Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2024/July

دوقلو
according to some persian sources, its from turkic, if so the source would be *doghuly which doesnt have counterparts in turkic languages as i know, so maybe the native persian compound form is more possible. Ryungja (talk) 09:03, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Probably borrowed from some derivative of . Vahag (talk) 10:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, do you think the combination of Persian (do "two") and Azeri (oğulu" "son"), forming "two sons" and since there is no gender in Persian the word coming to mean twin? Or is that stretching it too far? CaesarVafadar (talk) 08:09, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

μόνος
μόνος currently says "From Proto-Hellenic *mónwos, from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“small”)." Semantically, I guess "small" > "only" is possible, but how is the form *mónwos supposed to be derived from *mey-? Nothing matches but the initial consonant. At Reconstruction_talk:Proto-Indo-European/mey-, I see the following comments: "Most sources that I have consulted consider *mey- and *men- separate, unrelated roots. This list mixes the reflexes of the two. --Vahag (talk) 11:04, 27 December 2015 (UTC) True. Words in men-, man-, mon- or mun- (such as *muniwō) cannot possibly belong here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2016 (UTC)" Urszag (talk) 06:41, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree. Our entry RC:Proto-Indo-European/men- lists three distinct roots, but there is probably a fourth that means 'small, isolated' and is the source of both and, not to mention several other words currently listed at . —Mahāgaja · talk 06:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I see that Pokorny 1959 and Beekes 2010 both assign this word to a root *men- 'small'. I've updated μόνος, Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/men-, and Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/mey- accordingly, but will hold off on fixing all of the mislabeled derived words until there's been a bit more time for anyone to make a case for why *mey- might be correct or *men- wrong.--Urszag (talk) 07:57, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

кӱчык
This Eastern Mari word appears to be a borrowing from a Turkic language, from Proto-Turkic *kičüg. The etymology is empty however, and I can't seem to find anything on the Internet to confirm it. Akhaeron (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Thigmocoma
The protist Thigmocoma is the type genus of the family Thigmocomidae. But apart from the prefix thigma-, "to touch", I don't understand the suffix -coma. What is your opinion? Gerardgiraud (talk) 11:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Could it be ? Do thigmocomas have little hairlike feelers on them? —Mahāgaja · talk 12:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not obvious si here : Thigmocoma Gerardgiraud (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * No, but I notice there's a related genus called, which looks like it uses the other Ancient Greek word for 'hair', (genitive ). —Mahāgaja · talk 19:21, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You're right. I will manage with that. Thanks for help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 09:17, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

margr
In the Etymology of, it states <> - what do and  refer to ? Leasnam (talk) 14:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe a sloppy typo for more and meira ... (?) Wakuran (talk) 20:11, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Alas, User:Myndfrea has not made any edits since 2015, and would likely not respond to queries. Wakuran (talk) 21:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It is an old hypothesis by Folk & Torp (1910, Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 695) to link margr to and, which isn't very likely. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

happer
Origin of French word? 90.241.192.210 15:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * The origin of a word is stated under the heading 'Etymology'. Exarchus (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * what was its latin ancestor? 90.241.192.210 17:04, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Not every word in Old French comes from Latin. In this case, the similarity to is suggestive, but there are also similar Germanic words and "ap" as a representation of jaws snapping shut is also quite plausible. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:47, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The Old French is tied to 🇨🇬. Though  is often explained as being derived from the verb, it bears a striking resemblance to 🇨🇬. Leasnam (talk) 23:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

