Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/August

Palestine
RFV of the etymology.

User:Prinsgezinde removed all references to the Philistines in this and the following one. A quick check of Etymonline and in the New Oxford American Dictionary app on my computer supported the removed material. Does anyone have more information on this? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:49, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Among the more entertaining folk etymologies (if they can be called that) is the one advanced by James Silk Buckingham and Henry Welsford in the early 1830s and 40s, that "the etymology of Palestine is Sanskrit, from Pali, a shepherd, and Stan or Istan, place." - -sche (discuss) 04:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That the word derives from the word  and is related to the word  is the generally accepted theory. In various fora across the internet, at least part of the (non-scholarly) disagreement with this theory comes from people conflating questions about origin of the word with questions about the ethnic origin of the Palestinian people and/or the history of entities called "Palestine". [//biblehub.com/hebrew/6429.htm Strong's] has more on the Hebrew word.
 * Is "unattested", as has been claimed? DTLHS (talk) 05:22, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, e.g. Exodus 15:14 has (KJV: "of Palestina", NIV: "of Philistia") and Isaiah 14:29 has  (KJV: "Palestina" NIV: "you Philistines"). - -sche (discuss) 05:48, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * My reasoning for it is that this particular word's origin and usage is extremely politicized. There is no certainty on the etymology, although many would like to claim there is a general agreement. I'd rather avoid it than potentionally supply false information. Also, see here.
 * More: Philistine - This has been used to mean "uneducated person" since the 19th century. That use in English originates with a conflict between university academics and the townsfolk of Jena, Germany, in the 17th century, apparently based on the Book of Judges phrase “the Philistines are upon you.” The Philistines - in Hebrew plishtim - were a coastal adversary of ancient Israel whose name simply meant "invaders."
 * -Prinsgezinde (talk) 16:35, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The word Palestine and its etymology existed long before any political issues you may be referring to. --WikiTiki89 11:08, 3 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Can you point to modern scholarship that disputes the derivation of "Palestine" from ? The alternative theories I've seen are: (1) the spurious folk etymology suggested by Buckingham and Welsford in the 1830s and 40s, which merits no mention; (2) a theory by David M. Jacobson that "Palestine" is not just from but is a modification of it by the Greeks to incorporate a pun/folk etymology (but Jacobson notes that "modern consensus agrees with" linking "Palestine" to "Philistine"), which might merit attributed mention; (3) the theory mentioned at  that the Philistines take their name from Palaestīnī who take their name from  in Albania, which seems like an unlikely minority view. (I've also seen it suggested that the Plst mentioned in Ancient Egyptian records are not, as most scholars think, cognate to "Philistines" and hence "Palestinians", but rather Pelagesians who migrated eastwards.) The sources you link to which explain how "Philistine" came to mean "uneducated person" don't contradict or indeed have much to do with the cognancy of the place-names "Palestine" and "Philistia". - -sche (discuss) 18:49, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Avena is to sheep as Haver is to goats?
Different pages for Germanic words for "oats" (something like 'haver') claim that the etymology is from 'Kaper' because oats would have been fed to goats. Why oats would be especially distinctive of goats I'm not sure, but it occurred to me that "avena" sounded like "ovis", which was especially glaring when I stumbled upon Russian "овес" Just doing a little reading about goats and sheep, it looks like both are grazers, not regularly given grain. Sheep are a little more picky about what they can eat, but do better on grasses whereas goats apparently like vines and weeds best. If "haver" is "Kaper" why couldn't "avena" be a modified form of "ovis"? Then the association between the livestock and the grain would have been a (kind of) calque one direction or the other.

J&#39;odore (talk)
 * Kluge's etymological dictionary also suggests a connection of (< ) with, but I'm unconvinced. It seems like wishful thinking to me. The PIE "goat" word is attested in Proto-Germanic . A connection of  with  seems even more far-fetched. I'm no zoologist, but I thought goats were browsers rather than grazers. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:22, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

yearhundred
RFV of the etymology:

From year + hundred. Cognate with 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬.

