Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2021/September

quisling (sp. "Quislin")


A minor matter, but something regarding the earlier form of the man's surname, "Quislin"...

The final form, "Quisling" quite clearly is Kvislemark + -ing (sense 2).

But is the earlier form, Quislin, Kvislemark + a Latinate -in suffix seen in certain Scandinavian surnames (from -inus)?

Cf. Lundin, Ahlin, Nordin, Dahlin, Sahlin.

If so, we probably ought to note that. Tharthan (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


 * According to, referencing a book with no Google preview, “The family name derives from Quislinus, a Latinised name invented by Quisling's ancestor Lauritz Ibsen Quislin (1634–1703), based on the village of Kvislemark near , Denmark, whence he had emigrated.” If Quislin derives from Quislinus, then this ancestor re invented the Latinization. But perhaps the author of the book got the order of derivations wrong, or the presentation is misleading; the intention could be that ancestor Lauritz, the son of Ib, adopted a family name and turned kvissel – the first component of Kvislemark (a terrain at a fork in a river) – into a surname using -inus and henceforth styled himself “Lauritz Ibsen Quislin(us)“. See also .  --Lambiam 06:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your assistance.
 * If you are right about that, then presumably, Quislin later became to Quisling due to reanalysis after immigration to Norway as Kvislemark + -ing (sense 2). If no one has any objections to that analysis, the relevant part of the etymology section probably ought to be amended, so that it says:


 * The name is seemingly supposed to mean "one who is from Kvislemark", and is equivalent to . However, the earlier form of the name, Quislinus/Quislin, appears to have originally been intended as +, and only later on came to be reinterpreted as  +.


 * Tharthan (talk) 17:42, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't know when the spelling change Quislin → Quisling took place, but the person effecting the change may have been unaware of any association with the utterly insignificant Danish parish Kvislemark. --Lambiam 21:18, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That's certainly true. I have modified the etymology section at quisling, taking what you just said into account. Feel free to revert if you take issue with the edit. Tharthan (talk) 18:34, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't sure if to protest but since Lambi said effectively the same, I think the compound is too long and we would usually cite a reinterpretation of the suffix in such cases, the stem morphology to be left as an exercise for the reader if you don't want to cite a cranberry, if only to shave screen real estate. The exercise should be simpler if there was a page for Kvislemark.
 * It would be lovely to have the place name in place, but I am puzzled by the previous thread. The only two examples for *tw > kʷ that I can think of in any Germanic branch are Quark and queer, where I thought the latter was from metastasis of the labio-velar that was already there in *terkʷ, while lacking compeling counter examples. ApisAzuli (talk)
 * I know about the Scandinavian words kvitra (with daughter terms) and Dutch kwetteren for tweet, twitter, although it seems unclear if they are strictly related. Wakuran (talk) 13:46, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Cf. Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/twitwizōną. Wakuran (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Btw, is Frisian tsjotterje believed to be related, or would it have another origin? Wakuran (talk) 16:21, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, on a related note, there's Old Norse trana or trani from Proto-Germanic *kranô. Wakuran (talk) 16:21, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

fustee, dustee
The racial terms. Any idea what the etymology of either is? Compare mustee, costee, which are from Spanish mestizo, castizo. A reference cited in costee suggests that it (or the alt form castee) would be directly from Spanish casta by analogy to mustee, so I suppose dustee could be from dusty or dust + -ee by analogy to mustee, but I wonder if there's not a Spanish etymon. mustiphini from mestizo fino shows that the sound/form can become quite different from the original Spanish. - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


 * The old Century Dictionary speculates, with question mark, that fustee might be from mustee and dustee from fustee. I almost wonder whether people connected mustee to musty and then derived fustee from, and dustee from dusty: to this day I can find books calling someone's skin colour "dusty". - -sche (discuss) 03:57, 9 September 2021 (UTC)


