Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2024/January

taipa=mudflats?
The Portuguese translation of mudflats according to Wiktionary is alagadiço. A source published by the Culture Bureau of Macau says taipa (for Taipa island in Macau) means 'mudflats'. Is 'taipa' a legitimate translation of 'mudflats' that should be added in the translation box of 'mudflat'? I know nothing of Portuguese so go in to the entries and change things as needed. Also hoping for an English IPA pronunciation for this island's name. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:10, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Seems to mean rammed earth, more specifically, although I suppose there could have been some semantic shifts involved. Wakuran (talk) 01:52, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia says Taipa is mostly reclaimed land, so this is where rammed earth comes in. The word is distantly related to tap, in the sense "plug,bung,stopper". See 🇨🇬 24.108.18.81 05:33, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A Germanic borrowing into Romance, it seems. Wakuran (talk) 14:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This term has minimum 18th century origins; I wonder if that casts light on this discussion-- Citations:Taipa. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:15, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Having checked some Portuguese dictionaries (and also my intuition as a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese graduated on Portuguese), 'alagadiço' working as a noun surely translates into mudflats (https://dicionario.priberam.org/alagadi%C3%A7o) and 'taipa' surely translates into rammed earth (https://www.aulete.com.br/taipa ; https://michaelis.uol.com.br/moderno-portugues/busca/portugues-brasileiro/taipa ; https://dicionario.priberam.org/taipas). Also, none of the dictionaries I could find mention 'taipa' as meaning 'mudflats' - and I have also never heard of this usage, which sounds very strange to me. As to the name of the island of Taipa in Macau, the Wikipedia page about the island gives some possible etimologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipa#The_names_of_Taipa Bnfn (talk) 07:39, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Cuckoo-component in plant names
Happy new year everybody! Does anybody has any thoughts about plant names referring to cuckoo? See like 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬 etc? As far I see, it is not common for Finnish, but maybe there are examples from other languages. What may be the reason for connecting these plants to the cuckoo bird? Tollef Salemann (talk) 02:19, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * : The bird has a very distinctive call that's associated with the spring, and it also is known as a nest parasite (see cuckold). I'm sure many plants named after the cuckoo are associated with the spring (the wood sorrel is probably in this category), but there are also a few named because of very old dirty jokes, such as the cuckoopint. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:20, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

mafoo
RFV of the etymology. Is there any evidence that points specifically a Mandarin origin? While it is certain that the etymon is Chinese, it is also likely to be from Cantonese, and the spelling oo suggests that the borrowing is relatively early (most likely 19th century), which in turn implies that the Cantonese theory is more likely than Mandarin. – wpi (talk) 15:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The only Cantonese example on Wiktionary gives the meaning "pimp", although that could be a later semantic shift. Wakuran (talk) 20:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The second fr.wikt cite refers to a scene in w:Mukden, a city in far northern China with a very cold climate. I think horse travel has always been more common in the North as well. — Soap — 08:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Cummings & Wolf, A Dictionary of Hong Kong English, 2011, give etymology as Cantonese, and the word is used in Cantonese (and HK English) to mean both "stable boy", and in slang, "a pimp". Same word as Mandarin (Webster's 3rd derives it from "Chinese (Pekinese)"). Early citations on Google Books show the word being used in numerous places all over China: HK, Shanghai, Wuhan. I think we just need to add Cantonese to the etymology. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 13:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

δάφνη/*dakʷ-(n-)/laurus ~lacruma?
We are told that derives from pre-Greek dakʷ-(n-), as does. Supposing this pre-Greek language to be closely related to proto-Hellenic, might it not derive from the same root as and, referring to the shape of the flowers? Please note that the Latin cognate of δάκρυον is 🇨🇬, so we see how easily d and l alternate. 24.108.18.81 20:34, 4 January 2024 (UTC)


 * No, because has *kʷ (or *kʷʰ? Not sure how Beekes accounts for the aspiration) while  has *ḱ . —Mahāgaja · talk 08:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * It seems to be most commonly assumed that the Pre-Greek substrate was derived either from an Anatolian language, an unknown Non-Indo-European language or a combination of the both. Other scholars remain skeptical to its influence, though. Wakuran (talk) 12:23, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Since the language is unknown, the original consonant might have been something capable of generating both φ and w (lawrus). I am not insisting on this, but I would like to put this out there for others to consider. 24.108.18.81 17:45, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, "Pre-Greek" is supposed to have not had aspiration distinctions on its plosives, making it a wildcard in terms of aspiration for derived Greek forms ("[Furée concluded] that Pre-Greek (‘Vorgriechisch’) did not distinguish between voiceless, voiced or aspirated consonants (that is, voice and aspiration were not distinctive features in the language). This is reflected in the fact that we often find variants of the same word with (e.g.) π, β or φ", "Pre-Greek Names", Robert Beekes).--Urszag (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Beekes' construction of the supposed pre-Greek substrate is definitively non-IE and looks wildly unlike any language ever attested in Europe. The terminology is confusing, because we use pre-Greek to denote a non-IE language that Greek borrowed from, but some other languages use similar terms (e.g. I've seen pre-proto-Germanic) to denote an earlier unattested stage of a single language. And some people probably also use pre-Greek for languages that are not Greek but are clearly related to it, such as Phrygian. — Soap — 08:50, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

ᄣᅢ
@Eirikr I don't know much about Korean linguistics, but I can tell some info from my current knowledge of Korean.