trammel
According to Ernest Weekley (1921) An etymological dictionary of modern English many of the senses of trammel are a completely different word with separate etymology (from germanic tram meaning "beam" or similar, nothing to do with nets). Weekley elaborated on this at some length in the Transactions of the Philological Society, 1907, pp. 385–388, citing several other sources (there he also disputes the "three mesh" etymology of the drag-net sense). Cf. also the 1926 OED. Would it be worth modifying the entry to split the word in two, add more etymological details, linking sources, etc.? I'm a Wikipedian largely unfamiliar with Wiktionary formatting, conventions, sourcing, etc. Jacobolus (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Do you have more recent sources discussing the etymology? It doesn't seem like any other major dictionary connects to . Ioaxxere (talk) 05:55, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Ioaxxere I don’t think recency is particularly relevant here; the etymology given in most modern dictionaries of tri- (three) + macula (mesh) was, as far as I can tell, speculation invented in the 18th–19th century sometime. (Cf. Skeat.) Sources from recent decades that I have found have not seriously investigated or addressed the etymology of the word trammel. You might say they are, themselves, trammeled by laziness and historical inertia.
 * The main source for the basic etymology of the word is the appearance of trammel (a type of fishing net) in (Late Latin, originating in the early 6th century, various extant manuscripts from the 8th–9th century). You can see in Kern (1880) (cf.  the glossarial index) what a variety of spellings there were in various manuscripts: "tremacle, tremale, tremagilum, tramacula, trimacle, trammacle, trimacla, trimagle, tremagle, tremagolum, tremachlum, tremaclum, trechlum, tremula, tremalicum, tramagula, tremacula". As Kern says in the notes, "§ 146. Tremacle, etc., in § 20, is a diminutive, more or less Latinized. The Frank. word must have differed but slightly, if at all, from the Drenthian (N. Saxon) treemke (for tremike, tramike), a trammel. Both the English and Drenthian word point to a simplex trami or tramia."
 * The Century Dictionary (1895), points out: “In defs. 5, 6, 7 the sense suggests a connection with tram1, a bar or beam, but they are appar. particular uses of trammel in the sense of ‘shackle.’ Cf. tram3.
 * The 1926 OED just says that the etymology is obscure and "some of [the senses] may perhaps be different words".
 * I find Weekley pretty convincing and don’t believe the Century's “appar.”. There’s nothing obvious connecting the senses of pot-hook (concretely, a vertically hanging wooden or metal bar with holes or notches in it to allow height adjustment), shaft with metal points attached for drawing circles or ellipses, beam used for truing mill spindles, etc. to fishing nets or horse shackles, and the speculation in various dictionaries that the ellipse-drawing tool was named after the horse shackle because they involve restricted movement seems at the least highly speculative. The metaphorical senses of 'trammel' were all quite close to the literal sense of a trammel binding the legs of horses to change their gait until long after the sense of an elliptic compass was in use.
 * Entrave.JPG
 * Weekley's claim that the horse shackle's name may originate in tram ("beam") seems at least plausible, since other similar words such as entraves (from Latin trabs, "beam") and clog arose the same way.
 * Weekley's speculation about the mentions of trammels in the Lex Salica (Late Latin) being a word of Germanic origin for stake-net derived from tram which was Latinized and adopted into Latin/Romance languages is certainly not proven anywhere, but it doesn’t seem inherently less plausible than the "standard" speculation printed in most dictionaries.
 * The German word trämel means pole or stick, alongside a variety of other "tram"-like words in various Germanic languages, all meaning log, beam, timber, shaft, or the like (cf. Adelung (1793), scan or text; Ihre (1769); Fritschen (1716); Jamieson (1808)).
 * A bit of an aside: after hunting up many example uses c. 1600, the claim in most dictionaries that the archaic sense about hair is a kind of net is clearly abject nonsense based on a bad misreading of one quotation from Spenser's Faerie Queene. The "trammels of her hair" etc. refers to the hair itself, in plaits, braids, curls, or similar. The OED (since at least 1926) fortunately gets this one right, explaining it is “sometimes erroneously explained as a net”. It's not entirely obvious what the etymology is for this sense since it’s not super obviously related to large fishing/fowling nets. Jacobolus (talk) 14:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting. is a pretty good match semantically for "trammels of her hair" (thanks for fixing the definition, by the way). However, it doesn't seem like there's any evidence that the Latin term was borrowed from Germanic, so this might be a case of two etymological origins merging into one. Also, what do you mean by ? Ioaxxere (talk) 18:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Wait, why would 'beam' make sense semantically in relation to hair? I just mean there are a lot of quotations such as:
 * Which collectively make it clear that a "net" is not involved (except sometimes as a pun, as in the first example).
 * "doesn't seem like there's any evidence that the Latin term was borrowed from Germanic" – As I understand Kern, the range of spellings of this word supports a Latinized Old Frankish word (similar to a related Old Saxon word and related to the English trammel) rather than a word of Latin origin. I am by no means on expert on Late Latin or word transmission between Latin and Germanic languages. I wonder if there's some expert on these topics around Wiktionary who we could consult. Jacobolus (talk) 18:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, a hair is pretty much just a thin and flexible beam, isn't it? Anyway, I don't know enough about Late Latin to comment about it but I know that contributes in this area. Unfortunately  is a redlink at the moment. Ioaxxere (talk) 22:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would be quite surprised if people directly took a word for shaft or pole, diminutive of a word for beam or log, and used it to refer to plaits or tresses of hair based on some resemblance to a shaft per se, but who knows. I really don't have any idea how trammel got to mean hair plaits or funeral wrapping (a rare mid 16th century meaning), which also don't seem directly relevant to either horse shackles or fishing nets. I think the best we can do is say that the etymology of these senses is unknown. Jacobolus (talk) 23:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for Drenthian, is part of the, where the word treemke is still used for this type of net (or at least was in 1911). Jacobolus (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Which collectively make it clear that a "net" is not involved (except sometimes as a pun, as in the first example).
 * "doesn't seem like there's any evidence that the Latin term was borrowed from Germanic" – As I understand Kern, the range of spellings of this word supports a Latinized Old Frankish word (similar to a related Old Saxon word and related to the English trammel) rather than a word of Latin origin. I am by no means on expert on Late Latin or word transmission between Latin and Germanic languages. I wonder if there's some expert on these topics around Wiktionary who we could consult. Jacobolus (talk) 18:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, a hair is pretty much just a thin and flexible beam, isn't it? Anyway, I don't know enough about Late Latin to comment about it but I know that contributes in this area. Unfortunately  is a redlink at the moment. Ioaxxere (talk) 22:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would be quite surprised if people directly took a word for shaft or pole, diminutive of a word for beam or log, and used it to refer to plaits or tresses of hair based on some resemblance to a shaft per se, but who knows. I really don't have any idea how trammel got to mean hair plaits or funeral wrapping (a rare mid 16th century meaning), which also don't seem directly relevant to either horse shackles or fishing nets. I think the best we can do is say that the etymology of these senses is unknown. Jacobolus (talk) 23:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for Drenthian, is part of the, where the word treemke is still used for this type of net (or at least was in 1911). Jacobolus (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, a hair is pretty much just a thin and flexible beam, isn't it? Anyway, I don't know enough about Late Latin to comment about it but I know that contributes in this area. Unfortunately  is a redlink at the moment. Ioaxxere (talk) 22:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would be quite surprised if people directly took a word for shaft or pole, diminutive of a word for beam or log, and used it to refer to plaits or tresses of hair based on some resemblance to a shaft per se, but who knows. I really don't have any idea how trammel got to mean hair plaits or funeral wrapping (a rare mid 16th century meaning), which also don't seem directly relevant to either horse shackles or fishing nets. I think the best we can do is say that the etymology of these senses is unknown. Jacobolus (talk) 23:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As for Drenthian, is part of the, where the word treemke is still used for this type of net (or at least was in 1911). Jacobolus (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Hawaiian mele ('to be yellow'), meli
The explanation at might be perfectly correct, but there's also this from Witzel's "Early Loan Words in Western Central Asia":

(hinting at a distant link with :) "Note even beyond this area, in Polynesia, Samoan meli, Hawaiian mele, meli; mele, melemele 'yellow', Maori miere; Tongan melie 'sweetness, sweet, delicious', Rarotongan meli 'honey', Mangareva mere 'honey'. This must be old and cannot just be an introduction from French miel (in New Zealand, Hawaii?) as we have Haw. mele-mele 'a star name': Melemele and Polapola, 'the twin stars', the former male, the latter female; at any rate, this is already Proto-Nuclear Polynesian (Samoan, Futunan etc.) *melemele; cf. also Haw. Melemele 'a mythical land'. -- For the spread of the word, note the role of cire perdue with its inherent use of bee's wax, see Andrew Sherratt, elsewhere in this volume: Patterns of Growth: Nodes and Networks in the Ancient World."