 * What about PCel., cognate with L. and, so it seems, indeed with dust? I noticed this while looking into *dʰewh₂-}}, but only after the battery of possibly misplaced Proto-Germanic words, to wit: *dauganą "to conceal, hide", poorly attested and synonym with "tunkal*" in OHG (Köbler) q. v. ), and by extension synonym with , of uncertain origin. If I would already speculate about a possibly Visigothic vector, and considering the fact that 1/32 or 1/16 black ancestry would have to be far from black (but cp. [[hoary, hehr, obscurus), it fits well--too well I suppose--that one hypothesis for duster < OSax. thiustri should be PIE *tewh₂- (albeit not explained nor sourced) which is tentatively linked to Dutch vel sim., y'know? The other hypothesis adduces *þimstr < *temH- (“dark”), with the doublet ! It is understandable that the dental fricatives were not compared to *dusnos, but that the very topic was already concerned with Celtic burrowings ("dune" and "town") offers a striking parallel. In sum, there seems to have been repeated bastardization, or corruption, for lack of a better word. ApisAzuli (talk) 11:55, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

maroon, cimarrón
The English entry says the source of the Spanish word is Taino, while the Spanish entry says it's native Spanish from. Other references I can find also differ in which origin they state. Which is right? Generally, works which cite Taino say the Taino word meant "wild" and was applied by the Taino (and then the Spanish) to undomesticated plants and animals, but Helaine Silverman, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (2008), page 108, says the "Taino" word was applied to cattle that escaped domestication and took to the hills (emphasis mine); perhaps it is then that the word is Spanish and the Taino (once they shifted to speaking Spanish) are only responsible for a semantic development? - -sche (discuss) 07:06, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Spanish Wiktionary mentions both etymological theories. It appears that the term originated in the Americas, which lends some support to the theory of Taíno origin, and afaik -(a)rrón, although seen as an extension of in, otherwise does not carry a sense such as “dweller”. I can imagine though that  and the numerous Spanish words ending on -arrón influenced the form of the loanword. The first ref given at the Spanish Wiktionary, a 57-page article entitled “Cimarrón: apuntes sobre sus primeras documentaciones y su probable origen” (”Cimarrón: notes on its first documentations and its probable origin”), gives an extensive discussion, resulting in the conclusion that the term comes from an indigenous Taíno word símaran, a durative of the word símara meaning arrow, like an arrow escaping the bow. I have not read the whole article, so I cannot judge how convincing its arguments are.  --Lambiam 12:41, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've expanded the entry. - -sche (discuss) 19:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

deis
maybe from OldIr dess (right) < *deks-o- ; see Cymr. dehau and Bret. dehou from Celt. *deks-owo- see also Sk. daks-ina, Gr. δεξ-ιό-ς (dex-io-s), Lat. dex-ter
 * Yes; I've added it now. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:07, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

baluz
Can anyone provide a bit more specificity on what the "misunderstanding" was: misreading, or mistaking the meaning...? I want to check because it seems like this could be categorized as (etymologically) a ghost word. - -sche (discuss) 19:07, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

hammer
What about Hyllested’s ideas? --Espoo (talk) 07:40, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * whose dissertation can be downloaded here. --Lambiam 08:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)


 * This is very interesting, especially in view of a later paper about Finnic reflexes of laryngeals as *s, but the argument concludes in an appeal to ignorance, however valid, that a Slavic intermediate may have existed, which lacking cannot be included, naturally. The criticizm of Slavic "stone" is very real, see @AlexB over at Stackexchange] with further references, and an atypical conclusion: Languages are very complex phenomena and they cannot be adequately described with "die Lautgesetze kennen keine Ausnahmen." I'd subscribe to that.
 * The current ety suffers from the fact that there's no independent evidence to the particular formation in the same sense. It may have had *-mn, but that's mostly guess work. Personally I would rather refer to the Latin and Slavic words for hammer from *mel-, cp. marcellus, martellus, mortar and pistle (see also Fäustling) and suppose a prefix like Grimm alternant of the ga-prefix, cp. confect, commerce, comeo (as in Lillehammer?) when it was still meaningful, or perhaps *ḱeh3-, cf. . The type with a slanted edge is not really used for pounding, mind. It's imaginable that various confluences fell together, because, as the saying goes, if everything you have is a hammer ... ApisAzuli (talk) 12:35, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