The clusters must have derived from contractions, although Middle Korean is limited, so it's only supported by a small set of Koreanic loans into Japanese. Aspirated consonants also must come from /h/ < /Vh/ or /hV/.

The Ó symbol is not a rising pitch like Pinyin, but a high pitched syllable. Ŏ describes rising pitch. Chuterix (talk) 13:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Chuterix, thank you, I'd gotten my wires crossed on the tone notation: IPA and Pinyin both use the acute accent to mark rising tone/pitch, and I'd forgotten that EN Wikt doesn't use this the same way for Middle Korean.
 * Not sure what you mean about aspirated consonants? There aren't any in . ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's only extra mention to say the aspiration. Of course there's no aspirates there.
 * Also Pellard uses Ó to denote accent in Japonic, Ò unaccented, Ô falling. Chuterix (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Just to add to the confusion, in 1989 the IPA changed the acute accent from high rising tone to high level tone. --RichardW57 (talk) 19:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

frame: pure Germanic or via VL/OF?
The English has a very respectable-looking etymology going back through Germanic stages such as  to PIE. Clicking on any of those gives a whole family of relatives and descendants.

But under Proto-West Germanic, after lots of respectable-looking descendants of the general shape ram-, there's a question mark over whether it could have been also borrowed into VL as *frama (!), thence OF and French , which we (strangely) don't have entries for. Then another question mark over whether the as-yet non-existent French frame could have given the ME frame, instead of the more obvious all-Germanic route. I'm tempted to delete this whole branch outright, but maybe there's some reputable evidence or authority saying that it's a possibility? --2A04:4A43:979F:F221:C933:4D91:38FD:D570 17:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That is one possibility. I have added a separate noun etymology at and mentioned it there. The issue is that 🇨🇬 (also, ) is sparsely attested, and attested first (1305) in Anglo-Norman. In continental French it seems to have been strictly used with the meaning of an "embroidery loom frame". So it may have been generally agreed to have originally come from the English (from , from the verb ), and wasn't attested in Middle English till later. The possibility that it comes from  however is compelling, because it actually fits (cf. 🇨🇬, ) but the evidence is lacking. Leasnam (talk) 01:58, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Old English cannot have inherited frame from and we separate  from . The Old Frankish evidence is still very indirect, assuming that the sound change is even valid.
 * As for the verb, Wartburg notes that adchramire exists in parallel to adframire in the Lex Salica, but this text is usually so corrupt that I doubt it can prove anything. The explanation implies perimeter so to speak, that the summons was posted on the fence of the court "dass die vorladung auf den umzäunten Gerichtsort ausgestellt wurde." De Vries s.v. notes the same MLat. adhramire "een klacht naar het gerecht verwijzen", *hrama "omheinde gerechtsplaats", but the etymology remains uncertain because of competing evidence, thus also like Kluge/Seebold, Philippa et al.. It seems they cannot agree on PIE, contra Heinertz (presumably the same one cited by Wartburg). De Vries quotes *ker "vlechten" (to braid), but we already have , curious enough. 141.20.6.69 17:58, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

04:35, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Right, but it's still a possibility, it's not like they're claiming it's a loanword from Proto-Azteco-Vasconic or something. - saph 🍏 17:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Possible source is at https://www.scribd.com/document/470618618/The-Origins-of-Proto-Indo-European-The-C-pdf, JIES volume 47 The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis, Number 1 & 2 Spring/Summer 2019. I can't find it in Colarusso's work, only Bomhard's, which is not so good by argumentum ad hominem.  (The latter's notoriously good at finding 'Nostratic cognates' and too thin-skinned for robust debates.)  The arguments are good for Caucasian-PIE connections in general.  The Caucasian connection presumes the word goes back to PIE, rather than the Western PIE region. --RichardW57m (talk) 18:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I have removed the unreasonable Caucasian connection. --Vahag (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Why was the IP reply reverted? There was no consensus to speak of, but I really don't see a point in deleting comments that you don't agree with - saph 🍏 17:07, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Because it was written by someone evading an indefinite block for flooding the Etymology Scriptorium with borderline incomprehensible rambling. &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 17:43, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah. That makes more sense - saph 🍏 17:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

What is the etymology of "arylide yellow"?
There is nothing talking about this on Wikipedia & Wiktionary. Heyandwhoa (talk) 16:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Merriam-Webster tells us that an arylide is "a usually acid amide (as an anilide) in which hydrogen of the amido group is replaced by aryl (as phenyl)" and that it comes from aryl + -ide. My knowledge of chemistry isn't good enough to understand that definition, but apparently such compounds are used to make yellow pigments . —Mahāgaja · talk 16:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary doesn't have a listing for arylide, however there are separate listings for the likely parts ar-, -yl and -ide. Wakuran (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also aryl. DCDuring (talk) 17:18, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