This looks to me like a self-conscious artificial calque from one or more of the "cognates". It has very limited usage, but it meets CFI, so it shouldn't be deleted, but, if I'm right, we should be honest about its unnatural origins. Is there any trace of usage outside of the past century or so, or any evidence at all that this was inherited rather than constructed? Bosworth-Toller doesn't seem to have anything like this- just SOP combinations of / and in sentences, i.e. the equivalent of "a hundred years" and not "a yearhundred". I suspect this is about as authentic as phony archaisms like "thee sayeth". Chuck Entz (talk) 01:47, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The way in which the Etymology is written doesnt suggest it was inherited. It suggests it was created in Modern English by combining + . ?? Leasnam (talk) 03:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Irish ól
Proto-Celtic had no long ō, but the PIE root page suggests that this form did have one. So what is going on? —CodeCat 16:38, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is usually said to be from with compensatory lengthening for the loss of the t, though I can't say where the short o came from since Latin  points to *pōtlom < . Maybe before ō became ā in Proto-Celtic it shortened to ŏ before clusters like tl? That's not an environment for, though. Hmm... —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:57, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * has this to say:
 * "The vowel *o in Celtic is unexpected, as the PIE laryngeal should have yielded *a between consonants. It is probably due to an early analogy with the full grade (*eh₃ > *ō > PCelt. *ā), or to vowel assimilation (*fatlo- > *fotlo-), or to Dybo's law (*peh₃-tló- > *pōtló- > *potló-). Original *peh₃-tlo- would presumably have given OIr. **ál."
 * In my opinion, the "analogy with the full grade" argument is weak, because what would be the source of the analogy? Vowel assimilation is possible, I suppose, but it's kind of a copout since there are so many words where a...o didn't assimilate to o...o. And I don't know what Dybo's law he's talking about since the only I've ever heard of applies only in Slavic and is an accent shift, not a vowel shortening. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:42, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This Dybo's law refers to pre-tonic vowel shortening in Italic and Celtic. See and . Benwing (talk) 23:50, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Placement of the -l- in *pleh₂- and *pelth₂-
It seems that there can't be a single reconstruction for this root because there are two different forms: and.
 * Balto-Slavic must derive from a full-grade, as a zero grade  would develop into  or perhaps , and the full grade of  would result in.
 * Slavic on the other hand must derive from the  variant (in o-grade).

The synonymous root currently at suffers from the same problem:
 * Germanic requires, the reverse variant  would give.
 * Sanskrit appears to require.

And then of course there's the relationship between the t-roots and the t-less roots, which goes beyond a simple root extension. I'm not sure what the best way would be to handle this in the entries. Should we just have four separate pages? This might be difficult because the zero grades coincide: could come from both  and  as they have the same zero grade. —CodeCat 21:01, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Alternation *pel(t)h₂- ~ *ple(t)h₂- looks like an instance of Schwebeablaut. Roots appear to be unrelated. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:39, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

grem, greš, gre...
Etymology of Slovene grem, greš, gre...? 93.139.207.176 02:25, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

أرثوذكسي (orthodox)
I created this entry and put "Ancient Greek" for the etymology by force of habit, but I'm wondering if it should be listed just under "Greek." In particular, the seems to indicate a late derivation reflecting modern  instead of  ancient, but I suppose the Hellenistic (koine) pronunciation would have /ð/ for delta and still be considered "Ancient Greek." I have sought, with little luck, Arabic terms deriving from Ancient Greek words with intervocalic delta to see if they become or, excepting terms from Greek mythology or technical terms which are more likely to have been coined in modern times. This is really sort of a frivolous distinction but I would like to get it right, to the extent that there is a clear boundary between an Ancient or Modern Greek derivation, and I don't know nearly enough about Greek phonology, or even the evolution of the English word orthodox, to come up with a compelling answer one way or the other on my own. Any insight would be appreciated. Aperiarcam (talk) 04:52, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right that δ was pronounced /ð/ already in Koine Greek, which is still well within what we consider Ancient Greek, so you can say the Arabic word is from . The code   can be used as the first parameter of etyl, but is otherwise not a recognized language code; use   instead. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:40, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Not so fast; a fricative pronunciation of delta already in Koine Greek is by no means proven, see Koine Greek phonology. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I would guess this word was borrowed in the 600-1000AD period, hence probably coming from Byzantine Greek. I think we still consider that to be Ancient Greek; certainly, for other Arabic words probably borrowed in the same period, we say Ancient Greek. Benwing (talk) 23:41, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually we have a separate code for Byzantine Greek, . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:18, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * On the one hand, WT:AGRC (still) says to consider Byzantine as Ancient Greek, but (it says) only because that's convenient. On the other hand, there was a discussion where there was some support for treating Byzantine as its own language; WT:LANGTREAT says to consider gkm and grc separate languages; and we never did bother to delete Byzantine Greek's code, even when it was supposedly (quoth WT:AGRC) treated as Ancient Greek. Perhaps someone should update WT:AGRC. - -sche (discuss) 03:07, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