buffer
I split out the sense " A good-humoured, slow-witted fellow, usually an elderly man" to a separate ety on the basis of what other dictionaries do, but we also have the sense "The chief bosun's mate", which is presently under the same ety as the pH-stabiliser, portion of computer memory, device to cushion impact on trains, etc. etc. It occurred to me that the "bosun's mate" sense could in fact be the same ety as the "fellow" sense, but I cannot find verification of this. Does anyone know for sure where this sense belongs, or can find out? Mihia (talk) 19:17, 6 September 2021 (UTC) I did find one definition which reads 'a navy term for a boatswain's mate, part of whose duties is to administer the "cat"', possibly as if administering the "cat" explained the term. Mihia (talk) 19:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The "cat" referred to is not something I would ever associate with the phrase "good-humoured"... Chuck Entz (talk) 19:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm beginning to think it probably has nothing to do with the "fellow" sense, but whether it belongs in its existing place either, I don't know. Mihia (talk) 20:10, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thinking again about the "cat" association, it now seems to me more likely that it is connected with the "leather" sense, ultimately connected with "buffalo", in which case this sense of "buffer" probably should go under ety 1. Mihia (talk) 21:34, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I found a book that discusses the issue, though it doesn't come to a definitive conclusion. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:50, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Google won't show me that content; would it be possible for you to give me the gist of it, if it's not too long and complicated? Mihia (talk) 17:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Google is real picky about showing things from one country domain to people from another one. You might have better luck if you replace "google.com" with "google.co.uk" in the URL. Anyway, the book says the most common explanation is that the boatswain's mates act as a "buffer" between the officers and the rest of the crew. It then mentions an 1864 slang dictionary that says, in reference to the buffer's use of the "cat", that it might be from buff, as in bare skin, and finally gives the author's own theory that it might be from buff, apparently an obsolete term meaning to strike a blow or buffet. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I changed it to co.uk and it worked! Thanks for that tip. If the mate acts as a "buffer" between the officers and the rest of the crew, then this sense is in the correct section. I feel slightly sceptical about this "most common explanation", but since I really have no idea I will leave it alone. Thanks for your help. Mihia (talk) 13:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Anyone got an etymology for or ? There's nothing in Vendryes, Matasovic, or Pokorny. —caoimhinoc (talk) 00:22, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There is something at . --Lambiam 08:10, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That's the same there is a fáilte. I'm looking for a source. —caoimhinoc (talk) 14:23, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Rupee and Ruble
The etymologies for these two words denote their meanings in their respective languages; rupee comes from a word meaning stamped and ruble from one meaning cut. There seems to have been minimal effort to trace each word back to its PIE root. Considering that Russian and Hindustani are both Indo-European languages and the words have a similar form and original meaning, I wonder if they are descended from the same root, but it is beyond my ability at this time to research that now. 2408:8221:2D:BBD0:35D8:D8C3:6988:B3B3 10:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The roots of the words seem to be Sanskrit रूप् (form, shape) and Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/rǫbiti (to chop), but the Sanskrit lemma doesn't have any etymology. Wakuran (talk) 12:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Sanskrit root is said to be a back-formation from the noun, i.e. a  verb. This can be seen in the MW dictionary (the last two entries on the page). --Frigoris (talk) 12:58, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting analogy and admittedly possible on the face of it. (I know of one comparable case:, leading to and . Livestock was apparently the most important form of wealth for the Indo-Europeans.) But the meaning 'currency' doesn't go back very far in either language. I also don't see how a Sanskrit /p/ could be related to Russian /b/. I'd put this one with accidental similarity. —caoimhinoc (talk) 12:50, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/néh₂us
RFV of the etimology.
 * Well, it says “usually”, so I guess it is in many sources and one of them is in the lengthy reference list, have you even looked? The Semitic word is apparently the one I described under . Fay Freak (talk) 18:13, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd second a rfv of the Gamkrelidze/Ivanov claim. Don't see how that could work. —caoimhinoc (talk) 19:18, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this etymology is beyond farfetched. -- 06:03, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

raviolo
What is the "rava" that is alluded to? Is this just another form of rapa (turnip)? If so, doesn't that derive from Latin rapum rather than Dutch? I'm confused what the Dutch influence is supposed to be, if any. 70.175.192.217 06:57, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Dutch part was grafted on to the etymology by a user who's added lots of bad etymologies over the years: they're much, much better than they were back then, but they still make lots of mistakes. It looks like they were trying to combine the etymology that was there with the etymology for, with predictable results. I've removed that part as obvious incompetent nonsense. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:01, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