How credible is this analysis? Exarchus (talk) 10:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * 


 * Not all that much. The time depth involved makes the likelihood of modern reflexes that similar via inheritance unlikely. Note that there are terms related to sweetness going back all the way to Proto-Austronesian that contain "m" followed by a front vowel, but reflexes like show easily such patterns get lost over time. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, the Polynesian Lexicon Project reconstructs a term *malie ("sweet-tasting, delicious"), of which Tongan melie would be a descendant. Another term *mele is reconstructed as a star name.
 * Anyway, I guess Hawaiian mele(mele) "yellow" is then a development from the borrowed meli "honey"? Exarchus (talk) 20:35, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * If it's a wanderwort, I'd expect reflexes in other Asian language families. Indo-European and Polynesian languages are very distant from each other. Wakuran (talk) 12:10, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Chuck's right. It's bad etymologizing that doesn't take into account how sound change operates in Polynesian languages. I didn't know that Witzel is capable of producing such BS. Meli, *malie and *mele can't be related—vowels don't just "disappear" or change at random in Polynesian languages, especially in the penult and final syllables. Nor should we assume that meli wasn't anything else but a learned borrowing at a time when most probably the first Bible translators didn't bring honey with them in order to show them what this obscure thing mentioned in the Bible actually is.
 * Want more linguistic fantasies about honey and bees? In the Enna' dialect of Buginese, 'bee' is hani! Maybe they got it from English-speaking sailors? Or is it just from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *wani, with the perfectly regular sound change *w > h... :) –Austronesier (talk) 18:08, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Austronesier "I didn't know that Witzel is capable of producing such BS." It was all in a footnote, I suspect it was an excursus outside his expertise.
 * I gave a tentative etymology at, feel free to improve. Exarchus (talk) 18:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In the published version of the paper, Witzel is more careful in his wording about these wild speculations after having consulted Ross Clark, an actual expert in Oceanic languages.
 * As for melemele 'yellow', I'll do a little more digging. As of now, I think the connection to the Nuclear Polynesian name for Antares with its M-class color is the most likely solution. –Austronesier (talk) 19:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * So Mele Kalikimaka actually means "yellow Christmas"? —Mahāgaja · talk 06:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * mele also happens to mean "to be merry" (and now I'm wondering whether this might be influenced by English instead of just coming from the sense "chant, song") Exarchus (talk) 07:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Pookie
A little topical— I can’t really scrounge up anything convincing about where it comes from. There’s one well-circulated, quite questionable source that claims it originates from German, but that seems pretty unsubstantial. It certainly rose in popularity during the mid-ish 20th century, but there’s still no obvious etymon. To me, it seems kind of reminiscent of the pooka but the term doesn’t seem particularly, or even originally, British. CanadianRosbif (talk) 16:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the pet name, or something else? For pets, English already has the similar pooch/ poochie. Wakuran (talk) 17:26, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

gatvė
Where does the supposed suffix come from? Could it be linked to the ending of ? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 20:37, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/upó
Unsourced and derivationally problematic. - saph 🍏 13:30, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Dasyprocta
Back in December, I posted about the group of insects called Epiprocta. Much to my amusement, you all discovered its etymology came from "on top of the anus". So when I was learning about groups of rodents and saw Dasyprocta (the Agoutis), I was interested if this might also be using the same proct = anus etymology.

After searching for the prefix dasy-, I learn that means hairy! Is the etymology of this group really hairy anus or is this just a coincidence? Why would they choose this name for the agoutis? Thanks again Pithon314 (talk) 02:39, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * : The original description spells it out in Ancient Greek and Latin. Confirmed. Further down it says "Corpus pilis duriusculis versus anum longioribus tectum", which provides further explanation. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That's so funny! Thank you for confirming that! This fact now lives in my mind rent-free :D --Pithon314 (talk) 17:01, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Aconaemys
I have another rodent group question: Aconaemys (Andean rock rats). In this one, I believe the "mys" is Ancient Greek μῦς (mûs, "mouse") like other groups of rodents such as Dipodomys. Does anyone have insight into the "Aconae" part? Thanks again, Pithon314 (talk) 20:57, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ἀκόνη is vaguely related to rocks, although dictionaries say it means specifically "whetstone", which seems an odd fit. Lewis and Short simply defines Latin aconae as "pointed stones".--Urszag (talk) 22:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

sowie
Origin of German word? I don't think that so+wie makes a lot of sense to the meaning of this word. 90.241.192.210 19:17, 7 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Of course it does. "Sowie" literally means "so as", or perhaps if this is clearer in English: "as much as". Accordingly you can say Er liest Bücher sowie Zeitungen (literally, "He reads books as much as newspapers"). It's actually quite the same as English "as well as" or French "autant que". 84.63.31.91 19:38, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

philosopher's stone
The etymology section claims that this is a "malapropism of philosophers' stone", which is in turn a direct translation of the Latin phrase. This was added in this diff. Could we verify this claim? Even if this were true, IMO it's not so much a "malapropism" rather than a simple misspelling. Wyverald (talk) 21:27, 7 July 2024 (UTC)