mook
Anyone got a more reliable source than TV Tropes(!) for the etymology? - -sche (discuss) 16:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The Online Etymology Dictionary entry for mook refers to a series of books about "Little Mook", but doesn't seem to endorse it as a source. The earliest seems to be Little Mook and other Fairy Tales, by Wilhelm Hauff. This is an 1881 translation of Little Muck (German fairy tale) (c. 1825). Muck and Mook are given as nicknames for Mukrah in the original and the translation, respectively. "Little Muck/Mook" is a sympathetic or, at least, pitiable character in the story. It is hard to see how there can be any but the loosest connection to the definition of mook, which is c. 1930. But at least it predates the earliest usage, unlike the usage mentioned in TV Tropes.
 * UD has it derived from malook claimed to be Italian-American in usage, applied to 1. a personal not worthy of respect or 2. a "regular guy".
 * It reminds me of jamoke. DCDuring (talk) 18:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have tightened up this etymology and removed all the TV Tropes stuff about mook jong as this is chronologically untenable as an origin; added some sources, but that still leaves some of the suggested etymologies unsourced. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 13:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Rhombicosidodecahedron: translation of Latin text in etymology section
Would a Latin speaker kindly check the translation of the Latin text in the etymology section of ? I used Google Translate … Thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

etymology of Fr soit
We list no etymology for. This is common as it is assumed that an inflected form of a verb must come from that verb, but this verb is irregular. The etymology on implies that it comes from, but which form? Is it from the subjunctive, or from the indicative form ("sedet")? Indicative seems a better match. The template doesnt say. Also, is it possible that the /t/ was deleted and re-applied later, as with some other forms? — Soap — 10:41, 17 January 2024 (UTC)


 * has answered you at the word's entry. And the etymology does not imply that the present subjunctive comes from . --RichardW57m (talk) 11:11, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Do we know which forms derive from sedere, then? The template states that all of the forms beginning with soi- do, which by any reasonable understanding would include soit. If there are two different sources merging into the same word, we should explain that too. Still, I think what's more important is to specify which form of sedere, if known, is the source, rather than just saying that they come from that root. — Soap — 11:14, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The claim that the present subjunctive forms of être are from sedeo was added by User:DDG9912 without a source. I don't why it should be so; it's not hard to get them (and the corresponding forms in other Western Romance languages) from the present subjunctive of sum. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Although it is fairly easy to derive French soit from sit (retention of -t in this context is not regular, but can be explained as an analogical restoration), that is not the case for all Western Romance languages: Portuguese is not straightforwardly derivable from, and Spanish  can be explained as deriving, like seja, from Latin sedeat. Given that context, I am a bit uncertain whether the French form really is from Latin sit. However, I found a French historical grammar that suggests that "popular Latin" developed a paradigm sia, sias, siamus, siatis, siant: https://archive.org/details/outlinesoffrench00bakeuoft/outlinesoffrench00bakeuoft/page/182/mode/2up?q=soit Those also seem to be continued in Italian.--Urszag (talk) 13:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For Latin, the subjunctive form in question is , which through regular sound-changes yields the French and not at all . The indicative, for good measure, was , which lives on in the regular French outcome.
 * The source that you have linked implies that does not derive from  on the grounds of there being no attestation of the expected  (> ) in Old French. Whether that is in fact unattested, and if so whether it could have existed previously and then lost the additional vowel, is immaterial to this discussion, as the origin remains Latin  either way, whether via a regularised  or not. The same goes for all of the other soi- or soy- conjugations. I am not aware of, nor have I been able to find, any scholarly source that links any of these to Latin sedēre.
 * It is suggestive that all of the other claims that were added together with this soit < sedēre notion are also incorrect. Nicodene (talk) 15:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There is a bibliography in "Copulas in the Romance Languages" (Christopher Pountain, Oxford Research Encyclopedias) that I have not gone through yet. Pountain writes "The forms of Sp. ser, for example, do not reflect straightforward descent from Lat. esse ~ *essere, but are generally taken to involve suppletion by forms of Lat. sedēre ‘sit’ (the infinitive ser itself, and the present subjective sea,13 etc.)". Footnote 13 provides the following references: "Following Lloyd (1987, pp. 299–300) and Stengaard (1991, pp. 93–111). Pope (1934, p. 299), however, regarded the similar Fr. sois, etc., as deriving from analogical forms *siam, etc., replacing Lat. sim, etc., which could also be the origin of Sp. sea."
 * As I said, I'm not sure what the right explanation of the whole situation is. The French form soit may well come from sit (that seems most likely to me), but I wanted to push back on Mahagaja's statement that "the corresponding forms in other Western Romance languages" are all easily derived from the present subjunctive of sum.
 * I believe Latin sedeam sedeās sedeat sedeāmus sedeātis sedeant would, according to Latin-to-French sound changes, regularly yield *sie, *sies, *sieṭ, *soyiens, soyez, *sient (where "ie" = i.ə). (For tonic forms, compare medium, peius, peior > mi-, pis, pire; for atonic forms, compare mediānus > moyen). The tonic forms do not seem plausible as a source of the French subjunctive forms of être. The 1st and 2nd-person plural forms seem at least valid from a phonetic standpoint, although that derivation may be ruled unlikely on other grounds.--Urszag (talk) 06:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * * sǐat could explain the Spanish sea, but not the Old Spanish seya and Portuguese seja. For Ibero-Romance there are good reasons to believe sedēre was merged into the copula, and this is the majority view in scholarship, as far as I am aware. Note that the direct outcome of sedēre, namely seer in medieval Ibero-Romance, fell out of use during the Middle Ages, apparently submerged into ser < essere.
 * For sĕdeat > siée, there was a morphological reordering along the way, with sĕd-e-at replaced by *sĕd-at, as in the Italian sièda or Romanian șadă.
 * Soyez belongs to the set croyez, oyez, voyez :: crēdētis, audītis, vĭdētis; none of the outcomes in French are phonologically regular. Envoyez :: invǐātis in particular is a close parallel to soyez :: *sǐātis. Most likely all of these underwent paradigm levelling according to their rhizotonic conjugations. For instance the stem voi- (in voi/voiz/voit/voient < vĭdeo/vĭdēs/vĭdet/vĭdent) combined with the generalised 2PL ending -ez (< -ātis) makes voiez (> voyez). Nicodene (talk) 12:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