馨 pronunciation xīng
You wrote an rfe asking why the Mandarin reading does not end in -ng. According to MOEDict, xīng is indeed an alternative pronunciation which I've added to the entry, but I do feel that there is probably more to it etymologicaly, considering that -ng is the expected Mandarin ending. ChromeGames923 (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

tumma
Finnish tumma, Estonian tume, Voro tummõ etc. can't be connected to Proto-Slavic *tьma both meaning "dark,darkness"? Kutkar (talk) 11:24, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The entry is located under Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/tьma. Wakuran (talk) 15:18, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Xhosa ímalí and Zulu ímalí
According to OED, English is “from, , both ultimately from .” Our Xhosa and Zulu entries state they are “from , ultimately from .” The Xhosa entry references “Sergio Baldi, “Swahili”, in: Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (2011)”. Sgconlaw states “this [the OED entry] is a new entry first published June 2000 (so not an old entry that has yet to be reviewed)”. Which is the correct etymology? J3133 (talk) 13:37, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Just wondering if it is likely for Arabic to influence Zulu? Are there many Muslim Zulus, perhaps? — SGconlaw (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The OED is not especially reliable for borrowings; they simply don't have the necessary breadth of expertise. Baldi is not always right, but the distributional evidence he cites makes this clearly favourable to the alternative, which requires an unmotivated shift from /n/ to /l/., Arabic did not directly influence Zulu, but if you looked at Baldi's evidence, it would become immediately clear that multiple individual borrowings with the same semantic shift is highly unparsimonious.
 * , is there a reason you added this to June's subpage? I suggest you move it to the current page. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:18, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There don't have to be. Arab traders had extensive dealings all along the east coast of Africa and Swahili developed as a lingua franca for Africans to communicate with Arabs and each other. There have been Zulu speakers who also spoke Swahili for a long, long time. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:24, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * So is it advisable to cite both etymologies as alternatives, or only the Arabic one? If the latter, we should provide a fuller citation to Baldi, and I think we should at least mention the OED’s etymology and explain why we feel it is less plausible. Who can draft something appropriate? — SGconlaw (talk) 18:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not a fan of these maximal English etymologies, but I know you are, so I added more text to satisfy you. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:16, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * thanks. Might I add that a fuller explanation with sources as you have added would probably avoid someone coming along in the future and changing it back to the OED version. — SGconlaw (talk) 20:04, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * In my humble opinion, I prefer those "maximal etymologies" to the situation where two related words have contrasting etymologies with a "more at" note, such as are and art. Wakuran (talk) 21:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Proto-Anatolian terms with IPA pronunciation
I don't know anything about Proto-Anatolian, so this request may be entirely unjustified, but many of the IPA transcriptions look rather strange. In particular, the great majority of consonants are geminated. The word for "bear" is, for example. I just want to mention it, so it can be ruled out that someone conjured up something funny here, because I've seen it once before with IPA in a less prominent language. 88.64.225.109 04:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Courtesy link: . It looks a bit strange, but a cursory inspection suggests that the editor who added this is quite capable and knowledgeable. --Lambiam 08:14, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Having skimmed over the entries in Category:Proto-Anatolian terms with IPA pronunciation, it is apparent that [ː] is used to indicate a fortis-lenis distinction (e.g. d [t] vs. t [tː]), so it seems to be ok. Even H [ħː] is solid, since Melchert uses H for the voiceless laryngeal and h for the voiced one.
 * But I agree, without explanatory notes (e.g. in About Proto-Anatolian or the linked WP page Proto-Anatolian_language) and ideally a source for this phonetic interpretation of Melchert's reconstruction, it is confusing. Which brings us back to Beer_parlour/2021/August. –Austronesier (talk) 09:22, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * At the very least it needs the asterisk marked up, conventionally, also for Proto-Germanic
 * Whether it's fine and reliable, or not, is entirely relative to how useful this is, as Mahagaja and Austronesier said in that thread, but I disagree that the about-pages are better places to deal with. Because, if the verbose explanation may use IPA for clarity, there'd be need to avoid it in the reconstruction entry, where the reader is more likely to look first. The international standard is a good choice, because it is easier to research generally speaking. It's just a bit of funny punctuation added. However, that point is crucial.
