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Author Topic: The random etymology of the day  (Read 235474 times)

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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1725 on: March 25, 2013, 06:25:42 PM »
I think of it as more "up you go!" like when giving a kid a boost.  But I didn't remember the basketball definition.
Yeah, I'm aware of the basketball definition. But I always assumed it was traditionally used as a phrase you said as you hoisted something up or onto a place, which was why basketball co-opted it. You are hoisting the ball up to somebody.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1726 on: March 29, 2013, 10:59:58 AM »
Vintage originally meant the produce of a vine, usually grapes or the wine made from them. Later it came to mean wine more specifically, especially good or rare wine, and then the age or year of the wine itself. Then it made the metaphorical leap to describing the age of other things, especially old classic things. Now it can just mean things designed in imitation of vintage things, like Instagram filters or new t-shirts with printing that is made to look worn and faded.
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Offline pooka

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1727 on: April 03, 2013, 01:28:09 PM »
And then vint- will become a prefix meaning "give the appearance of."  Just you wait. 
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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1728 on: April 20, 2013, 10:01:06 PM »
Because Tailleur asked about it at dinner tonight: draw originally meant 'pull' or 'drag'. The sketching sense of draw arose around 1200 from the sense of pulling a pencil or pen across the page. Draught and the later spelling draft are nominalizations of the verb (following the same pattern as drive–drift and give–gift). The alternation between w, gh, and f (and in some other words, y) seems pretty weird, but it all goes back to a g in West Germanic. Between back vowels /g/ eventually became /w/, between front vowels it became /j/, and before some consonants it became /x/ (like a German or Hebrew ch), which was often spelled gh in Middle English), which then either disappeared or turned into /f/ in some instances.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1729 on: April 22, 2013, 06:58:20 AM »
So they are both interrelated. Cool! But weird!
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1730 on: April 22, 2013, 08:23:56 AM »
Yup. I forgot to mention that drag is also related. It's either a northern dialectal form that hung onto the /g/ or an Old Norse form.
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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1731 on: April 22, 2013, 09:58:00 AM »
By the way, here's that corpus of general conference talks that I mentioned. It only goes through 2010, but it's still very useful for seeing trends from 1851 until then.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1732 on: April 22, 2013, 10:50:34 AM »
By the way, here's that corpus of general conference talks that I mentioned. It only goes through 2010, but it's still very useful for seeing trends from 1851 until then.
Indeed, if I could figure out how to work the thing. BTW we were all wrong, Monson became prophet in 2008.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1733 on: April 22, 2013, 11:01:56 AM »
The interface to these corpora leaves a lot to be desired.

If you'd like to see a bar chart showing trends, like this, select "chart" and put in the word or phrase to search. If you select "list", it'll show you how many hits there are in each decade, and then you can click on the numbers for each decade to see a list of hits.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1734 on: April 22, 2013, 12:21:00 PM »
Looks like my widow theory doesn't hold up after reviewing the data. Thanks!
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1735 on: April 23, 2013, 05:30:34 PM »
How did mummies get their name? From mummification? Which one came first, and is it related at all to what English people call their moms?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1736 on: April 23, 2013, 06:16:39 PM »
No relation. I'm a little confused about the etymology, since Etymonline.com and the OED say slightly different things. Mummy apparently took a tortuous route from Persian mumiya 'asphalt' to Arabic mumiyah 'embalmed body' or 'bituminous substance' to Latin mumia 'mummy' or 'medicine prepared from mummy tissue' (!?). It was originally used in English in the medicinal sense and then came to mean the embalmed body itself. I can't tell if asphalt was used in embalming or if an asphalt-like substance is found in mummies or both, but the OED says this:

Quote
Belief in the medicinal powers of the bituminous liquid which could be extracted from the bodies of ancient Egyptian mummies app. arose because of its resemblance to pissasphalt (see sense 2a). Later, similar powers were ascribed to mummified flesh itself, which was often used in the form of a powder.

Yes, pissasphalt is apparently a real word, and it means a soft, tarry substance between petroleum and asphalt.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1737 on: April 23, 2013, 06:19:02 PM »
Quote
Yes, pissasphalt is apparently a real word, and it means a soft, tarry substance between petroleum and asphalt.
Astound your opponents in Scrabble when you first play 'asphalt' and then use it again to make 'pissasphalt' :)

edit: Alternately you could start with 'piss' and move on to 'pissasphalt'.
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Offline Noemon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1738 on: April 23, 2013, 06:41:03 PM »
Then you'd be in danger of someone adding "ant" to the end before you got your asphalt on.
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Offline rivka

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1739 on: April 23, 2013, 07:34:34 PM »
A tarry substance was used in traditional Egyptian mummification.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1740 on: April 24, 2013, 08:29:33 PM »
So mummy preceded mummify?
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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1741 on: April 25, 2013, 08:03:00 AM »
Yes. Mummy dates to about 1400; mummify dates to 1628.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1742 on: May 04, 2013, 06:59:12 AM »
Are 'oaf' and 'elf' related words?

Also, the 'yester' in 'yesterday'. Did it find its way into any other English words? I can't think of any.
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Offline Dobie

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Offline Brinestone

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1744 on: May 04, 2013, 09:58:24 AM »
Well, gestern means "yesterday" in German. (So our word appears to be yesterday-day.) I don't know if that helps.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1745 on: May 05, 2013, 05:04:48 PM »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph5-dRuTrDU

I'm surprised you remembered that theme well enough to pick "yesteryear" out of it. How old are you, Dobie?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1746 on: May 05, 2013, 08:12:21 PM »
Are 'oaf' and 'elf' related words?

My first thought was no, but then I looked it up. Oaf comes from the Old Norse form alfr and referred to an elf's child or a changeling.

Quote
Also, the 'yester' in 'yesterday'. Did it find its way into any other English words? I can't think of any.

Just yesteryear, but that's a modern formation. As Ruth said, the yester part originally meant 'yesterday' on its own.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1747 on: May 05, 2013, 10:28:14 PM »
Thanks.

Kinda weird how far conceptually oaf and elf have diverged from each other.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1748 on: May 06, 2013, 06:48:14 AM »
So how about Alf?
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: The random etymology of the day
« Reply #1749 on: May 06, 2013, 08:48:52 AM »
The sacred river that ran through caverns measureless to man?
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