twin
Per this source, the Proto-Germanic reconstruction (and the variant *twinjaz) is wrong. Instead, the double -nn- of Old English getwinn is original and etymologically identical with English and German. The reconstruction should therefore be. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:53, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The link above doesn't show any information on the page... Leasnam (talk) 19:16, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * So what happened to the /z~r/ in and ? --WikiTiki89 19:17, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * According to Bosworth and Toller, it is correct. They reconstruct PGmc *tvina, *tvinia to support Old English twinn Leasnam (talk) 19:20, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Philippa 2009, is from OHG, contracted and assimilated from , composed of / + . —CodeCat 00:47, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * My question was actually if they derive from then what happened to the  in Dutch and German? --WikiTiki89 01:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Long vowel in Latin īsse
I think the perfect infinitive of in Latin has a long vowel in the form, but is given as short in Wiktionary. I don't recall where I've seen it as long, maybe in Moreland and Fleischer? Benwing (talk) 23:58, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Definitely long as it is a contraction of / . Aperiarcam (talk) 00:07, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic adjective comparative forms
How do Proto-Slavic adjective comparative forms work?

For an example comparative of *vysokъ is *vyšьjь, or comparative of *soldъkъ is *solďьjь...

But what would be comparatives of adjactives ending in -st like for an example *čęstъ (similar adjactives are *pustъ, *gǫstъ, or *žestokъ) is it *čęstьjь, or is it *čęsťьjь or *čęščьjь?

Or adjactives ending with -s or z like *bosъ or *lysъ is it *lysьjь or *lyšьjь or is it something else? 78.1.228.34 05:07, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I fixed your links, that should answer your first question. As for, it would probably be , but I don't know if the comparative exists for this particular word (it doesn't in Russian, as far as I know). --WikiTiki89 15:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * OCS has čęstъ com. čęstie, also čęsto com. čęstie / čęšte. So what would be correct proto-slavic form *čęstьjь, or *čęsťьjь or *čęščьjь? 93.139.161.203 16:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Check our entry for, the answer is already there. --WikiTiki89 17:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Did kebab come from Persian or Arabic?
Entry for the Persian lists the Arabic  as its descendent but according to Hans Wehr the Arabic term comes from the native Arabic geminate root ك ب ب (k-b-b), e.g. form II verb  means "to form or roll into a ball". may need some attention - plurals, inflections are not available in H.W. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:27, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * If I had to guess, the Arabic looks like a folk etymology; ar:w:كباب more or less dismisses an Arabic etymology. I would cast my stone in favor of a Turkish derivation, and apparently ultimately some sort of Semitic origin (Akkadian or Aramaic, neither Arabic nor a Semitic cognate of ). The English kebab seems to have come from Ottoman Turkish, if not Persian; it certainly did not come via Arabic. Aperiarcam (talk) 06:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, I haven't found a plural form for . The inflection is regular and triptote (here is an example of the accusative case being used). Aperiarcam (talk) 07:02, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * WP has this to say, with reference:
 * According to Sevan Nişanyan, an etymologist of the Turkish language, the word kebab is derived from the Persian word "kabap" meaning "fry". The word was first mentioned in a Turkish script of Kyssa-i Yusuf in 1377, which is the oldest known source where kebab is mentioned as a food. However, he emphasizes that the word has the equivalent meaning of "frying/burning" with "kabābu" in the old Akkadian language, and "kbabā/כבבא" in Syriac language. (Nişanyan Sevan, Sözlerin Soyağacı, Çağdaş Türkçenin Etimolojik Sözlüğü, Online, Book.)
 * Another reference claims the Kitab al-Tabikh contains an earlier mention of the dish. - -sche (discuss) 07:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the replies. I was more interested to know if the Arabic term was borrowed from Persian (or other language) or is native Arabic word. Hans Wehr dictionary doesn't specifically say the term is from native Arabic root letters but lists the term under the related root letters (as usually done with words from the same root). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:31, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I've modified the English, Turkish and Persian entries. - -sche (discuss) 20:32, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is misrepresenting Nshanyan, who does not even mention the Persian word. See Nshanyan's website. There is no Persian word "kabap" meaning "fry". The languages of the region, including Persian, borrowed the word from Arabic. The Arabic itself may be a native formation or a borrowing from Aramaic. I have expanded with sources. --Vahag (talk) 20:56, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

