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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…
European languages got the word from Persian or Arabic. But in Persian it's "narang" and in Arabic it's "naranj". (And in the languages they got it from, the word also begins "nar-".) So what happened to the initial "n"?
Answer: rebracketing, not as with "alchemy" from an article present in the source language but with an article that isn't there. You start with "naranj", import it into (say) French: "une norange". A bit of elision and it sounds the same as if that initial "n" weren't there, and after a while people forget about it.
Even better, in 19th-century Scots we find "nirrange" where the word has gained an initial n- again via another rebracketing from the indefinite article "an".
(Also, a nitpick: "etymology" isn't the only English word from "etymon", not only because of "etymologist" and "etymological" and the like but also because "etymon" itself is an English word, though not a common one.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that European languages or that a sizable portion of their vocabulary descended from Sanskrit is quite outdated. It was understandable that some people in 18th century could hold such views because they didn’t know better, in 19th century it wasn’t held by most if not all scholars, in 20th century it was disproved beyond reasonable doubt, in 21st century it can only be regarded as pseudoscience.
Are you sure you are not referring to a theory of direct derivation - which would be quite an irrelevant matter? Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it; hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which is the important thing. You could say that if they were unrelated, it would be the most extraordinary coin…
I am not sure what else you may mean by "comes from".
>Because evidence is that the Sanskrit terminology is massively present in this modern language and defines it;
There is no such evidence in modern linguistics.
>hence, awareness of Sanskrit is fundamental for awareness of the current language - which is the important thing. You could say that if they were unrelated, it would be the most extraordinary coincidence, and if their relation is not of «descende[nce]» that has much more relevance for historians than for language users, kind of mandated to know said language in depth.
They are related. Latin, Sanskrit, Russian, English, Greek, German, Persian, Bengali, etc are all descended from Proto-Indo-European. Knowing one is not any better than knowing any other in terms of awareness of meanings in other Indo-European languages.
I love the origins of English words. A book on the history of a ton of words would make for ana interesting read.
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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
Seems to be un-deaded now, praise the mods! And on closer inspection there was one naughty word in there, although technically it's a homonym that happens to have the same spelling. (And "homonym" itself is probably best avoided.)
> PEN AND PENCIL Interestingly, Swedish is closer to the Latin here. "Pensel" is a paintbrush, and both pen and pencil are called "penna". If necessary, they are distinguished as bläckpenna (ink pen) or kulspetspenna (ball point pen) and as blyertspenna, which comes from the German "bleierz", meaning "lead ore", due to a misconception that they contain lead.
In Dutch, paintbrush is "penseel". Pen is pen, pencil is "potlood". "Lood" refers to the lead in the pencil (which isn't lead at all, of course).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#Graphite_deposit_discov...
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.
Really? I've not come across it. Was it used with the historical meaning, or a-historically as another word for wedlock?