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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.
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.
The comment is still available [0], just "dead", so it doesn't show up on unless the user has enabled "show dead comments" on their profile page. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30584622
Wedlock comes from Old English wedlác, where lác was a suffix that formed an action noun out of another noun. Other suffixed words were brýdlác (nuptials), réaflác (robbery), andfeohtlác (warfare). Wedlock is the only one we still use today. Not true; I've seen the word "bridelock" used in modern English.
> 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fo…
However, these sensations are extremely cultural. As a non-American, it's funny to see Americans trying to impose their cultural sensitivities on other countries and cultures. Like criticising crayon brands for using the word "negro" on their black crayons. Or criticising people for using an online name that vaguely looks like a forbidden American word.
I also remember from many years ago an American interviewer trying to interview a black British athlete what it was like for him as an "African American". He corrected her that he's British, and she corrected to "African American Brit".
It's absolutely great that Americans are trying to rid themselves of racist slurs, but combined with American cultural imperialism it can lead to weird situations that can ironically come across as quite racist again, because other cultures refuse to play by the new (entirely justified) American sensitivity rules, because in those other cultures the words lack the racist connotation that they have in the US.
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.
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…
This one doesn't really fit here, as the "obvious" etymology is the correct one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
> They are anagrams 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).
This is an extremely common way for pronunciation to evolve, usually known as metathesis. An example familiar to most Americans is "ax" for "ask" heard in certain dialects.
For a hundred more examples, see the Wikipedia page.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
'masculus' does not seem to come from the Sanskrit 'marya' (both may have come from the same root), and 'marya' does not seem to mean mortal but rather young man. 'martya' (from a different root) does mean mortal, though, which is where you may have become confused.
But they seem to have the same meaning. The identified root seems to be "mṛ", that of mortality, and they may (/may/, with relevance to the content this paragraph) come from it; that one term in Sanskrit in inherited by Greek and then Latin is the «come from» I meant.
> and 'marya' does not seem to mean mortal
So where does it come from? According to some authors, 'marya' comes from "mṛ" just like 'martya', which you state has a different root. Edit: disambiguation: of course 'marya' is used for "young man". But it seems to mean "a "mortal", someone ready (initiated, young man, no more a child) to develop his defined (limited) path of life".