 * It's definitely not a malapropism as that requires some kind of inappropriate or even absurd use of words. This is obviously not the case here. It makes absolutely no different whether we attribute the stone to "the philosophers" (as a group) or "the philosopher" (as such), in same way that it's "miller's knot" or "shoemaker's end". I would simply call it a "variant" or at most an "alteration" (for the latter, strictly, we must first prove that "philosophers' stone" is in fact the older form in English). 84.63.31.91 22:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)


 * As philosophōrum is in the genitive plural case, a direct translation would correctly be "philosophers' stone", so yes, it is most likely the older form. Wakuran (talk) 01:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The correct term is "misconstruction". Theknightwho (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm obviously aware of that; otherwise I wouldn't have suggested calling it an "alteration" in the first place. But such reasoning is meaningless. The only way to prove that "philosophers' stone" is the older form is by looking at the oldest English attestations. In fact, to my own surprise, Ngrams shows a strong dominance of "philosopher's stone", which grows ever stronger the further back one goes! (Of course, I can't be sure whether Ngrams is able to distinguish these properly.) 84.63.31.91 15:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

aburahaye
When adding my English entry (aburahaye), I couldn't find the Japanese term for"haye" to complete the etymology. I know for a fact that "abura" of the word meant "oil," but I couldn't seem to find out what the "haye" meant. Any suggestions? Couscousous (talk) 22:54, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There are only a handful of Google hits for the word, so it's unclear exactly which species the word refers to. I am also not sure on whether the ending should be read as [heɪ] or [hɑjɛ] (which have implications for which Japanese word that was borrowed). An initial guess is that it could be a mangling of goi, the compound form of koi. Wakuran (talk) 01:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Managed to find the species now. According to this dictionary, it seems to be'Sarcocheilichthys variegatus variegatus'. The Japanese article mentions Japanese article サクラバエ (sakurabae) and ヤナギバエ (yangibae), bae could be a compound form of hae, which apparently in zoological matters could refer to a carp or small fish. There are entries on the Japanese Wiktionary for hae and haya. Wakuran (talk) 01:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Google Translate implied the words could refer to sharks, so perhaps they ultimately have been borrowed from German Hai or Dutch haai (?...) Wakuran (talk) 01:42, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Found a kanji, so the last guess might be inaccurate. 鮠 Wakuran (talk) 01:56, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * For future reference, most Japanese plants and animals are referred to in katakana, so you would search on Google for "アブラハヤ". The first hit I checked gives the name in kanji as 油鮠, which confirms as the correct second part. Ignore the part about "carp" in our entry, since a dace is a type of minnow. Of course, carp, goldfish and minnows are all in the same family, so it's not that far off. The English name at the same site is "downstream fatminnow", with fat= and minnow=. They may have just calqued the Japanese name. Judging by Google Translate, "由来・語源 表面がぬめぬめして油がついたような感触だから. 長崎県東彼杵郡での呼び名の「アブラハエ」の「ハエ」を「ハヤ」に転訛して田中茂穂が命名したものではないか？　本種はタカハヤとの混称が多く、比較的よく使われた呼び名を元にしたのだと思う. " from the same website discusses the etymology- something about the skin feeling oily, and changing another, older name with "hae" meaning "fly" to "haya" and possibly influenced by the name of another fish. It also gives the name of the person who coined it, 田中茂穂 . Chuck Entz (talk) 05:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Whilst trying to make some worth in this gigantic discussion, I realized that maybe Iit should be checked for verification as the only results on Google Books were dictionaries. Couscousous (talk) 09:08, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * So, it would likely be pronounced as [hɑjɛ]? Could it have been a confusion from 'haya' or an attempt of indicating the separate pronunciation of a and e in 'hae'? Wakuran (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The Japanese Wikipedia page on (haya) states these fish are also called ハエ (hae) or ハヨ (hayo). The katakana character エ historically represented the syllable ye and takes the place for that syllable in the traditional katakana table, so I can imagine someone mechanically transcribing it as ye. There are Google hits for "aburahae", while "aburahaye" is only found in a supplement of the Century Dictionary.  --Lambiam 00:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Lambiam That's true, but English had essentially no contact with Japanese until long after the distinction between ye and e stopped being recognised. It feels more plausible that y was inserted epenthetically in English to prevent ae from being read as a diphthong. Theknightwho (talk) 01:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * When has avoiding two original syllables being read as one ever been pursued?  <  ;   <  ;   or  <  .  --Lambiam 07:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * isn't a good example, as English learnedisms derived from were originally pronounced  (see ; the archaic nonstandard form  is also worth mentioning in this connection); the modern pronunciation is due to synizesis similar to that seen in  and, supported by analogy with the more popular . Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 18:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Disregarding the old Japanese distinction between e and ye, syllables starting with "e" seem to have potentially had a non-phonemically distinctive phonetic glide at the time when Romanization of Japanese first was taking place (or had had one recently enough that it had become conventional to indicate it): compare Yedo, yen, Inouye. "Ye"-spellings like this are supposed to have occurred in the first and second versions of Hepburn's dictionary. But whether this is a plausible explanation for this word depends how old "aburahaye" is. We'll need to see what examples turn up as a result of the RFV.--Urszag (talk) 19:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Elymi
I am exploring the possiblity that Elymi derives from Proto-Indo-European (“mountain elm”), thus "Elm People". The Elymi spoke some kind of Indo-European language, and the Mountain Elm grows in Sicily. 24.108.18.81 01:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * If millet grew on Sicily, it may have come from . --Lambiam 07:16, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

goofy goober
The earliest given citation is in a novelization of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie; the book was released in September 2004 and the movie in November 2004. However, another book is given as a citation that dates to October 2004; it seems unlikely to me that the second citation, which was not written by someone involved with SpongeBob or the movie, was referencing a book made for children about a film connected to a children's TV show. It is possible that later citations may have been influenced by SpongeBob, but this one citation casts doubt on SpongeBob coining it. I suppose this could just be an alliterative SOP, unless WT:LIGHTBULB or WT:IDIOM ("goofy" and "goober" both refer to silliness) apply. -B RAINULATOR 9 (TALK) 04:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