ius
ius and Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂yew- say jus came from ævum, but ius says it came from jugum. Lysdexia (talk) 17:42, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No one says that ius comes from aevum or from jugum; that would be silly. We do say that the PIE root that ius comes from itself comes from the same root as aevum. Cal Watkins, whose scholarship I tend to believe, takes it back only as far as, without claiming that comes from  as we do. I don't see any possible way it could come from , and I've removed that bit of nonsense from the Wikipedia article. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:06, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The etymology comes from De Vaan 2008, I've added that to the entry accordingly. —CodeCat 19:58, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I had expected you would say that. By a quoted word I meant its meaning, where the word's root's meaning is identical to the root's reflex's meaning. Lysdexia (talk) 02:02, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

blood
Why did the proto‐Germans invent a new word for blood? Why didn’t they use the ones from Proto‐Indo‐European? --Romanophile (talk) 12:49, 22 August 2015 (UTC)


 * According to Wikipedia (Germanic substrate hypothesis), some linguists estimate that a third of Proto-Germanic vocabulary is not derived from Proto-Indo-European. I think I remember reading a hypothesis that this new vocabulary was brought by sailors who spoke some other language. Maybe *blōþą was one of those borrowed words. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 13:12, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Blood is also the sort of thing that could be subject to taboo avoidance and thus replacement by another word. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:50, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/blōþą suggests a possible PIE derivation which doesn't sound that implausible to me (although I'm no expert): that it derives from the same root as bloom (see Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰleh₃-), presumably first as a verb describing the process of bleeding. Early PIE seems to have had two different roots for blood – *h₁ésh₂r̥ (the root of the Latin sanguis) for blood inside the body, and *krewh₂ (the root of raw) for spilled blood – so it seems plausible for a third root to emerge that covered both meanings (especially given that both roots eventually evolved distinct meanings in Germanic: *h₁ésh₂r̥ became iron, *krewh₂ became raw). Poetic use "bloom" to mean "bleed" is still quite common. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:56, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Are we sure that sanguis derives from *h₁ésh₂r̥? The Wiktionary-voice etymology is clever but I've heard there is a dispute about this. References would be nice. Benwing2 (talk) 09:26, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/podъ
Is this in fact cognate to ? I can't find a source that links them, although chaff (German-language references which gloss *podъ as 'Boden') means I may have missed something. The editor who added that has been sloppy about linking German and Slavic terms in other places; see e.g. the recent edit history of and for that matter, where German is interpolated into the middle of a list of Slavic relatives. - -sche (discuss) 07:45, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Vasmer, it's cognate to 🇨🇬. I see no mention of Boden.--Cinemantique (talk) 08:24, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In fact, this user has been adding a lot of links that are distant at best and spurious at worst, e.g. to tâmara. - -sche (discuss) 09:58, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

ak, auk
Middle High German ouch, whence modern auch, is listed as deriving from ak via Old High German oh, but also as deriving from auk via ouh. None of the references I've found (see entries) mention the two roots merging (in OHG/MHG). Is that nonetheless what happened, or what's going on? - -sche (discuss) 03:20, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems to me more like a case of ouch displacing och. Benwing2 (talk) 09:22, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * OTOH ak -> oh seems strange, I'd expect ah. Benwing2 (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

boar
See Talk:boar. - -sche (discuss) 16:43, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Pussy
I heard someone trying to argue that the word "pussy", meaning coward, was not sexist because it was not derived from "pussy", meaning a woman's genitals, but instead from pusillanimous. Is there any evidence of this? It seems like it at least could be true, but I've never researched word etymologies, so I don't know how to find out. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 07:11, 30 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think it's most likely to have come from the word for "cat", and the OED agrees . There is after all the similar (if less offensive) pussy-cat, and the English language associates cats with cowardice and meekness in quite a few ways - see kitten, scaredy cat, pussyfoot. pusillanimous isn't pronounced like pussy, which makes a clipping unlikely. However, trying to argue whether or not a word is sexist based on what it meant 100 years ago is what's known as the etymological fallacy – what matters is the way it's understood now. So for example, when Jay-Z raps "This ain't a ho in the sense of having a pussy [woman's gentials]/but a pussy [coward] having no goddamn sense, tryna push me"*, he's clearly linking the two meanings regardless of what the OED says. It ultimately doesn't really make much difference where it came from, if people now associate the word with women. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:19, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * (*) Incidentally, that verse suggests a meaning of ho which we don't have, apparently meaning a cowardly or subordinate man. It would be difficult to cite though. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:19, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree that that quotations shows any connection between "pussy" meaning "coward" and women. It is no more than a pun on the other meaning. --WikiTiki89 18:56, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

