Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 238014 times)

Porter · « **Reply #625 on:** November 12, 2007, 10:21:49 AM »

When I was a youth, the term for people like that was "lemming".

JT · « **Reply #626 on:** November 12, 2007, 11:49:45 AM »

Urban dictionary has it. I've been hearing it used as slang for at least 8 or 9 years (I never heard it in high school, but I did in college).

I've recently heard it as a verb (wow, you totally tooled that guy*).

*which, in that context, basically means to make him look foolish.

pooka · « **Reply #627 on:** November 12, 2007, 12:03:26 PM »

So why was the gay nightclub in Wayne's World called "The Tool Box?"

I think the older usage may just mean someone has no mind of their own.

JT · « **Reply #628 on:** November 12, 2007, 12:06:02 PM »

'Tool' as slang for a guy's equipment isn't a new thing. Not quite the same usage as what we're talking about here, though. Just like when you call someone a dick you don't literally mean it.

Jonathon · « **Reply #629 on:** November 29, 2007, 12:15:12 PM »

Here's a fairly obvious one that I'd never realized until I saw it spelled out the other day: circadian is from the Latin circa + diem, meaning "about the day."

And here's a much less obvious one: a dairy (originally deirie) is a place where deys work. Dey originally meant "kneader" and was related to the word dough. It eventually came to mean "female servant." Then it came to mean specifically "woman who works in a dairy" (or "milkmaid," I guess).

Also, I may have said this before, but the -dy in lady is the same as dey. In Old English lady was hlæfdige (the g was pronounced like a y here). Hlæf is Old English for loaf, so a lady was a loaf-kneader.

Noemon · « **Reply #630 on:** November 29, 2007, 01:16:28 PM »

Fascinating. I've passed this one on to my mom (from whom I get my fascination with etymology, as I think I've mentioned before).

Jonathon · « **Reply #631 on:** January 11, 2008, 09:28:02 AM »

Rivka's post on the "You keep using that word" thread prompted me to look up duel. I assumed it was formed from the Latin word for two, duo, just as dual is. Turns out it's actually related to bellum, meaning "war," the word that gives us bellicose and belligerent. In Old Latin the root was duellum, but the sound /dw/ often became /b/ in Classical Latin. Another example is the Old Latin prefix dui- becoming the Classical Latin bi- (as in bicycle, bicuspid, and bisexual).

Duel somehow survived this sound change and, under the influence of the word duo, came to mean "war between two people" after being borrowed into English. So it seems people have been confusing and conflating these words for 500 years or more.

Noemon · « **Reply #632 on:** January 11, 2008, 10:19:12 AM »

Any relationship between the Latin "bellum" and the Greek "ballein" (to throw)?

Jonathon · « **Reply #633 on:** January 11, 2008, 10:32:54 AM »

Apparently not. Bellum comes from duellem, but I don't know how to trace it back further than that. Ballein goes back to the Proto-Indo-European *gwel, meaning "to drip, spring forth, throw." Any corresponding root in Latin would appear something like *vel, I think.

Though it seems that the English words quell, quail, and probably kill also comes from *gwel. Link.

Jonathon · « **Reply #634 on:** January 14, 2008, 09:35:37 AM »

This is going to be crude, but I just learned it from Snow Crash (and verified it with Etymonline.com) and wanted to share.

The word science comes from the Latin verb scire, meaning "to know." This probably descended from an earlier meaning of "to separate one thing from another, to distinguish," from the Proto-Indo-European root *skei-, meaning "to separate."

In Greek, this root gave us the word schism. In English, it gave us shed (now meaning to lose hair, skin, or feathers). But it also gave us the word shit, based on the idea of separating waste from the body. (The Latin word excrement means essentially the same thing, though it's unrelated.) I just found it amusing that shit and science are linguistic cousins.

Noemon · « **Reply #635 on:** January 14, 2008, 10:26:24 AM »

Fascinating!

Man, I love this thread.

Neutros the Radioactive Dragon · « **Reply #636 on:** January 14, 2008, 10:44:04 AM »

Cool.

But I'm still surprised that "shit" didn't come out as "daffodil".

goofy · « **Reply #637 on:** January 16, 2008, 04:16:57 PM »

Quote

Also, I may have said this before, but the -dy in lady is the same as dey. In Old English lady was hlæfdige (the g was pronounced like a y here). Hlæf is Old English for loaf, so a lady was a loaf-kneader.

lord is from hl?ford from hl?f weard "loaf-guardian".

Jonathon · « **Reply #638 on:** January 16, 2008, 04:48:10 PM »

I never quite understood that one. Were Old English loaves in constant need of protection?

goofy · « **Reply #639 on:** January 16, 2008, 08:28:28 PM »

Quote

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.

Other respelled words include school and hectic from earlier scol and etik. The same thing happened in French: doi became doigt (Latin digitum), pié became pied (Latin pedem), and set became sept (Latin septem). Sometimes they got it wrong: pois "weight" became poids in the belief that the word was derived from pondum, but it is really from *pensum.

Jonathon · « **Reply #640 on:** January 17, 2008, 12:55:52 PM »

I didn't know that about hectic. Interesting that two lost sounds were restored there. I suppose you could make the argument that the French version was borrowed, and then the Latin version was borrowed on top of it and replaced it.

goofy · « **Reply #641 on:** January 18, 2008, 07:37:25 AM »

I never thought of it that way. I hope we return all these borrowed words soon.

Jonathon · « **Reply #642 on:** January 18, 2008, 07:43:49 AM »

It is the polite thing to do.

Porter · « **Reply #643 on:** January 18, 2008, 07:51:26 AM »

The French don't want our words back. They now smell like English.

Jonathon · « **Reply #644 on:** January 18, 2008, 08:14:38 AM »

pooka · « **Reply #645 on:** January 23, 2008, 12:53:50 PM »

Derring do!

Quote

derring-do
originally (c.1374) dorrying don, lit. "daring to do," from durring "daring," prp. of M.E. durren "to dare" (see dare) + don, inf. of "to do." Misspelled derrynge do 1500s and mistaken for a noun by Spenser, who took it to mean "manhood and chevalrie;" picked up from him and passed on to Romantic poets as a pseudo-archaism by Sir Walter Scott.

Porter · « **Reply #646 on:** February 05, 2008, 12:32:04 PM »

My 8-year-old wants to know why meteorology is the study of weather and not the study of meteors.

Jonathon · « **Reply #647 on:** February 05, 2008, 12:40:34 PM »

The original sense of meteor was "celestial phenomenon." I'll just link to the Etymonline.com entry, because it explains it all pretty clearly. Basically, we took an umbrella term for atmospheric phenomena and gradually narrowed the senses to apply to two very different things.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #648 on:** February 06, 2008, 12:12:45 AM »

I like the way my kid spelled it "meaty urologist".

Jonathon · « **Reply #649 on:** February 06, 2008, 07:59:17 AM »