intrusive -s in obscene, abstrude, etc
Do we know where the -s- comes from in the Latin-derived words obscene, abstrude, and others? Can it be residue from the prefix ex- re-interpreted as ec-? Or maybe a hint of s-mobile? Is it possible that obscene is not +  at all, but rather derived from the Greek loanword ? — Soap — 10:44, 17 January 2024 (UTC)


 * If you look at the etymologies in Wiktionary, you'll see that the -s- appears to go back to PIE. It's selection in Latin is phonetically conditioned. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:02, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Gender of धातु
If is simply a borrowing of, where does the gender come from? The inherited word is feminine in Pali (contra Turner); the masculine word is a borrowing from the Sanskrit grammarians. --RichardW57 (talk) 23:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @RichardW57 Is it possible to be inherited? But wouldn't the 't' have disappeared like in Marathi, Oriya, etc? Exarchus (talk) 09:43, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Apparently, Platts has it as masculine, so it appears to have changed gender after 1884.Exarchus (talk) 09:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A similar case appears to be : neuter in Sanskrit, Platts gives it as masculine, nowadays feminine. Notice that inherited is also feminine.
 * A pragmatic advantage of having these words as feminine is that you get a separate form for the direct plural. Exarchus (talk) 11:20, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yet another example: . Platts gives masculine, nowadays feminine, although McGregor gives "f. m.". Exarchus (talk) 11:32, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * More examples:
 * - : neuter in Sanskrit, feminine in Hindi (also in Platts).
 * - : masculine in Sanskrit, Platts gives "s.m. (generally f. in Urdū; see rut)", generally feminine nowadays (McGregor gives "f. m.")
 * I can't find examples of -u stems switching from feminine to masculine. Exarchus (talk) 12:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Correction: (feminine in Sanskrit) can apparently be both feminine and masculine in Hindi. Only example I could find. Exarchus (talk) 12:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Exarchus ःHello गोरिल्ला can have both the declensions: गोरिल्लाओं, गोरिल्लों Word0151 (talk) 04:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Word0151 I changed it, thanks Exarchus (talk) 08:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Exarchus And, धातु is masculine [you can see that from its usage] Word0151 (talk) 13:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Word0151 @RichardW57 The dictionaries I look at say it's feminine, and I can find several occurences of धातुएँ in for example the धातु Wikipedia article. So it would probably be more correct to say that it can be both masculine and feminine. Exarchus (talk) 13:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also 'Hindi sabdasagara' gives 'स्त्री', so feminine. Exarchus (talk) 13:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Exarchus true it can be both Word0151 (talk) 13:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Platts does mention 'dhāt' as having a feminine form: "s.f. Semen virile", which is one of the meanings of nowadays धातु. Exarchus (talk) 10:13, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My suspicion was that it had taken the gender of the inherited form, but according to Turner, is also masculine, which he also asserts for the Pali.  A tendency for nouns in -u to become feminine sounds more plausible. --RichardW57m (talk) 15:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

பாண்டியர்
From Sanskrit? DevPandey27 (talk) 01:07, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Seems unlikely. The word looks more Dravidian than Indic. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia briefly discusses the etymology of Pandya. Wakuran (talk) 11:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Etymology for pronoun "ze"?
Any etymology? Heyandwhoa (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Completely arbitrary. There is only a limited set of consonants not already taken so this had appropriate functional load. We just need to phrase it in a politically correct manner. Fay Freak (talk) 21:46, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Dreich vs dree
Pinging. I think shouldn't be indicated as an alternative form of. Alternative forms are assumed to have the same etymology. Although dreich and dree share a common Middle English etymon, they are different in that dreich probably took the path Middle English > Scots > Scottish English while dree took the path of Middle English > Northern English. See Talk:dreich for more details. Does anyone else agree? Ioaxxere (talk) 21:48, 21 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I would just say that I had followed the existing references (chiefly the OED), and although what stated on the talk page diverges from them it seems to make sense. If we are not to follow the published references, though, it's probably best to get consensus here. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:51, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * what course of action should be taken given that no one responded? Ioaxxere (talk) 07:03, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Was barramundi renamed for marketing reasons?
This is a common claim: that barramundi was renamed from Asian Sea Bass in the 1980s because it sounded nicer. 1 2 Wikipedia

But searching through trove archive, I can find lots of articles referencing barramundi from before the 1980s. And I can't find any mentioning asian sea bass.

