11–20 of 83 posts
> Where male goes back to Latin masculus, female comes through French femelle from Latin femella. The eventual overlap in pronunciation was accidental. Latin was masculus and femella, old French was masle/male and femelle/femaile, modern "English" is male and female. We didn't take one from Latin and one from French -- we took both from French. It doesn't make any sense that "male" was taken from "masculus" when "mas…
I am ironically amused to note that the comment appears to have offended somebody or something sufficiently to make it disappear, even though it did not contain any actual offensive words.
I love this kind of thing. There’s plenty of neat little nuggets I have come across. Folk Etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology. - “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab. - A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meanin…
Brilliant. I'll need to make a point of pronouncing "outrage" to rhyme with "garage" from now on. "It is an oot-RAAZH!"
I love the origins of English words. A book on the history of a ton of words would make for ana interesting read.
I posted a comment noting that some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words, even though they are etymologically unrelated. I am ironically amused to note that the comment appears to have offended somebody or something sufficiently to make it disappear, even though it did not contain any actual offensive words.
I posted a comment noting that some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words, even though they are etymologically unrelated. I am ironically amused to note that the comment appears to have offended somebody or something sufficiently to make it disappear, even though it did not contain any actual offensive words.
An unmentioned subcategory is words that that sound or look like taboo words, but are actually unrelated: "niggardly", "Gaylord", "fag" as in cigarette (from "fag end", unrelated to "faggot"), etc.
I love the origins of English words. A book on the history of a ton of words would make for ana interesting read.
Also, if you are a member of a public library, you can often get free access to the full Oxford English Dictionary online, which has detailed etymologies.
My personal discovery: “testament” and “statement”. They are anagrams, and obviously have some semantic connection - “this is what I’d like to happen” vs. “this is my opinion on a topic”. But no shared root (known to me) or other relation.
Being an anagram has no value: not only switching the order of sounds is not a mechanism in the evolution of terms (at least, I cannot think of a single example), but more relevantly the sounds do not overlap with their symbols - terms are in general transliterations (so the "character" has little importance, being a mostly referencing simplification).
I posted a comment noting that some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words, even though they are etymologically unrelated. I am ironically amused to note that the comment appears to have offended somebody or something sufficiently to make it disappear, even though it did not contain any actual offensive words.