 * I favor Victar's judgement to remove the pronounciation, nevertheless, if only to avoid uncomfortable discussions. Like, I'm worried about the age old question around the linguistic reality of reconstruction, such as in this case. This thread is concerned with verification, not policy. I see no way to verify that PA had /*ħ/, if it rests mostly on Sumero-Akkadian Cuniform readings from many centuries later. I'm in no position to criticize it appropriately, but it seems too important to accept unchallenged for laryngeal theory, if the only resolution seems to be that it's broad transcription with several possible representations in a narrower sense, and underlying *h2, *h3. It's still unclear to me what that really means to you. ApisAzuli (talk) 06:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, adding IPA to reconstructions as in this case creates an illusion of unverifiable precision (like /*ħ/ for PA *H, or saying that PA lenes were unvoiced) which historical linguists don't offer in many cases–for good reasons. It's like adding geographical coordinates to a country infobox in WP. Some proto-sounds are like Singapore or Liechtenstein and can be pinned down in a meaningful way, but for others the range of possibilities and opinions is as large as Brazil. –Austronesier (talk) 07:53, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This moves into policy territory, but a heading Reconstructed pronunciation will remove any unwarranted illusion of precision. --Lambiam 12:36, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry I committed several typoes. Now, I reckon, that about-page exclusive treatment of the phonology could be justified by a need to be verbose and even handed. A heading  'reconstructed pronunciation does not offer the needed level of detail. Anyhow, I had meant to say the opposite, that a single Cesar Chiffre or other rule set using IPA would pave the way for including the corollary data in the entries. So, "there'd be [no] need to avoid it [...]". However, the way it is now it set precedent by way of anchoring, largely dictating content for the about-page. And it seems to be mistaken: I have by the way revisited Kloekhorst 2018 on the matter (though the download from his page seems to be broken), who summarized a forming consensus on PA uvular stops, largely following Weiss 2016 and others but citing Melchert 1994 as uncertain. What has changed since then? Craig Melchert has recently published 78 pages of a chapter on "The Position of Anatolian" in draft for preview (so not a good reference per se, but see his page), where it does tentatively suggest labialized uvulars */xʷ/' [xʷ] eg. for the case of as the outcome of *h2w, if I am not mistaken. The exposition is slightly cryptic, but pharyngeals (viz. ħ) are nowhere to be found.  ApisAzuli (talk) 07:25, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing out these sources. From what I can get there, Melcherts "conventional" *H/*h are now interpreted by him as [x]/[ɣ], and as [qː]/[q] by Kloekhorst. So the transcription /ħːŕ̩tːkːɔs/ contains a hybrid of Kloekhorst's length interpretation of the fortis-lenis contrast (see Kloekhorst (2016)), and the common pharyngeal interpretation of *h2 and *h3 (which is rejected by Kloekhorst). –Austronesier (talk) 12:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * A convenient way of expressing the fortis/lenis distinction in IPA is with the "strong articulation" diacritic from the  for the fortis series, leaving the lenis series unmarked. We already use it for Korean and Old Irish.  or  might look less startling than with length marks. Nevertheless, I am still opposed to the inclusion of IPA transcriptions for proto-languages. WT:About Proto-Anatolian should have a discussion of the various proposals for the phonetic realization of each reconstructed phoneme, but the entry itself shouldn't give pronunciation information, IMO. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:16, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was noticing this the other day on (since I'm working on the PIE entry). Hʷ is controversial enough, let's not reconstruct largyngeals. --  20:27, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Can somebody verify the etymology of glamour?
This edit was made by a rather disruptive user. --Fytcha (talk) 17:24, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Norse hypothesis is standing since September 2010.
 * The writing style of the more recent edit is rejectable and should be reverted. The previous version is not perfect either, because we would usually leave details up to the respective entry and simply gloss "moon", or nothing, which was not supported by the templates in 2010,I imagine. If the editor was serious they had better create the respective entry, where the quotation is a better fit. Adding qualifications into the competing, thus far accepted hypothesis changes very little, because the template system does not support probabilistic reckoning (does it?) and the tone is too confrontational anyway. It should be understood that almost all etymologies are hypothetical to varying degrees.
 * More over, they fail to see that the Norse alternative might, hypothetically speaking, also apply to the Scottish etymon, whether that's intended or not. This point of view should give them some rest. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:10, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I've not heard of the Norse connection before, but I found some corroborating info here [] under GLÁMR. Leasnam (talk) 04:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Etymonline mentions it, as well. Wakuran (talk) 11:21, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * ‘glamour’ is definitely from Scots. OED says so. All the oldest citations are from Scotland. The text should make clear that the two hypotheses—gramarye or glámr—pertain to the origin of the Scots word. They both seem equally likely to me. I think they should be brief and the Scots entry can optionally contain a more detailed discussion. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 01:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I might buy into an etymological confluence of two tributaries, gramarye and glámr, whose collusion gave birth to . --Lambiam 09:51, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