, don't belong here at all, but are from a strong variant. But even for the rest I have trouble with the feminine gender. , are both clearly from a weak masculine. is given with both genders, but the fact that it became feminine in Middle Dutch and MLG means nothing because that's what commonly happened to inanimate weak masculines in these languages. Accordingly, there is absolutely no evidence for a feminine in West Germanic. The only remaining support would be. But is that even attested? I can't find it any sources. 84.63.31.91 06:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The Gothic is weak Masculine. I created the entry as a strong feminine because that's how it is presented in Koebler, despite the fact that all descendants are weak masculine. I haven't a clue why it's reconstructed this way. I'll move it. Leasnam (talk) 01:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Moved to . Leasnam (talk) 01:42, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

How are انار and رُمَّان related ?
"From Middle Persian [script needed] (ʾnʾl /⁠anār⁠/). Probably ultimately related to the pomegranate terms under Arabic رُمَّان (rummān)."

Is there any source or an explanation on how rummān and anār⁠ related ? "Probably" is not adequate enough without any source/explanation in my opinion.

I would delete that they are related if there is source/explanation but since it was added some years ago I'm a bit hesitant. If there is a source/explanation I would like to know it and to also to add it. Appreciate any help possible, Cheers. CaesarVafadar (talk) 07:52, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Have you seen the other potential cognates in the table of the Arabic section? The remark is more about them. After all it literally says “the pomegranate terms under rummān”. The two terms themselves are separated by several millennia.
 * Other than that, liquid metathesis is common in languages across the world.
 * You don’t have anything more helpful to write in the etymology, do you? Fay Freak (talk) 08:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I did look at the Arabic section. I just wanted something more academic in suggestion that source of انار is from the same place as رُمَّان or an explanation how they could be related.
 * From what I know of sound changes of Proto-Iranian to Old Persian/Old Iranian to Middle Persian/Middle Iranian, there is no sound change that explain this and there is no cognate of انار in Avestan. But I can only read English so my sources are kinda limited. I know there are some good sources in German, French and possible Russian. I guess multiple metathesis' could explain it, I know "R" likes to change position in Iranic languages.
 * Since we don't know origin of رُمَّان and origin of انار, I personally think, it's too much of a stretch to say they are related. We have to establish some sort of commonality, and like I said there are no sound change that could get us near a common word. I guess they Could be related. I'm not apposed to it.
 * If I could reword, I would change it to "From Middle Persian [script needed] (ʾnʾl /⁠anār⁠/), of uncertain origin. Perhaps ultimately related to the pomegranate terms of the same origin of Arabic رُمَّان (rummān)."
 * But when I'm not certain I don't like to add/delete/change etymologies.
 * Thanks for your response by the way, I didn't consider metathesis. CaesarVafadar (talk) 08:44, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Your proposed wording is totally okay. Myself I just changed “probably” to “arguably” since you voice your concerns so nicely.
 * Is there really nothing to add on the Iranian end? Something more in Middle Iranian or Old Iranian could lead us farther later. Even adding the exotic languages at the Arabic page took a while. Fay Freak (talk) 08:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Only things I could find are the Avestan word for 'pomegranate tree' /urvaram/ or /haδānaēpata/. I kinda doubt the accuracy of the second word though.
 * There also Sogdian n'r'kh, pronounced /nārāk(a)/ or (anār-āka) but I can't access the source of it. The place I found the word from says the source is "A Compendious Sogdian Dictionary" by Raham Asha. Author hasn't finished the book so I haven't bought it yet.
 * I don't have any book in Bactrian and I couldn't find anything pomegranate related in Pahlavi/Parthian.
 * I did find a article in "parsi.wiki" which seemed pretty in depth but no source was sited so I ignored it. CaesarVafadar (talk) 11:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Irish scraiste
Can anyone help me find a plausible etymology for ? DIL doesn't suggest one. Irish often reflects  or  in loanwords from (Middle) English or French/Anglo-Norman (e.g.  from  or  from ), so scraiste could come from something like  or "scradge", but I'm not finding anything with feasible semantics. Our entry for doesn't give anything, nor can I find anything likely-looking at the University of Michigan Middle English Dictionary. Does anyone happen to know of a word in older or dialectal English that means "lazy person" or the like and looks like it could be the ancestor of scraiste? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * If it helps (and you may know more than me about whether this source is reliable or not), Séamas Moylan, The Language of Kilkenny: Lexicon, Semantics, Structures (1996), mentions a second sense (in Hiberno-English rather than Irish, apparently?): page 230: SCRAISTE [...] n. 1. “A lazy, slothful man” (S-D). 2. A stingy, miserly person; gen in phr. a mean oul scraiste (KM). [Din. id. “sluggard, tramp, vagrant "; Ó Dón. id. "loafer, layabout." S.a. CNÍOPAIRE]. (CNÍOPAIRE, referred to above, is on page 73: CNÍOPAIRE n. "A miser" (S-D). [Din., Ó Dón. id. S.a. PIOSGUIRT, SCRAISTE, SCRIOS, ]) Given the reference to old scraiste above, I considered Old Scratch, but even "devil"-"miser" would be quite a semantic jump. AFAICT the EDD doesn't have any dialectal senses of scratch, cratch-that-often-becomes-scratch, or scradge that look plausible. It has scratcher "money-grubber" (as a run-in under scratch "scrap together, save; earn a scanty livelihood") which could plausible connect to "miser". - -sche (discuss) 20:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/boudi