I have found the story of barramundi being popularised in the US, but that didn't happen until the 2000s.

Can anyone shed some light on my confusion? 2001:8003:48D1:4201:90E3:E537:D658:CDBF 12:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * See also German Rucola marketed in the 1980s, but I know this because I am German and not because the internet is good to depict this, and Greek yoghurt pushed in the 1980s but first in the UK, only in the 2000s becoming an US term. It can well be true. Again I am far from sea and don’t know the fish-market enough to confidently research this one. Fay Freak (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * People can be wrong about certain things. Maybe that's what's happening. CitationsFreak (talk) 01:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * making a case in point here: we see how adjustments of multiply editors in the fashion of broken telephone absolutize and falsify word origins. not how the term spread. Especially in product descriptions it is possible that one producer wanted it to be used and used it by itself in industry publications when it was not lexicalized by the community. In this fashion in Google Books  had a spike of generic use in the 1980s when before usually (which means not always) literal Greek yoghurt was noted. My  was then slanted by  towards statements about the composition of certain products and a certain company rather than certain language usage and no explicit mention about genericization being a process, and now CitationsFreak has but left a completely detached note about UK, begging the question why the UK is mentioned when now it is a North American term, both helping out Putin and the racists supported by him by not pointing out to Americans, in whose curricula the  get the short end of the stick, how  and through the EU we have a greater palette of dairy products and designations even in the US. Twenty years ago we didn’t get skyr, also promoted by a certain company, now on all German supermarket shelves, and bodybuilders excruciated their tastebuds with . Listening comprehension of North American coaches hearing the term in foreign diet plans is slowly increasing, over the years. But then CitationsFreak will be like “ackchyually,  is attested earlier” – yeah but in how exquisite a context? We just had it how etymologies cannot be essentialized as chains from points in time along which a community pops over anyway. Fay Freak (talk) 07:58, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the term spread when the concept behind it became popular. I don't feel like that is worth noting. My version of the etym was right, there was an association with this food and Greece before Fage existed. (For example, I've seen someone in a US publication that they went to Greece, and got "Greek yogurt".) The fact that I didn't say it came from it being easier to access due to it being an EU country was something I forgot, and will include when I rewrite the etym sometime today. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wait no, don't include that. "Greek yogurt" came before the UK was involved in the EU, and is not where the term came from. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * But the UK had been in since its beginning in 1973 with the same result, making it part of the . (She might have joined it again after 2020, but for reasons that were also surprising to MEPs she could not even enter the  and the EU kept a hard line.) Fay Freak (talk) 09:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the name originally referred to another fish, probably the or the, but that the non-aboriginal population of Australia transferred it to the current species, which was also known as the giant perch. That doesn't mean the story about the name being adopted for marketing purposes is wrong. Outside of Australia, the fish was mostly known by various local names like begti and cockup until the more generic-sounding international name "Asian sea bass" was adopted. I think the Australian name was later promoted world-wide over the others for marketing reasons. I can see why: "begti" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue for English speakers, while both cockup and the original kakap have some pretty ugly associations for those same English speakers, and "Asian sea bass" is rather bland and forgettable. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes that is probably true. I just wish there was a better source than the one Wikipedia lists, it really doesn't look reliable! 2001:8003:48D1:4201:58A5:1747:7FBC:9B69 11:49, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Google Ngram Viewer shows that there is a huge spike in the 1980s, which also coincides with a spike in Lates calcarifer. 2001:8003:48D1:4201:58A5:1747:7FBC:9B69 11:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Barramundi was used in association with Lates and Scleropages (also another genus) at least as far back as 1890. I'm not sure that the "marketing" angle is worth too much emphasis. There are interesting marketing angles to the Chilean sea bass. DCDuring (talk) 16:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

copo-copo
Probably not the right place to ask about this, but if Macanese borrows a term from Malay that was already reduplicated in Malay (see also palám-palám), should I add the Macanese reduplications category to it or no? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 16:35, 22 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I guess it depends on the facts on the ground. What is the plural of ? Is it ? —Mahāgaja · talk 18:30, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've not found a distinct plural so far, nor have I found any Macanese reduplications that go above 2 of the same unit, and I've gone through about two glossaries complete with usage examples as well as just blogs of people writing in Macanese. In Macanese it's possible to have the singular form be the plural form as well, especially when the amount of something isn't particularly relevant to the main idea of the sentence, and one would have to derive the number by context (a la Cantonese). The plural of could very well just be . Insaneguy1083 (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I just realized the question was if it should be in the reduplications category. In that case, the question is, does singleton exist? If not, then I wouldn't call it a Macanese reduplication. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In the context of Macanese, singular is just the 🇨🇬, with no connection to butterflies. Weirdly though, I've also not found a Malay singular  either from which to derive . Insaneguy1083 (talk) 18:36, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I dont know much about Malay, so this may be no help, but I think that animal names in some Austronesian languages are reduplicated in their base forms. I know I saw manu-manu on a wordlist somewhere as the reflex of manu "bird". — Soap — 16:37, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

