The English words “wheel” and “cycle” are related, as is the word “chakra” (a centre of spiritual energy within the body, in Hinduism). When two words have a shared etymology within a language, we call them “doublets”. Another surprising doublet of these is “Ku Klux Klan”. The “Ku Klux” bit comes from the Greek “Kuklos”. […]
Languages
Surprising doublets: Horse, Chariots, and Car
There are several pairs of doublets (related words) in English where one is from Norman and has a ‘c’, and the the other is from Old French and has a ‘ch’.‘car’ vs ‘chariot’ is a example, and they have the bonus of also being related to “horse”.Others include ‘castle’ vs ‘chateau’, ‘cattle’ vs ‘chattel’, ‘canal’ […]
The Etymology of English Weekdays
The idea of the 7 day week was introduced to Germanic peoples by the Romans, and so Germanic speakers mostly just replaced the Latin names of these days with Germanic gods or words that seemed like the best translations of the Roman words. The 7 names the Romans gave to their weekdays coincided with the […]
The Etymology of Planets and Dwarf Planets in English
The etymologies of the English names of the planets and dwarf planets of our solar system All the planet names come from Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. The dwarf planet names are also from gods, but from much more varied languages: in the 21st century it has become increasingly common for astronomers name solar […]
Surprising Doublets: Grime, Christ, and Ghee
Grime, Christ, and ghee share the same Indo-European root! The word “grimace” is also cognate, coming from French “grimace”, from Frankish *grima (mask), from the Proto-Germanic *grīmô. Greek Khristos is a calque of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšīaḥ), also meaning “anointed”. Māšīaḥ was also borrowed into Greek and Latin, eventually reaching English as the word “messiah”. […]
Surprising Doublets: Cow, Beef, and Bovine
Yet another surprising etymology graphic:“Cow” and “beef” are related words.After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, the country came under the rule of a Norman French speaking nobility.This lead to a situation where the live animals were handled by Middle English speakers, while the cooked animal was eaten by theirNormal French speaking lords.The result: […]
Etymological Tree of Sker
I started making an image showing how “skirt” and “shirt” are from the same origin, but got a bit carried away with all the other words also related. So here are 23 English words all from the Proto-Indo-European word “*(s)ker-” (‘to cut’). As a general rule: if a PIE word started with “sk”, and it […]
Indo-European Words For Two
Why are all these words related? The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language was spoken around 6000 years, somewhere on the border between Europe and Asia. Since then, the language has spread and split up into many different languages in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Now, nearly half the world speaks an Indo-European language. Because all […]
Fantastic False Cognates
False cognates are pairs of words that seem related, but aren’t. Here are some of these amazing linguistic coincidences. What are False Congates? If you read my last post, Dizzying Doublets, you’ll see that sometimes words that seem totally different, like “nation” and “king”, or “gonads” and “genius”, can be distantly related. Words like this, […]
Linguistic Prescriptivists Make Terrible Zoologists
If you love language, be a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist!Remember:Just because a word isn’t in your dictionary, doesn’t mean it isn’t a word. Just because a dialect is different from the standard language, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Just because someone uses a word in a way you aren’t familiar with, doesn’t mean they are wrong.And, however you […]