RFV of the etymology. R:EDPC doesn't actually suggest any Indo-European origin of the word. Is the suggested connection with the Baltic words listed published anywhere? A new editor also keeps trying to push an utterly ridiculous connection with Phoenician and Proto-Semitic, which doesn't bear thinking about. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Please stop adding this unsourced and frankly ridiculous Semitic etymology to RC:Proto-Celtic/boudi, and especially please stop pretending it's sourced to Matasović, when he says nothing of the sort. He doesn't even mention the halfway plausible Indo-European etymologies listed; I don't know where they come from either. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If you can't conceive of the possibility of the language of the Phoenicians in the Iberian peninsula mixing with the proto-Celtic languages there, and with that mixture often being mediated by trade, in which "profit" is a completely reasonable word to posit as a borrowing from the culture bringing the mercantile to the culture benefitting from having nice neighbors who sell them saffron...
 * ... then you don't know know enough about history to be saying anything out here. Siprum (talk) 23:44, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Siprum That's all very well, but why are you falsifying sources? Theknightwho (talk) 01:32, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That was accidental. Apologies. I was unfamiliar with the layout. Siprum (talk) 01:34, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * But the Insular Celtic languages were never spoken in the Iberian peninsula, so the word has to have already been in Proto-Celtic before Celtic speakers spread into Iberia. Also, it's phonologically implausible that something with the consonants *b-ṣ-ʕ would become boudi; they have nothing in common but the initial b. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * See all of the earliest Celtic inscriptions and realize that the script is derived from Phoenician. Asserting anything prior to this is proto-Celtic speculation. As contact at the earliest attestation of Celtic is proven, it should be considered that that contact would be mediated by trade, and a word for profit would be completely plausible as a borrowing. Siprum (talk) 16:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * America and NZ write in a Phoenician-derived script (Latin alphabet), does that mean the ancient Phoenicians visited America and New Zealand? Obviously not. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:41, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Just saying, but didn't Phoenicia have trade links with Cornwall for their tin? Exarchus (talk) 08:38, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * All etymologies at the proto-language level should be sourced, period. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 06:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Outright restoring an etymology we have yet to source from anywhere is not a good idea either. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Requiring all etymologies to be sourced or deleted has absolutely never been a policy of the project, but, of course, having everything sourced is the goal. -- 17:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected re:sourcing etyms generally, but I did not feel that the Baltic connection in particular was plausible without sourcing from a previous scholar. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 05:33, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In all the hubbub, the only etymology with a source got removed so I re-added it. The etymological dictionary for Proto-Germanic also gives this at *bautan-: "Mir. búailid ‘to beat, strike’ (a denominal verb from an instrumental formation *bʰou-dʰlo-?)" and further: "the original root-final consonant cannot be identified as *d, but only as *t or *dʰ"
 * It seems to make a lot of sense that and Middle Irish búailid (see ) are related. Exarchus (talk) 10:21, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The EDPG says búailid might be related to *bautaną, but it doesn't mention búaid at all. Of course it's conceivable that búailid and búaid could be from the same root (especially if the original meaning of *boudi is 'victory' rather than 'profit'), but neither EDPG nor EDPC makes that leap. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It does seem more plausible to me than the link to the Baltic terms. This (old) dictionary reconstructs a root *boud for the Irish verb buail. I'll see if I can find something more recent. Exarchus (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * MacBain is definitely unreliable for connections outside of Celtic, and even he doesn't explicitly connect buaidh and buail. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:02, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * A quote from https://www.academia.edu/58408337/Celtic_Etymology: "Celtic etymological lexicography has been lagging behind that of most other European language families and it still exhibits many glaring gaps."
 * Maybe this is one of them...
 * (Btw, some people here, ahem, are actually mentioned in the article... Celtic etymology must be in a sorry state if one feels the need to talk about Wiktionary.) Exarchus (talk) 14:42, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Mahagaja I'm actually still confused about Matasovic's wording, why does he say German Beute etc. could come from "the same root *bʰewd-"? The same root as for Celtic? If he thinks a Germanic word for 'booty' can come from *bʰewd-, then why not the Celtic word? Exarchus (talk) 21:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I interpreted "Germanic forms ... could also be inherited from the same root" to mean all the Germanic forms could come from the same root, but you're right, it could also mean that the Germanic and Celtic words could all be inherited from the same root. His wording is ambiguous. Nevertheless, the fact that all the Germanic words appear to have been borrowed directly or indirectly from a Frankish or Old Dutch word makes it unlikely to be an inherited Proto-Germanic word. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * So what do we do? There don't seem to be many attempts to connect *boudi- to PIE, or to some hypothetical non-IE source, which surprises me given that Boudica is well-known. Pokorny gives "*bhoudhi- 'Sieg'?", which without connection to a verbal root isn't very illuminating. And Matasovic might simply intend it to come from *bʰewd- as he isn't claiming that this root for some reason doesn't occur in Celtic (see *bibud-).
 * Given that the current proposed etymology seems to be simply original research (btw, LIV is against connecting the Baltic and Iranian forms), I would a fortiori also mention *bʰewd-. Exarchus (talk) 08:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Current etymology gives: "From Proto-Indo-European *pol- (“to pour, flow, float, fly, swim, flee”)."

