Author Topic: The random etymology of the day (Read 237876 times)

JT · « **Reply #275 on:** August 18, 2006, 05:11:05 AM »

What about 'Omicron Persei 8'?

Jonathon · « **Reply #276 on:** August 18, 2006, 08:04:19 AM »

I think that falls outside the realm of etymology.

pooka · « **Reply #277 on:** August 18, 2006, 09:45:17 AM »

How about "Maroon". Do people turn maroon when Marooned or is Maroon an exotic location where people are marooned that happens to be the source of the color?

Jonathon · « **Reply #278 on:** August 18, 2006, 10:22:31 AM »

The color comes from the French word for chestnut. The verb also comes from French, but they got it from the Spanish cimarron, meaning "fugitive" or "feral," and subsequently shortened it. Apparently it was used to refer to slaves who ran away and lived in the mountains in the West Indies.

So you have fugitive > fugitive living in the wild > someone living in the wild (on an island). At some point in the sense development it became a verb referring to the act of becoming a maroon.

Jonathon · « **Reply #279 on:** August 24, 2006, 09:00:36 AM »

anger

From the Old Norse angr, meaning "distress, grief," from Proto-Germanic angus, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *angh, "stretch round, tight, painfully constricted, painful."

angst

From Old High German angust, from the same root as anger.

anguish

From Old French anguisse, meaning "choking sensation," from Latin angustia, "tightness, distress," from Latin anguere, "to throttle, torment," ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *angh.

anxiety

From the Latin anxietatem, noun of quality from anxius, "solicitous, uneasy, troubled in mind," also from anguere.

These four words all refer to intense negative emotions, and they're all different, but once you see the roots, it's easy to see how they could have differentiated and developed specialized senses.

Brinestone · « **Reply #280 on:** August 24, 2006, 02:20:59 PM »

Can you do distressed and distraught?

Jonathon · « **Reply #281 on:** August 24, 2006, 07:47:37 PM »

Even if it's completely uninteresting?

sarcasticmuppet · « **Reply #282 on:** August 24, 2006, 07:52:13 PM »

Wow, the etymologist thinks it's uninteresting?

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I get a kick out of random etymology.

Jonathon · « **Reply #283 on:** August 24, 2006, 08:08:47 PM »

Not every word has an interesting history. In fact, I'd say that most of them don't.

Brinestone · « **Reply #284 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:32:06 AM »

Okay, since you found them boring, I looked them up myself. You're right about distressed, but distraught is not totally uninteresting. It's cognate with distract, which seems obvious now.

And now I'm driven to distraction by the fact that you found this boring. I assume that's because you're smarter than me and knew they were cognate just by looking at them.

Jonathon · « **Reply #285 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:43:03 AM »

No, I looked them up and found their etymologies to be fairly uninteresting (especially distressed). Distraught is slightly more interesting, I guess.

pooka · « **Reply #286 on:** August 25, 2006, 12:06:28 PM »

Distraght is easy. It comes from "dis + Draft" as in "out of beer".

Porter · « **Reply #287 on:** August 25, 2006, 08:37:13 PM »

Is there any connection between mile (the unit of length), mile meaning 1,000, and Miles (a name meaning soldier)/Military?

Jonathon · « **Reply #288 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:47:41 PM »

The first two are definitely related. Mile/mille meant "thousand" in Latin, as I'm sure you already know. A mile was originally a thousand paces, or mile passum.

Miles/military are probably unconnected to the word for "thousand," though. Miles was the Latin word for "soldier," and militaris was an adjective meaning "of soldiers." It's not clear where miles comes from, but it doesn't look like it's related to mile/mille.

Porter · « **Reply #289 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:50:21 PM »

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It's not clear where miles comes from

Which miles are you talking about?

Jonathon · « **Reply #290 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:56:21 PM »

The only one.

mile/mille: thousand
miles: soldier

Porter · « **Reply #291 on:** August 25, 2006, 09:57:25 PM »

But you already said that miles means "soldier", as did I. We know were it comes from.

Or did you mean before that?

Jonathon · « **Reply #292 on:** August 25, 2006, 10:01:01 PM »

Yup. I was talking about tracing it back past that to see if it hooked up with the word for "thousand" at some point.

It's turtles all the way down, as they say.

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #293 on:** August 26, 2006, 11:00:35 PM »

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It's turtles all the way down, as they say.

They say that?

Porter · « **Reply #294 on:** August 27, 2006, 07:33:53 AM »

Apparently.

rivka · « **Reply #295 on:** August 27, 2006, 06:03:40 PM »

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It's turtles all the way down, as they say.
They say that?

Well, I certainly do. All the time. I said it at DC-con just last week.

Porter · « **Reply #296 on:** August 27, 2006, 06:07:31 PM »

I was teaching a lesson about pioneers today, and I whipped out my mad random-etyomology-of-the-day skillz.

Jonathon · « **Reply #297 on:** August 27, 2006, 06:15:36 PM »

Jonathon · « **Reply #298 on:** August 28, 2006, 09:54:42 AM »

Today's random etymology is brought to you by Merriam-Webster's word of the day.

anomalous

This word ultimately comes from the Greek (via Latin and then French) anomalos, which comes from an- (a negative prefix that's cognate with English un- and Latin in-) plus homalos, meaning "even" or "regular." Homalos comes from homos, the Greek word for "same" (which is actually cognate with the English word same, believe it or not).

So something that is anomalous is essentially something that is uneven or irregular, or, in other words, unsame.

Porter · « **Reply #299 on:** August 28, 2006, 09:57:11 AM »

I assume that this is the same homos from which we get homo sapiens and homosexual?

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which is actually cognate with the English word same, believe it or not

What does it mean for same and homos to be cognates with each other?