of an image.

So that made him drag out the dictionary, where he found opacity was truly a word, but he still says "opaqueness" is correct for when referring to the DEGREE of translucency, whereas opacity means that the item IS opaque.

I see the dictionary has these both as nouns. I have always thought of opaque as more of an adjective. ( a description of an item)

What are your thoughts? How do you use these two words?

FG

Porter · « **Reply #598 on:** October 03, 2007, 08:06:37 AM »

I would use those two words as synonyms.

Farmgirl · « **Reply #599 on:** October 03, 2007, 08:33:23 AM »

Jonathon's not going to give me an official opinion???