I'm not sure which root is actually intended here, and it also doesn't seem to make much sense to me. The supposedly related simply gives the etymology as unknown. Exarchus (talk) 09:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)


 * What is actually the source for and ? Could it be an outdated reconstruction given that etymonline.com suggests Old French as source for ? I can't find it in Kroonen's Proto-Germanic dictionary either.
 * Also relevant: Exarchus (talk) 15:13, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a good idea to ping the person that added the etymology. Also, never use etymonline.com. --  01:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't recall where that came from. I've updated the etymology at . Leasnam (talk) 02:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Leasnam I think a lot on that reconstruction page is debatable. For, dictionaries simply give 'borrowing from ' without mentioning Old Dutch. Then the Old French term is said to come from Late Latin (not *felus), which is of disputed origin, currently given as coming from , but the main hypothesis of TLFi rather gives *fillo, related to . Exarchus (talk) 07:24, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm getting the impression that the only forms hinting at the possible existence of are the Old English compounds wælfel (“bloodthirsty”), ealfelo (“evil, baleful”), ælfæle (“very dire”).
 * Apparently the first attestation of (mentioned at ) is the same Latin text where it's supposedly the ancestor of... Exarchus (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * So as you can see, I added a bunch of notes to the *faluz/*falu entries, feel free to comment, but I think these reconstructions are very shaky.
 * For there is at least Köbler's reconstruction, though with short 'e'. Exarchus (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Another question I have: what's the source for Old Frisian 'fal'? Because I can't find it in the 'Old Frisian Etymological Dictionary', and the etymology for modern West Frisian 'fel' is given as "Nederlands fel, Oudfrans fel". Exarchus (talk) 08:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * To answer the Frisian question: it is mentioned in the 1840 Richthofen dictionary, but also with the question whether it comes from Middle Dutch 'fel' / Old French 'fel'.
 * The word seems to be a hapax in Old Frisian, in a text from 1404, making a borrowing very likely. Exarchus (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

German post-liquid voicing
At we read "The second -d- is due to voicing after a liquid (as seen in some other words)." That's unhelpfully vague. Can we link some of these parallel examples? 4pq1injbok (talk) 13:11, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ? And even . Could be that the author didn’t went o mention many forms due to their having fallen out of or never belonging to the standard but Upper German dialects. Fay Freak (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think your examples had a similar -d- already in Proto-Germanic, so they might not be very good comparisons. Wakuran (talk) 17:18, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This is irrelevant, because all such cases presuppose /d/ in Proto-Germanic, since Proto-Germanic /d/ → /t/ and /t/ → /t͡s/, /s/ in High German due to the, so we only have /t/ from /d/ later becoming /d/ for dialectal reasons. Fay Freak (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

(Dutch)
Self explainitory at this point. 90.241.192.210 17:06, 12 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Not a bad question actually, I added the etymology Exarchus (talk) 20:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * By the way, to be really accurate, all Dutch verb forms like 'hoor', 'roep' etc. should have the 2nd person singular added in case of inversion ('roep je?'). Exarchus (talk) 20:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

âm ỉ
From âm + ỉ. Âm is another Nom reading of ấm (萻, 𤋾). Ỉ means small. Could someone verify this? EimarGD (talk) 12:01, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

the et in etwas
I would like to know more about this prefix that currently does not have a article. 90.241.192.210 12:25, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * From what I can find out, it seems related to German je and English aught, originally meaning ever, similar to Dutch iets, ietwat. Wakuran (talk) 13:14, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Dutch iets comes from the partitive genitive of, also responsible for the first component of ietwat. Its etymology, from , from +  << 🇨🇬, does not align with " (edde = some)" from the Etymology section of etwas. I think that   in that section is a misstatement. I don't know whether the claimed cognateness with  has a sound base.  --Lambiam 21:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There might be a connection with West Flemish 'eetwat, entwat' Exarchus (talk) 09:41, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This et is also found in and . As an annotation to Kluge states, "The origin of this pronominal ëte, ëtes, ëttes, ëddes, ‘any,’ is quite obscure."  --Lambiam 22:02, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

matschen
Origin? 90.241.192.210 17:38, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As others have told you before, take a look at the "Etymology" section. If you have specific questions about the origin, feel free to ask them. DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 20:35, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Proto West Germanic ancestor? 90.241.192.210 09:59, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There are similar Germanic words going back to Proto-West Germanic or Proto-Germanic such as mud, mash and mush, but this might be a later, imitative coinage. Wakuran (talk) 10:27, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Aargou
RFV of the etymology.

From, compound of [].

It looks like "" is really modern German, and not the same as whatever is inherited from.

After looking further, it seems that the etymology was copied whole from, with de changed to gsw. The etymology at is less wrong, but the part about inheritance as a whole word from  directly contradicts the part about compounding of modern German parts (from what I can tell, the OHG ancestor of, at least, had a quite different spelling from its German descendant).

The German etymology was added by an editor known for getting things mixed up and the entry was added by an editor known for masses of assembly-line-style edits with poor attention to detail.

Please fix both entries. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I found a possible reference: "Ar-, Är-gäu" under Gäu] in the Schweizerisches Idiotikon. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Ånnsjön
Ånnsjön is a lake in Jamtland, and is probably called after Ånn - the largest village at its coast. But the Wikipedia gives a weird explanation of the Ånn name itself, as it comes from a male personal name. Furthermore, Norwegian WP gives a South Sami name for the lake - Ånne, but i can't find it nowhere. Does anybody has any thoughts about the lake's etymology? May it be of Sami origin? Or is it from some little-known Jamtish word? Tollef Salemann (talk) 23:15, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * (/unnə/) is South Sami for 'small' (found also elsewhere in Sami, e.g. North — though lack of expected *nn > dn in these suggests it is not inherited from Proto-Samic), which could very well be a modifier in toponyms. Wringing an å- directly from this seems difficult; in some different morphological formations in SSami, an *a-umlaut *u > o (å) would be expected, but this would also not give a form Ånne. And then is the lake particularly small at all? --Tropylium (talk) 12:52, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Granta
I've seen two untrustworthy (IMO) sources which claim Granta, as in the river which passes through Grantchester on its way to the Great Ouse, is Brittonic for muddy river. Any thoughts? -- two millennia later, its upper section is generally renowned for being crystal clear, but that was above what was the head of navigation before it was canalised. Lower down, through Cambridge (the Cam was originally the Granta until a backformation after Grantebrycge had mutated to Cambridge) it's muddier, and below Magdalene Bridge aka Great Bridge, where the Roman Duralipons was (I assume the pons means they built a bridge there, at what was the head of navigation) it has a very muddy section, but IIRC even further down, towards the Great Ouse, it's clear again. Having said that, the local clay is extremely claggy, much more so IMO than near London, so anyone would remember the banks of the Granta as muddy. --Eng in ear 01:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