North Germanic samband and Sanskrit सम्बन्ध
I have mentioned this apparent connection in the Icelandic entry a few days ago, but I realize that it should have "professional" approval. Are these words cognates? I have checked that the PIE roots of these words are the same. ॥ ☼ সূর্যমান ☽ ॥ 20:47, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think so, though I wouldn't create an entry for unless there are more cognates. See the etymology  to . --  22:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If the compound only is found in two groups, I guess it might just as likely be two independent coinages. Wakuran (talk) 13:09, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I haven't been able to find *samband in Old Norse. It appears that the word is a new formation in the modern Scandinavian languages from the productive prefix sam- + band. Leasnam (talk) 03:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For reference: . -- 05:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is indeed a striking resemblance. It is possible, but I consider it unlikely. For one the Icelandic prefix is from, a nominalisation of . Secondly, attested PIE compounds with use the variant *sm̥. (See LIPP vol. 2 p. 724.) So if it existed, it would've had be reformed at least twice, once in Germanic, once in Indo-Iranian. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 17:03, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Arabic أمريكا, Persian آمریکا, Hindi अमरीका
Where did the form without 'e' originate? (Arabic would be my guess)

Borrowed from English, or earlier from Portuguese? Exarchus (talk) 13:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The name Amerigo is stressed there. The Medieval Latin pronunciation also. The first who knew the country were learned, and so were certain more specific terms about America in Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian. In effect no less probably from French Amérique, like ; the  can be analogical because it is a “country-name”; terms with that ending have become more frequent and replaced older ones without the ending, such as  and . We have learnt that politicians arbitrarily chose official names, and make them parts of compulsory education hence accepted usage, hence the names are arbitrary and learned again. Fay Freak (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I notice that Latin has a form with a stressed long 'ī', I think the Arabic term would rather come from that than from French. Wasn't  only borrowed around the time of Mexican independence? (before that it was 'Nueva España')

Italian luglio: dissimilation or assimilation
Just encountered. Interesting. One alternative given for the etymology is that it's doublet of with the first consonant changed from  (or whatever the sound was at the time, such as ) to. The etymology section currently says this is dissimilation, but in what sense? My first thought was that it's assimilation in that the first consonant becomes lateral like the second. An anonymous user suggested it was dissimilation from (and corrected the manual IPA at that time, which suggests they might have known what they were talking about). That at least makes sense to me, though usually dissimilation doesn't involve another word, but the edits were reverted. — Eru·tuon 18:28, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * In principle */ˈjulju/ > */ˈlulju/ could either be called dissimilation, considering the loss of the palatal element, or assimilation, considering the new /l/. Nicodene (talk) 18:41, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * well dissimilation can involve other words if theyre commonly used in adjacent contexts the way month names and numeral names are. to be honest i cant think of any other examples but im pretty sure there are some. — Soap — 13:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skrībaną
Why are we presuming descent from Latin? This could just as easily be directly from *skréybʰeti. - saph 🍏 18:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not an expert, but I believe the specific sense of "write" is a clue that it is borrowed from the Latin. Leasnam (talk) 03:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a bit odd that the only source cited on the entry, Orel, isn't a fan of the etymology: 'Hardly borrowed from but, probably, semantically influenced by Lat scrībō'.
 * That said, I'm not sure what the issue is unless scrīb-ō :: *skrīb-aną presents some phonological or morphological issue (?). It seems all are agreed that at least the semantics are Latin. Nicodene (talk) 05:13, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn't really present a phonological issue, it's just that Germanic could have completely independently developed the term, there's no clear reason to assume that it was borrowed from Latin. It's not even necessary that it would have been semantically influenced by Latin, it's not too far of a semantic shift. - saph 🍏 08:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Is it normal for there not to be traces of the pre-'write' sense then? As for the historical context, is there doubt among scholars about writing spreading to the Germanic peoples from the Mediterranean in the time of the Roman Empire? Nicodene (talk) 13:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, didn't think of the technological part. Latin would have influenced it semantically, but again there's no reason to assume that it is derived from Latin. - saph 🍏 14:07, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * If there's sourcing (even in the form of the source already cited in the entry) for the idea it's inherited and only influenced, and if there's also sourcing for the idea it's borrowed, why not just mention both theories? "X takes this to be a borrowing from Latin, but Y alternatively thinks it could be inherited and semantically influenced", and qualify which theory is more widely accepted. - -sche (discuss) 15:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

perdê chávi
Any ideas? I'm a native Cantonese speaker and I've got nothing. Could this be some sort of idiomatic phrase from a South Asian language or Malay? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 00:08, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Seems to me like a Romance borrowing according to etymology on the page and the word’s phonology, probably Portuguese perder (to lose) and chave (key). CanadianRosbif (talk) 01:49, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The etymologies of the constituent words were added by OP themselves. The question is where, or in what language, did the combination 'lose' + 'key' → 'have diarrhoea' originate? A quick Google search does not reveal a Portuguese equivalent, but it would be best to ask a native speaker like @Stríðsdrengur. Nicodene (talk) 01:58, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

the meaning of the etymology of Jacob
We have Jacob listed in two different places as meaning he shall heel in Hebrew. What sense of is meant here, if it's even one at all? I wouldn't expect such an idiomatic verb to have the same, or even a similar, set of meanings in Biblical Hebrew as it does in modern English. The עקב page suggests it might have a meaning similar to "follow close behind", but quite a few other meanings are possible as well even just from looking at that same page. — Soap — 15:50, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also I meant to add I dont think jacuzzi qualifies as a doublet, since it almost certainly contains an Italian-only suffix and perhaps a plural or fossilized genitive morpheme.  — Soap — 15:51, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The sense of is . —Mahāgaja · talk 20:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Hallstatt
We say “the first element, (…), was likely borrowed through Celtic, (…); see Proto-Celtic *salanos.”

