Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 238383 times)

rivka · « **Reply #1975 on:** February 07, 2017, 05:56:46 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on February 07, 2017, 02:33:41 PM

Then again, of all the creatures that can fly, why did "fly" get that name.

That one actually makes sense to me, as flies are ubiquitous in a way bees, wasps, butterflies, etc. are not.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1976 on:** February 09, 2017, 08:06:19 AM »

The turnip is named for its shape, because it looks like a woodcrafter could have made it by turning it on a lathe.

Spoiler: Picture of a lovely symmetrical turnip (click to show/hide)

Jonathon · « **Reply #1977 on:** February 09, 2017, 08:57:01 AM »

The OED is a little less sure of the etymology than the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Quote

the first element is uncertain, but is generally supposed to be French tour or English turn n., referring to its rounded shape.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1978 on:** February 09, 2017, 09:00:23 AM »

I use them in a lot of my cooking, and my son used to say that they were called turnips because you'd never know where they'd turn up.

This is a spurious etymology.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1979 on:** February 16, 2017, 02:21:14 PM »

An editor from Merriam-Webster tweeted that mercy and mercenary are related—they both come from the Latin merces, 'fee, wages, price paid'.

That was new to me, so I decided to look up the root. The nominative plural form is mercedes, giving us the personal name and car brand name. Merces comes from merx, 'merchandise, goods', which is (obviously) also the source of merchandise. A market is a place where merchandise is sold, and mart is simply the Dutch form of the word.

The name Mercury possible also comes from merx, though it could be an Etruscan borrowing that was influenced by this root.

rivka · « **Reply #1980 on:** February 16, 2017, 04:03:18 PM »

Quote from: Jonathon on February 16, 2017, 02:21:14 PM

An editor from Merriam-Webster tweeted that mercy and mercenary are related—they both come from the Latin merces, 'fee, wages, price paid'.

How that gets to mercenary is clear. But how do you get from "price paid" to mercy?

Jonathon · « **Reply #1981 on:** February 16, 2017, 04:20:24 PM »

From 'fee, wages, price paid' to 'reward' and then 'gift, kindness, grace'.

rivka · « **Reply #1982 on:** February 16, 2017, 05:41:21 PM »

Huh. Thanks.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1983 on:** February 16, 2017, 07:10:11 PM »

In conclusion, words are weird.

rivka · « **Reply #1984 on:** February 17, 2017, 12:12:12 AM »

True dat.

pooka · « **Reply #1985 on:** March 03, 2017, 11:17:52 AM »

In class8cal mythology Mercury ushered the dead to the 4iver styx? This is a speculation on a possible meaning.

I never thought about compliance and complete until Saturday when I was abbreciating both for work.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1986 on:** March 23, 2017, 11:20:40 AM »

"Tumbler" means drinking glass, because the original design didn't have a flat base, so if you set it down before you finished your drink it would tumble over and spill everything.

What a stupid design! What were they thinking?

Brinestone · « **Reply #1987 on:** March 23, 2017, 11:56:55 AM »

With help from Duplo: An exponent is an opponent whom you don't compete against anymore.

Not so much a dubious etymology as a dubious definition, but this thread seemed like the best place for it anyway.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1988 on:** March 23, 2017, 02:07:22 PM »

Not this one?

Brinestone · « **Reply #1989 on:** March 27, 2017, 04:54:37 PM »

Oh man. I thought that's where I was.

Porter · « **Reply #1990 on:** April 09, 2017, 10:08:27 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on March 23, 2017, 11:20:40 AM

"Tumbler" means drinking glass, because the original design didn't have a flat base, so if you set it down before you finished your drink it would tumble over and spill everything.

What a stupid design! What were they thinking?

This is just a guess, but perhaps it was the bar owners who were buying such tumblers. If you can't put your drink down, it's a lot more difficult to "nurse" your drink, thus encouraging people to drink more.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1991 on:** May 01, 2017, 03:25:31 PM »

Apricot probably ultimately comes from the Latin praecoquum, meaning 'early-ripe' (from the same root as precocious, which literally means "cooked early" but was also used to refer to things that ripened or matured early). From there it was borrowed into Greek as berikokkia, then into Arabic as al-birquq, then into Spanish or Portuguese as albaricoque or albricoque. Then it was influenced by the French abricot, and the b changed to a p for some reason, possibly under the influence of a false etymology.

I love how the word made a complete circuit of the Mediterranean over the course of more than a millennium before making its way into English.

Ela · « **Reply #1992 on:** May 15, 2017, 07:45:27 PM »

What struck me about that is in modern Arabic, an apricot is called a mishmush.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1993 on:** May 15, 2017, 08:54:01 PM »

Interesting. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about the etymology of the Arabic word. I'm guessing that al-birquq was simply replaced with mishmush at some point.

That sort of thing happens fairly frequently. For example, the Latin caseus 'cheese' became queso in Spanish, but it was replaced with the unrelated word fromage in French. The English word cheese actually goes back to caseus too, but it was borrowed from Latin during Proto-West Germanic times. So the word in English no longer bears any relation to the word in French.

Ela · « **Reply #1994 on:** May 16, 2017, 09:23:56 PM »

I'm not sure about the etymology, either. Hebrew uses a similar word for apricot - essentially the same word, but they say meeshmeesh.

According to this guy, al-birquq now means plum. It's not a word I'm familiar with in modern Arabic, though I'm by no means an expert. My son might know, as his Arabic is quite good.

Jonathon · « **Reply #1995 on:** July 25, 2017, 01:22:43 PM »

The verb garner comes from the Old French gernier, a metathesized form of grenier 'storehouse, granary', from Latin granarium. The verb originally meant 'to store grain' (literally just 'to put in a garner/granary') and eventually broadened to mean 'to gather', 'to accumulate', or 'to earn'.

link

rivka · « **Reply #1996 on:** July 25, 2017, 04:15:18 PM »

Interesting!

Jonathon · « **Reply #1997 on:** September 19, 2017, 10:17:49 AM »

A typo ("road" for "rode") got me wondering if road and ride are related. And it turns out they are! Road appears to be an ablaut form of the verb ride (like sing and song), so road originally meant 'an act of riding'. Eventually it came to mean the thing you ride on, but the 'act of riding' sense survived to the 1800s, especially in the sense of 'a hostile incursion by mounted men' or 'a raid'.

And—surprise!—it turns out raid is also cognate. Road and raid both come from the Old English rad. In the dialect that became Standard English, the vowel backed and rose to /oʊ/. But in Scots the vowel fronted and rose to /eɪ/, resulting in raid. Raid was borrowed back from Scots in the 1400s in the sense of a military expedition or incursion, so for a few centuries road and raid existed side by side in the same sense.

I'd always assumed that inroad just meant 'a road into', but it comes from the 'hostile incursion' sense too.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1998 on:** September 20, 2017, 02:37:34 AM »

I learned that "Episcopal" comes from "having the characteristics of bishops", which strikes me as hilarious, because where I used to live there was an Episcopal church that was built diagonally on a corner lot.

www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Episcopal

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #1999 on:** October 20, 2017, 10:06:18 AM »

How is "plant" the same word for a natural thing growing from the earth, as for a factory or power generating facility?

Happy Mother's Day, Ma! I got you a plant.

Oh! How unusual! What kind of plant is that?

Nuclear.