天堂
RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 21:37, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * most likely incorrect or at least inaccurate in the form as it is presented now. means literally a  of the s, which doesn't match the meanings of the  as defined in the entry. In Buddhist mythology, there's a devasabhā hall by the name  in the Trāyastriṃśa heaven of Śakra (Indra). (This is also the name of a hall of the s in the '). In extant translations in Chinese Buddhism the word devasabhā was typically glossed over while a phrase like "the devasabhā known as Sudharmā" was translated together as 善法堂 from its name; su- (good) + dharma + -ā (feminine ending to agree with sabhā). There's a mention though, in the classical Sanskrit-Tibetan-Chinese glossary book '; you can see the mentioning here where devasabhā was glossed as 天堂 or 靈霄殿. However, this cannot be understood to mean that it was actually used like that in the texts, nor that the Chinese term 天堂 first ever arose from a translation of devasabhā. Most of the earliest attestations of the Chinese term couldn't be "mapped" to an Indic original. Some later authors such as  used it quite idiomatically (as in modern usage) to translate any word in the sense of "heaven; paradise" without the  stuff; e.g. for, as in the phrase  -> 受天堂樂 in the 《根本説一切有部毘奈耶藥事》. --Frigoris (talk) 08:12, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, if (who added the etymology) is out there, do you have some source for the etymology? --Frigoris (talk) 08:44, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic/kaša
Is it more parsimonious to assume Lithuanian košė and Slavic kaša are siblings, or that one borrowed from the other (which would most likely be Lithuanian borrowing from Slavic)? Košė does seem slightly more like the hypothesized related Lithuanian word košti which makes me think it could be independent, but I wasn't able to find any source either way. (Also, this is my first time making a Reconstruction page so I'm not sure if I did it right. I copied it from another and then modified the details. Might have gotten something wrong.) 70.175.192.217 21:59, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The Lithuanian verb is real, more often as perfective nukošti. There are however multiple problems with that hypothesis:
 * Different intonation (it doesn't change easily in Baltic languages).
 * The Latvian counterpart kāst "to filter, to decant" does not produce a noun; there's a regionalism kašas pl but that's clearly from kasīt "to scratch".
 * Filtering or decanting isn't actually involved in making porridge.
 * Therefore, košė is more likely a borrowing from Slavic. Panya kijivu (talk) 20:16, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

, and
The entry at Turkish introduces this suffix as a nominalizing suffix, providing the example. This in itself is already dubious as it doesn't mention vowel harmony, and I wouldn't expect -u to be used as the canonical form.

But when following the link to this example word, the etymology now links to another suffix. In this page in turn, no mention is made about any nominalizing function.

Can a Turkish editor clarify? Sitaron (talk) 04:48, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks like there are two issues: whether -u should be the lemma, and what its definition should be. I've addressed the first by posting it at WT:RFM, but I have no clue about the other one. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:51, 18 September 2021 (UTC)


 * is a harmonized form of, as are and . It is correct that they are a derivational suffix to form a noun from a verb (cf. , ,  and many more). --Fytcha (talk) 09:45, 18 September 2021 (UTC)


 * As for canonicalization, Wiktionary doesn't do this for Turkish suffixes unfortunately, see for instance, , , (only one of them contains all three meanings and the complete etymology). If I were to decide, I'd make all but the canonical forms of the suffixes into pages whose only purpose is to refer to the canonical form of the suffix (as in -dük).


 * The canonical forms are those with i and e. --Fytcha (talk) 09:54, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * A possible approach would be to have a consolidated entry, with definitions for separate entries etcetera of the form “Vowel-harmonized form of &thinsp;”. A similar approach can be used for -ler/-lar and other context-dependent suffix variation such as -(y)ken and -de/-da/-te/-ta. For korku the etymology should then use “From ”.  --Lambiam 09:38, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I support this idea. What about deverbal verb-forming suffixes, for example Turkish reflexive suffix is written as -n- in linguistics however verbs with this suffix combined with both of the inflectional and noun-forming suffix -n in Turkish words suffixed with -n. Should we handle it like Turkish words suffixed with -e and Turkish words suffixed with -e (dative) or like Turkish words suffixed with -la and Turkish words suffixed with -la-.
 * Is it OK to use minus sign after the suffix and what about plus sign before it if it's denominal. MhmtÖ (talk) 14:19, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