David Stifter strongly disagrees, see this recent Twitter post where he refers to this article of his: Hallstatt - In eisenzeitlicher Tradition? in: Interpretierte Eisenzeiten. Fallstudien, Methoden, Theorie. Tagungsbeitrage der 1. Linzer Gesprache zur interpretativen Eisenzeitarchaologie. Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz, pp. 229-240. (also available here).

His main points are contained in the abstract in English: "An etymology from a putative Celtic *hal ‘salt’ < PIE *sal has been claimed for various placenames attested from the middle ages onwards, containing an element hall in Central Europe, among them most notably Hallstatt and Hallein. But this etymology is rendered unlikely, if not impossible by a number of facts: 1.The required sound change PIE *s > Celtic *h has no convincing parallel in Continental Celtic. 2.The Proto-Celtic word for ‘salt’, that can be reconstructed on the basis of the Insular Celtic languages, is *saleyno-, although the existence of a root noun *sal cannot be excluded for Continental Celtic. 3.The placenames in hall unequivocally show a geminated ll, whereas a word for ‘salt’ would have contained a single l. 4. Placenames in hall- are found exclusively in areas settled by Germanic peoples, but not in other areas inhabited by Celtic peoples in antiquity. 5. It is highly unlikely that the invading Germanic peoples of the early middle ages would have encountered speakers of Celtic languages in the Alpine regions, but rather speakers of Romance languages. Romance does not possess the sound /h/. 6. The attestations of hal(l) as a proper noun in Old and Middle High German point to a meaning ‘place where salt is produced by simmering brine, salt pan’, not ‘salt’. Furthermore the method of salt-production in the middle ages was completely different from Iron Age salt-mining. 7. Most of the places with hall in their name lack a continuous settlement since antiquity; most of them are foundations of the early and high medieval period.Therefore an etymology for hall has to be found within Germanic, not Celtic. Various Germanic proposals have been made in the last 150 years, none of which is without semantic or phonological problems. My new proposal is to derive hall from Proto-Germanic *χallan, which continues PIE *kalnom or *kHlnom ‘hardened skin, encrustation’ (cp. Latin callum ‘horny skin, callus’). This originally must have referred to the encrusted salt that forms in during the simmering of brine. From the salt thus produced the word must have been transferred to the instrument and place of simmering."

Should we change the etymology? My own intuition would be to go ahead and just remove the mention of Celtic completely and just give Stifter’s etymology, but I don’t know whether there’s counter-arguments to this out there, so I’ve decided to leave this up for discussion here.

Not sure whom to ping beside, as I don’t touch German and Germanic myself. 00:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC) // Silmeth @talk 00:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't think we should remove the Celtic etymology, but we should note that it's the traditional etymology and then follow it up with a note briefly explaining Stifter's hypothesis. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK. I’ve edited it – kept the traditional derivation, added a paragraph about Stifter’s problems with it and short summary of his idea. // Silmeth @talk 12:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Completely not sure about this, but I found another city in eastern Germany, Halle which may contain the same meaning of "salt". I've also created and listed various descendants, most notably the 🇨🇬, but unsure if this might not be taken from the name of the City, or was inherited. The gender (neuter) suggests inheritance to me, but I could be merely wishful-seeing. Leasnam (talk) 18:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Stifter in his article lists several places with the name Halle in Germany, see §1.2.2 Deutschland. He explicitly says that hall in OHG and MHG does not mean salt – but rather ‘a place where salt is produced from brine’, §2.2:
 * "Im alt- und mittelhochdeutschen bedeutet hal(l) nicht ‘salz,’ wie man bei der herleitung von einem keltischen wort für ‘salz’ erwarten würde, sondern den ‘ort, wo das mineral erzeugt oder verarbeitet wird’ (vgl. Schwarz 1925: 187 und Meineke 1999), offenbar ein geläufiger terminus technicus."
 * which I’d translate as (but please do correct, my German’s shit): “In Old and Middle HG hal(l) does not mean ‘salt,’ as one would expect from the derivation from a Celtic word for ‘salt’, but a ‘site where the mineral gets produced or processed’ (see Schwarz 1925: 187 and Meineke 1999), apparently a common terminus technicus.”
 * And then, directly following, remarks that it’s typically a part of a compound for a specific type of salt (but doesn’t mean salt by itself!):
 * "In althochdeutschen texten kommt das wort nicht als simplex vor (…). In einem rezept finden man halasalz ‘hall-salz’, d.h. salz, das durch sieden aus sole gewonnen wurde, offenbar als kontrastive bildung zu merisalz ‘meersalz’, erdsalz ‘salz aus der erde, steinsalz’ und lûtarsalz ‘natürliches laugensalz, steinsalz’."
 * ie. “In Old High German texts the word doesn’t appear as a simplex (…). In one recipe/prescription one finds halasaz ‘hall-salt’, i.e. salt which is obtained by boiling/simmering of brine, evidently a formation contrastive to merisalz ‘sea-salt’, erdsalz ‘salt from the earth, rock-salt’, and lûtarsalz ‘natural alkaline salt, rock-salt’.”
 * He also mentiones an instance where halhûs ‘hall-house’ is used to gloss Latin salina. // Silmeth @talk 19:20, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Incidentally, Wikipedia has and German Wikipedia a much more detailed article Hall (Ortsname), including a list of place names whose etymologies are affected by the new hypothesis. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

