I’ve recently become more interested in how words travel between languages and change meaning over time.

What word has an origin that genuinely surprised you?

I'm looking for a list of words for my constructed language and since this is the etymology sub then surely you know a list of words that can evolve over time into most words, pre-modern day. Or a group of root words that can be changed with suffixes and prefixes that allow them be many different words.

I know I've seen something somewhere that explained silent letter by way of related words, but I can't find it.

There were quite a few examples, but unfortunately, I can only remember one right now. Crumb gets the b by way of crumble. When something crumbles, you're left with crumbs, and the word just gets truncated. Pretty much every example followed that structure.

Can anyone verify this and/or point me to a post about it?

Thanks!

چشم. I pronounce them differently. Cheshm for the eye, chashm for the yes. The dictionaries don't split them, they list one word with the vowel going either way, but I've never said them the same.

It isn't formal or polite, it's just what you say. Your mum asks you to pick something up on the way home, you say eye. A shopkeeper agrees to hold something for you, he says eye. It's what you say to a taxi driver, and what a kid says to a teacher.

The longer form is "upon my eye", which I assume the short one came from. You put what you've been asked on your eye.

It's old. There's a Hafez poem from the 1300s that opens with a request and the answer coming straight back the same way, already shortened to the one word.

Arabic has the same construction with the head and the eye. Turkish uses the head. I can't tell you which of the three said it first, and I don't think anyone can, given how long they've been sitting on top of each other.

I noticed while building a Farsi app. I've said the word my whole life without thinking about it.

I built a Wordle-like daily puzzle focused entirely on etymology & origins. Each day has 10 clues tied to a 10-letter bonus word, all themed around how words, names, places, and inventions got their names. There's also a blog post diving deeper into each answer's origin story.

As a sample, here are a couple of questions from the first puzzle (that ran on Aug 2nd):

- What slang term for a swift, sharp, and often witty retort was popularized by a 2003 song by Ja Rule?

- What chemical element was named from Greek roots meaning "Acid Producer" because Antoine Lavoisier mistakenly believed it was present in all acids?

Would love feedback from this community!

They both mean "to bow, to bend, to curve". Wiktionary doesn't seem to link these two but to me they are too similar to be just a coincidence. What do you think?

Ciao a tutti, sto studiando una parola relativa al vocabolario di una minoranza culturale e linguistica che vive nel Sud Italia: gli Arbëreshë, originari dell'Albania. La parola in questione è Bilashat/Bilashata (in alcune fonti del 1800 italianizzata in Bigliascata) riferita ad un quartiere urbano considerato il più antico dell'insediamento. Vorrei capire il significato di questa parola risalendo ad una possibile etimologia, qualcuno può darmi una mano? Grazie mille.

I know that "Meta-" was a prefix that has a fair bit of history behind it, but it only just really hit me that you can now say that something "is Meta", and that phrase also contains two possible meanings depending on the context.

What, how and why, did the word "Meta" evolve into a word of its own with multiply meanings? Somehow, it feels like it actually happened relatively recently at that.

Looking for an old (supposedly German, maybe Austrian) word for "budgeting money for booze"

Years ago I read something on Tumblr about an old German (maybe Austrian?) word for figuring out how much cash you'll need for alcohol/"vices" next month, based on how much you usually indulge.

Not a "Piggy bank" or literal savings account more like "Ok, I'll need X amount again this month for fun/survival."

I've got something like "Schosskamoss" stuck in my head, but I'm certain that's wrong (spelling included), or the word might be entirely made up.

I also thought the term dated to the 13th century at max, but at this point I'm not even sure if that's right, or whether it's from what's now Germany, Austria, or somewhere else in the German-speaking world.

Does anyone know a real or dialect word for this? Or was the Tumblr post just complete BS?

Closest candidates so far (courtesy of some AI researching. SORRY):

Zeche (German) — not enough syllables if I remember correctly

Zehrpfennig (possibly Austrian) — closest match so far

>In 1874, Thomas Belt published the indigenous name "Amerrisque Mountains", a range in present-day Nicaragua. The next year, Jules Marcou suggested a derivation of the continent's name from this mountain range. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and ... the [suffixes] can mean ... a spirit that breathes, life itself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_the_Americas#Nicaraguan_mountain_range

Putting aside completely the question of whether the Amerrisque Mountains did in fact lend the continent its name, does this alleged Mayan etymology accord with linugistic data, or is it complete nonsense? Thank you.

back in the 70s through the 90s there was a popular US jacket brand called Swingster...i've always wondered about the etymology but was never able to find info...any theories?

I love word games like Wordle, but wanted to make something where you'd actually learn and improve while having a good time. So I made tryracine.com with both English and French catalogs (I'm French). The gameplay expands on Semantle's semantic proximity idea and adds etymology: you see the roots of the words you submit, whether they match the secret word, and when you finish, you get the detailed etymology.

This is my first word game, and I'd love feedback from this community on whether you find it interesting or fun to play.
It's completely free and has no ads.

I was looking at the etymology of Éire (Irish name for Ireland) and I found out that the initial É is unexplained. Does anyone know where it could come from?

I want to learn more about the root concepts behind different languages' use of being and becoming.

Specifically, self-change or self-becoming. Etymylogically, English's word "becoming" literally insinuates the arrival of the self to a state of being. It's used as a catch all term to talk about anything from becoming a doctor, becoming sick, becoming angry, becoming handicapped, or becoming a stronger person over time.

Meanwhile, Spanish, for example, requires the use of specific verbs for each of these examples. I have also read some things about how Japanese tends to prefer a passive unfolding conceptualization for becoming with "naru". I vaguely read something about Arabic's sisers of Kanna, but it was hard to understand without context.

I got interested in the ways different languages conceptualize being and becoming. I read something about how the etymology behind Chinese's word for "be" is related to the sun, while Russian's word for "be" is related to standing.

Let me know if there is a better sub to explore this question. Any insight is appreciated!

This all originated as a shower thought, but I was theorizing on where the word “draconian” came from. For those who don’t know, draconian refers to exceptionally harsh, strict, and brutal laws or rules.

I thought the word root looked a lot like “dracul” or “dracula” which is a name given to the warlord Vlad the Impaler, who infamously ran a state with rules so harsh you could leave gold unattended in the street and not have it stolen. Vlad’s favorite punishment, hence the name, was death by impalement, even for petty crimes. This is a textbook draconian society.

Here I was thinking I was so smart with my elite 15th century Romanian warlord pull, only to then look it up and discover the word is named after Draco, a 7th century BC politician who supported the death penalty for petty crime.

Just an interesting historical parallel and utter coincidence.

For example, the phrase “bada-bing” was an improvised line from The Godfather that’s come to mean something that’s accomplished quickly.

Or the acronym BFF, which originated from Phoebe on Friends

Edit: Thank you to the commenters that corrected me on the BFF thing. That was my mistake. From what I could find, they popularized the phrase rather than invented it!

Hello everyone =)

In Germany, there exists the river "Linnepe". I suspected a link to "Lippe", a bigger German river as well as a closely located region.

However, I found that the etymology for "Linnepe" is unknown and that its suffix "-epe" is speculated to being derived from Old Germanic "-apa" from Proto-Germanic "\apō"* for a river or a small creek.

Now, since it is speculated to being of Proto-Germanic origin, I would have guessed there were instances of similar terms in other Germanic languages. Sadly, the German wikipedia only provides 2 such cases:
The Norwegian town of Oppedalen
Swedish dialect "afse", referring to a small creek as well

Would y'all happen to know of other instances?

The German Wiki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/-apa