An Entry for the Hebrew Word: כיח is MISSING
Hello,

Could anyone knowledgeable enough would please ADD an ENTRY to Wiktionary for the MISSING above-referenced Hebrew word (hopefully, with its Arabic/Aramaic cognates)/

Thank you,

AK63 (talk) 05:22, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That doesn't seem like an etymological question. Have you tried WT:Requested_entries_(Hebrew)? Chuck Entz (talk) 06:05, 18 September 2021 (UTC)


 * There is one now, but did you mean the Mishnaic noun כִּיחַ or the modern verb כִּיֵּחַ? --Lambiam 09:13, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Possible relation of Proto-Bantu and PIE
I do not know how this Etymology Scriptorium works (I would be surprised if this theory actually comes into consideration), but just wanted to let a few people know that these are a possible pair.

If the relation is unclear, consider Swahili and Sanskrit

(I do not know how they are related, but I did hear that us Indians used to trade a lot with East Africa) ॥ ☼ সূর্যমান ☽ ॥ 14:34, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * According to Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Iranian/sinȷ́ʰás, they're unrelated. According to User:Metaknowledge. Wakuran (talk) 16:02, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * According to Mayrhofer “The reminiscence of Swahili simba “lion” is clearly coincidental” (My translation). —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 16:13, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

16:24, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

蒲公英 - 婆婆丁
might there be a connection between 婆婆丁 and the japanese reading of たんぽぽ (tanpopo)?
 * I think it's negative, the form 婆婆丁 and 孛孛丁 were already recorded in the Ming period documents (滇南本草, 救荒本草, 农政全书, 本草蒙筌, etc.), and according to Chinese dialectologist Itsuku Oota (太田斎), 婆婆丁 and similar forms were simply derived from the formal form 蒲公英 and mixed with folk etymology, which produced a lot of interesting dialectal forms of dandelion, including 布布丁, 姑姑英, 婆婆英, 薄薄丁, 馍馍菜, 不登登, 孛登高, etc. Some of those forms can also be found in Wiktionary: Ydcok (talk) 13:14, 29 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Japanese sources bring that up, particularly an older version of the Chinese term, . However, at least one Japanese source (Gogen Yurai Jiten, "Etymology Derivation Dictionary") rejects that hypothesis due to the time lag between when the flower was called  in Chinese and when the Japanese term  shows up, apparently sometime during the  (1600–1868).
 * Separately, I find the contention mentioned above a bit odd, that Chinese is somehow derived from .  The vowels aren't too far off, but the consonantal shifts seem strained...?
 * ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:00, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I came up with a similar example for corruption by folk etymology, the English word asparagus, in some dialects, this word was replaced by sparrow grass, which has nothing to do with sparrow nor grass. I think similar process has happened between 蒲公英 and 婆婆丁. Ydcok (talk) 15:32, 13 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Well, according to Oota (2017), 婆婆丁 was contaminated by 婆婆, with the first two syllables somehow duplicated.
 * This is how 婆婆丁 derived from 蒲公英 explained by Oota:
 * pʰu kuəŋ iəŋ (蒲公英) → pʰu pʰu iəŋ/tiəŋ (扑扑丁)→ pʰuə pʰuə iəŋ/tiəŋ (婆婆英/婆婆丁)
 * But he did not explain why 丁 and 英 was interchangeable in many dialects, he found both 婆婆英 and 婆婆丁 in some dialects of Hebei, and this counterpart: 咕咕英 (Daixian, Shanxi) vs 咕咕丁 (Shenze, Hebei).

‑‑ Ydcok (talk) 10:59, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Milan
We say the lack of a final -o in English (vs standard Italian Milano) suggests borrowing from French, but as pointed out on the talk page, the final -o is also lacking from the native Milanese Lombard Milan. Could this just be a borrowing of the local name, then? - -sche (discuss) 02:28, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * On the face of it, that certainly seems more likely, especially given that standard Italian would not have been standard yet when the name was borrowed into English. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * So several categorizations “ terms borrowed/derived from Italian” are probably somewhat anachronistic. --Lambiam 09:57, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I think a borrowing from French is more likely, because English borrowed several names of cities on the continent from French rather than the local language, e.g. Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice, Munich, Prague, etc. As for terms derived from Italian, remember that our definition of Italian goes very far back, since we consider Old Italian (which is as old as Old English) an etymology-only variant of Italian. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:43, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * In the old days Venice with its language Venetian was a big source of loanwords. I correct incorrect attributions to Italian as I notice them.  See R:tr:LF.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:21, 2 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I saw that is etymologized as, specifically, “Borrowed from ”. Is that perhaps too specific? The modern style of pizza, first documented by   who wrote in Italian, is a Napolitan innovation. This does not imply the term is originally Napolitan, and not at all that Napolitan was the donor language.  --Lambiam 10:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