German Venedig
Where does it come from? Does it have something to do with the adjective ? PUC – 19:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes! I wondered this myself a couple years ago: Etymology_scriptorium/2021/October. - -sche (discuss) 00:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Moving Reconstruction:Latin/-dere
This is attested through its various derived terms and so isn't a reconstruction. The issue is that the mainspace already has the corresponding entry -do, so a simple move is not possible. Help? Nicodene (talk) 00:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * If you're asking how to preserve the edit history for attribution requirements, one thing I've done in similar cases is move the page to the other entry's talk page Talk:-do, overwrite the latest revision with a note that earlier edit history is preserved in the edit history, and make a similar note in the edit summary when I'm merging any missing content into the main entry. - -sche (discuss) 01:03, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I’ll try that then, thank you. Nicodene (talk) 12:16, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Turkic/altun
Nugteren, H. (2011). Mongolic phonology and the Qinghai-Gansu languages. LOT.

Caïssa
Any ideas? It’s one of those Greek-ish poetic names like Pamela or Ophelia which usually have some real inspiration in the language, but could this one just be phonetic rather than semantically significant. CanadianRosbif (talk) 06:40, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmm, chess in Modern Greek is skáki (from Italian), and in Ancient Greek is zatríkion (from mangled Persian). Swedish has a similar name Kajsa, although that is derived from Karin, and one of many variations on Ancient Greek Aikaterī́nē. I might hazard a guess that William Jones could have thought about how English church was derived from Ancient Greek kyriakón, trying to create a similar pre-palatalized Greek version. (Although English chess is mangled French rather than anything else.) Wakuran (talk) 14:18, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I also think that it was coined to look like it could be a Greek name (and is a common suffix on female given names) that could be the ancestor of the word chess. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The two "etymologies" are apparently originally one word via, with the burn/sacrifice sense coming from the notion of "feeding" fire by sacrifice/offerings and the "adult" sense from living organisms being "fed" or "raised" to grow up. The exact same participle meaning "fed" is reconstructed by De Vaan to explain both etymologies. So do we merge them under one etymology? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Even though they are the same root, we imply they were formed from different words, one being and the other .  If this were English, we would list such independent formations as two separate etymologies.  For example, if a word that can be both a noun and a verb in modern English had different spellings for the noun and verb in Middle English, we often list those as two separate etymologies.
 * It's possible we have an unwritten policy to be more expansive with English than with other languages because it's the language of the project. I'm not aware of any formal rule, and we dont always separate.  One word where I compressed two etymologies into one is .  My rationale being that few people are going to expect two separate entries, and people might miss the second entry when they see the end of what was the first. — Soap — 06:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note that verbs suffixed with -sco(r) do not, as a rule, have past participles of their own.
 * It is possible however for one to take a past participle from its own root verb. Thus has 'borrowed'  from, and likewise  :  : . It is no different with  :  : . - Nicodene (talk) 08:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Would it be good to follow the precedent set by ? We list two etymologies for that word as well, one meaning high/tall/deep and the other meaning mature/well-fed.  It seems to be a similar situation ....  the root is the same, but was formed twice independently from different forms of that verb (supine and stative, i think).  if those two are separate, perhaps this means the two adultus etymologies should be separate as well. — Soap — 10:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * But the two are different since they come from different ablaut grades (e-grade for "high" and zero for the participle).  derives from the zero grade participle  in both senses. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 13:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

𑜏𑜦𑜂𑜫 & 神 Relationship
Hey all, the user is working on the etymology of an Ahom language word and thinks there's a connection between 𑜏𑜦𑜂𑜫 & 神. I can't really help, so I wanted to bring this to your attention. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:09, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * : The only possible connection would involve borrowing from Chinese. The entry at 神 says "compare 🇨🇬", which shows how much sound changes tend to hide relationships within language families- and Ahom is, not . Chuck Entz (talk) 15:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A direct borrowing is very unlikely since Ahom was not in contact with Chinese. It would have to be borrowing between some ancestor of Chinese and some ancestor of Ahom. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Mahagaja Yeah, The Numbers, Calendar system and Religious elements were borrowed from East Asia (Chinese) during ancient time. Dragons, Confucian elements are clearly visible in Ahom religion according to the studies. So, that could be possible. Ahom scriptures also mentioned China as 𑜉𑜢𑜤𑜂𑜫 𑜁𑜦𑜧. So adding 神 as cognate with 𑜏𑜦𑜂𑜫 shouldn't be a misinterpretation! KhiLanTzi (talk) 01:26, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Chuck Entz Sure, but the borrowing been there since ancient period due to religious exchanges between Taoic religions and same geographical location of Ancient Kr-Dai and Sino-tibetan . For further information you can check this category (less words because of few entries). KhiLanTzi (talk) 01:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)