"What matters is how it is used now." congratulations Smurrayinchester, you're an SJW using appeal to modernity. Some of us have linguistic integrity.--Sigehelmus (talk) 16:41, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Let's pretend that I accused you of name-calling and using acronyms to avoid content or logic, and that you responded with other insults and we had a long, pointless "debate" over nothing. That way we don't have to actually waste bandwidth or try anyone's patience with what you seem to be pushing toward.
 * I would contend that a language doesn't have much in the way of a reality independent of those who use it or have used it in the past, but is rather a working model that's the result of sort of a negotiation between speakers/writers and/or listeners/readers. That means that what you and I understand our words to mean can be completely different from what they used to mean, or what they mean somewhere else.
 * If I say "the exception that proves the rule", or that something is "nice", those will mean what my audience understands them to mean, regardless of the fact that the first meant something completely different a few hundred years ago, and the second's etymology can be traced back to a Latin word for "ignorant". Yes, words can retain their meanings, and yes, old understandings can prevail- but only if the people using the language are aware of those meanings, and are willing to accept them.
 * I'm sorry to have to inform you, but language change doesn't always make sense. I don't care how logical or historically-correct your understanding of a phrase is, if it's not part of the understanding of the person you're communicating with, it won't be understood the way you think it is. For that matter, there's nothing to stop you from speaking to your neighbor in Sumerian, but don't expect them to understand it. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:25, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * You sound like a cretin who is certainly not nice — which is to say, as you must know, a good Christian who is certainly not ignorant. ;) - -sche (discuss) 00:40, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Why are people whining about vulgar terms being potentially sexist? That's a laughable complaint. No kidding! They are vulgar; they aren't meant to be kind. Tharthan (talk) 20:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

typhoon
Not 颱風? —suzukaze (t・c) 07:22, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Merriam-Webster favors 大風, but they think the word is from and corrupted by the Sinitic root (the opposite of what most of us think). OED says "tai fung (big wind)"; presumably this is also a statement in favor of 大風, which is read "tai fung" in Hakka. Any phonetic evidence would be drawn from the southern Chinese dialects, so the superficial resemblance of the Mandarin form to the English word is a red herring. Personally, I find it all a bit dubious, because the Chinese word presumably went through Persian, then Arabic, and the resulting word was potentially influenced by  before it entered European languages, and certainly influenced after. I would give up on any phonetically-oriented etymological investigation and default to 大風 per the lemming rule. Aperiarcam (talk) 08:24, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why the Chinese word would have to go through that many intermediaries -- the Portuguese were quite active in the Chinese-speaking world around the time of this word's first apparent use in English, listed by the OED as the 16th century. Also,  (specific to the “typhoon” sense, as opposed to just  in the “big wind; windstorm” senses) is also read in Hakka as thòi-fûng, and in Cantonese as toi4 fung1, raising the possibility that the purported Portuguese purveyors of this term might have confused the two Chinese terms, at least with regard to the initial vowel.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 21:15, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

From F. Corriente (2008), ''Dictionary of Arabic and Allied Loanwords. Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and Kindred Dialects'', page 457a "tifò (Ct.), tifón (Cs.) and tufão (Pt.): was prob. first acquired by Pt. during the initial explorations of the Indian Ocean, < Ar. ṭūfān 'flood; hurricane', and phonetically contaminated by Gr. typhṓn, name of the mythical monster causing volcano eruptions and hurricanes." --Vahag (talk) 21:50, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

etymonline.com thinks Tiphon "violent storm, whirlwind, tornado" is attested in English since the 1550s (from Greek typhon), earlier than the "Asian hurricane" sense. I wouldn't take their word for it, but it's worth looking into. - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 30 August 2015 (UTC)