gig, giggle
Bringing these edits to gig and giggle to public attention. Especially the latter one reeks of a folk etymology. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 13:32, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I was just bold and reverted the claptrap at -- given the extremely common addition of suffix  to form frequentatives, and also the Middle English antecedent and cognates in Dutch and German, the purported mish-mash of 🇨🇬 +  strains credibility so much it makes my head hurt.  The removal of the Middle English and the Dutch and German looks like borderline vandalism to boot.
 * I am less certain about the changes to, so I've left that as-is. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:56, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I have de-giggled that change. --Lambiam 08:54, 30 September 2021 (UTC)


 * PS: Over on Wikipedia, I've backed out the same user's rubbish on the List of English words of Irish origin page. He'd added, among other flaming incompetence.  Sheesh.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:05, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

jig
At &thinsp;&thinsp; I read: “An assimilated form of earlier &thinsp;”. So many questions, ... --Lambiam 09:14, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Should that be, “Dissimilation of”?
 * 2) Is there any substantiating support for this claim? In particular, is this earlier “gig” attested?
 * 3) If so, shouldn’t the sense “” be listed as the definition of a (presumably obsolete) entry at ?
 * 4) Or is this earlier “gig”, perhaps, an earlier “alternative form of ”? – the spelling “gig” for the pronunciation  would not be entirely strange.
 * Merriam-Webster's etymology of is: "perhaps from, from , of Germanic origin; akin to 🇨🇬; akin to ", which seems to match up with our gig. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I have replaced the section by one derived from the entry in . --Lambiam 10:07, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

bien lui en prit
What is the etymology of this French phrase? What I wrote previously was reverted so I am unsure.


 * It is one specific form of a more general idiom: prendre de à , in which: the subject can be bien, but also grand bien, or mal; the indirect object (à ) can be pronominal, becoming lui or in the plural leur; the verb agrees with the third-person singular subject but can be any of the present (prend), past historic (prit), perfect (a pris), future (prendra) or conditional (prendrait), but not the imperfect; and the action can be an infinitive, or pronominal, becoming en. So a manifestation of the idiom may take the form, grand bien leur prendrait de rééditer ce genre de performance.. The sense of the verb in the idiom is “to contribute to a (good or bad) result”; see sense 60 for prendre at the French Wiktionary. --Lambiam 07:09, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting phrase. When the subject is impersonal, the imperfect is not unheard of: "Je ne savais pas ce qu'il me prenait de dire ça à un total inconnu"; "Quand il lui prenait de téléphoner à Alexandre, c'était en général pour lui demander son avis"; "s'il lui prenait parfois de rêver de répit, d'accalmies, de plages de silence".
 * Compare also the turn of phrase qu'est-ce qui te prend ?, qu'est-ce qui lui a pris ? (≈ ), "il me prenait parfois de folles envies de serrer cette charmante enfant dans mes bras et de l'appeler ma fille" (= "de folles envies me prenaient parfois de...", where the, which is a noun designating some emotion, is displaced behind the verb and replaced by an impersonal ). PUC – 19:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * These seem to be different idioms. Do they, or at least the second one, correspond to sense 66 for prendre at the French Wiktionary, Concevoir un sentiment pour quelqu’un? Note that the definition for sense 60 is not grammatically substitutible (Bien lui a pris d’avoir été averti à temps ≠ Bien lui a contribué à un bon ou à un mauvais résultat d’avoir été averti à temps), and I suspect the same may hold for 66. The usexes given are too bare to see the grammatical pattern. Can one replace je ne sais pas ce qu’il me prit de dire ça by je ne sais pas quel caprice me prit de dire ça and then also by je ne comprends pas comment il me prit de caprice de dire ça? --Lambiam 22:19, 2 October 2021 (UTC)