Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

theweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#21

Post by mdp2021 »

xeromal wrote: post #3

I love the origins of English words. A book on the history of a ton of words would make for ana interesting read.

Surely Etymonline (as also others noted nearby) - it is sequential (alphabetically of course) as much as hypertextual so it is equivalent to the text of a book;

from the actual "ISBN" titles, without too much of a system but as a preliminary scavenging read you may check:

Justin Cord Hayes - The Unexpected Evolution of Language

and

Nigel Rees - Why Do We Say

(Nigel Rees also being the conductor of the 500 episodes of the radio programme "Quote... Unquote". Very prolific writer, apparently, other titles from him could be relevant).

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#22

Post by mdp2021 »

jl6 wrote: post #20
dustintrex wrote: post #12

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.

Sadly I think those words have died, as victims of semantic pollution, through no fault of their own. Even though no dictionary will attest to an offensive meaning, they share enough phonemic material with malwords to trigger an immune response, which is not something you generally want to do to your readers.

> trigger an immune response, which is not something you generally want to do to your readers

In general, you expect readers not live «immune response[s]». It is called "sensation", and you either expect readers to be mature and having learnt to manage it as much as they learnt all other physiological and emotional and intellectual control, or if not mature you want to expose them to the world of serious adulthood for their awareness [rephrased: you do not hide adult behaviour: example must not be missed] - in which "sensation" has no part, replaced by distance, reflection and cool and objective consideration.

It is very odd to consider readers as "prone to sensation" (and that they could be legitimately so).

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#23

Post by mdp2021 »

moonchild wrote: post #17
dustintrex wrote: post #6

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.

A 'faggot' is also a bundle of wood.

No post body was provided.

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#26

Post by ogogmad »

veltas wrote: post #25

Tower of Babel and babble.

I think there are limits to what anyone can know about ancient history. I think the ToB story was written so long ago that no one can know the origin of the word "Babel". "Babel" (בָּבֶל‎) could mean babbling, or it could mean Babylon (בָּבֶל), but how can anyone know either way?

It's intriguing though how the spellings בָּבֶל‎ and בָּבֶל are completely identical, including which beths are beths, which veths are veths, and even their vowel marks!

So chances for Babylon:babbling are 95:5 for me. I'm not good at Hebrew though, so I don't know how to accurately assess the probabilities. Thanks for that!

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#27

Post by mdp2021 »

dustintrex wrote: post #12

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.

> can no longer be used

...Can no longer be used without fumbling into people that assume the rest intends to speak demotic, "Fixed That For You".

> some words can no longer be used because they resemble offensive words

I find it very interesting on a specific historic case that the original group, of difficult pronunciation for Europeans, in the Gulf of Guinea area, "n·gr", meaning "big river", naming the Niger river and nearby countries, happened to be so close to the Latin for "black" - which is already in a way offensive, with its potential as some "reduction to appearance". (Of course, the Republic of the Niger and the Federal Republic of Nigeria correctly just shrug the coincidence off.)

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#28

Post by mdp2021 »

bryans wrote: post #8

> 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…

The roots seem to be very different:

-- if 'masculus' comes from (Sanskrit) 'marya', then it means "a mortal". The implicit meaning is evident in the more direct Latin form "maritus" (see English 'to marry'), the husband, meaning "you now have a role in which you shall behave aware of your mortality - i.e., as an "adult"".

-- 'femina' comes from the nourishing ability of giving milk, ex 'felo' (the act of sucking, related to "fecunditas" (the condition that allows it - implying the ability to host a "fetus") and giving "felicitas" ("happiness" in the typical derived meaning, of the /pleasant/ occasion)).

But easily, 'male' and 'female' then adapted to similar form being used for polar concepts.

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#29

Post by simonh »

bryans wrote: post #8

> 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…

Fair enough, but masle in Old French comes from the vulgar latin masclus, so the article isn't wrong, it's just that the lineage is indirect. It seems a very minor nit to pick.

Re: Words that seem related but aren't (2015)

#30

Post by LudwigNagasena »

mdp2021 wrote: post #28
bryans wrote: post #8

> 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…

The roots seem to be very different: -- if 'masculus' comes from (Sanskrit) 'marya', then it means "a mortal". The implicit meaning is evident in the more direct Latin form "maritus" (see English 'to marry'), the husband, meaning "you now have a role in which you shall behave aware of your mortality - i.e., as an "adult"". -- 'femina' comes from the nourishing ability of giving milk, ex 'felo' (the act of sucking, re…

>if 'masculus' comes from (Sanskrit) 'marya'

But it doesn't.

Post reply on HN