drutta
Origin? 90.241.192.210 15:02, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There are some similar Swedish words dråsa and drösa, which I guess possibly might be related. Wakuran (talk) 17:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There are also similar variants of dratta and tratta. SAOB only mentions tratta, with the etymology given as "imitative". Wakuran (talk) 21:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Old Norse ancestor? 2A0D:3344:12C:9410:6085:C890:4E94:EC06 07:31, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Probably too recent for that. Dråsa has a possible ancestor in Old Norse *drjósa / Proto-Germanic *dreusaną. Wakuran (talk) 10:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Old Norse has the similar word detta, but it seems unclear if there's a connection. Wakuran (talk) 10:25, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Ք
Origin of letter? 90.241.192.210 15:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello? 90.241.192.210 10:29, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Where did this letter come from??? 90.241.192.210 11:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)


 * You may have more luck hitting up some place like History of the Armenian alphabet, we don't normally deal much here with the graphic derivation of writing systems. --Tropylium (talk) 12:58, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

bouillotte
The etymology of the English entry is poorly formatted, I think the implication is that the word for the card game is directly borrowed from the same word in French with the same meaning, namely a card game resembling poker. We only have hot water bottle as the meaning for the French entry though. Anyway, why did the word for a hot water bottle get used for the name of a card game in the first place? Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)


 * French dictionary gives this for the card game: "Peut-être dér. de bouillir* en raison de la rapidité du maniement des cartes dans ce jeu" Exarchus (talk) 18:49, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

lieutenant
Etymology says: From Middle French lieutenant, from lieu (“place”) + tenant (“holding”). Doublet of locum tenens.

I'd always assumed (with absolutely no evidence) that the word came over at the Norman Conquest in 1066, therefore from Old Norman, and that that language did at the time use the u as a consonant, explaining the UK pronunciation as levtenant (only Anglicising the -ant). Was I wrong? --Eng in ear 01:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I've updated the etymology at . Middle English shows various forms, including, , , , and even as , so perhaps the f/v developed from an earlier w or an earlier ȝ (cf. , , etc.). Leasnam (talk) 02:12, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. If I hadn't found engineering so time-consumingly interesting, I think I would have made linguistics a hobby if not a  profession. Apart from introducing me to Anglo-Norman, via the etymology of draught you've introduced me to dragan, with its meanings drag and draw, thus explaining where the gh in draught comes fromǃ  Very interesting.  Triviaː I think friend and lieutenant are the only common words where ie is pronounced /ɛ/, although the unstressed ie in words formed from participles of compounds of facio and some others, do have an /ə/ rather than, say, an /ɪ/. ̴̴So thanks again. ̴̴̴̴̴ --Eng in ear 02:59, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

płaz
Etymology with no reference. The notion of the word being borrowed from Czech doesn't make much sense, since Old Polish had its native płazić/płazać, from which a deverbal płaz could be derived, as sources cited in Further Reading suggest. JimiY ☽ ru 09:01, 17 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I've added to the page. I can check later but the whole page needs a clean-up, which is something I can't get to right now, as I'm finalizing some steps for a major Polish dialectology I've been working on. Perhaps someone else can volunteer. Vininn126 (talk) 09:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

dungeon
There's some back-and-forth happening in the edit history. It may be in vain to hope anyone else knowledgeable can weigh in, besides the four Romance and Germanic editors who've already edited the etymology in the last four months, but I want to raise it here in case anyone else can. The dispute is over whether dungeon is (Only recentish relevantish discussion I've spotted is Etymology scriptorium/2022/February.) M-W, Dictionary.com and Etymonline have short etymologies which only mention the Romance derivation, and in fairness / complete disclosure of what I found, M-W explains how the semantic evolution might've happened without needing the Germanic word ("Part of the [donjon] tower usually included an underground room, the dungeon, usually used for prisoners."), though the fact that both the semantics and the spelling of the Germanic word line up is noticeable. I have not searched specialized Germanic or Romance etymology resources yet, and have no stance on what is right (am just reporting what I have found so far). - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * partly from and partly from, or
 * purely from donjon, "likely with semantic input" (and apparently also orthographic influence) from dung.
 * Middle English is probably from Anglo-Norman, and probably partially also from 🇨🇬. Continental Old French donjon was an inner residence or bower (usually the main tower), the most secure and fortified place in a fortress or castle, where a king kept his family in the event of an attack. It was the place where the royal family made its last stand if the castle were overrun by an enemy. Old French Donjons were not used to keep prisoners and they were not below ground. This was also usually the case in Anglo-Norman, a dunjun/dongon was the king's secret residence, but there are very rare occurrences where the term dungun/dongoun is used to mean a place to keep prisoners, either above or below ground. The shift from "King's private residence chambers" to "place where prisoners are kept" seems strange, as kings do not customarily throw their enemies or criminals into their personal residences where their wives and children live - quite the opposite. These rare instances in Anglo-Norman seem to reveal possible influence from [Old~Middle] English or some other Germanic language. Lastly, as the current etymology at  states, Old English dung became Middle English donge and then Middle English dongoun over time, possibly due to "Frenchification" of the word (in a manner similar to what some sources claim caused humble lunch to morph into fancy, high-class luncheon). In summary, I feel the current state of the Etymology at  short-changes the Old English input, which seems to be the only sense that survives to this day, and causes the current etymology to be partially incorrect. Leasnam (talk) 06:10, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Concerning "Part of the [donjon] tower usually included an underground room, the dungeon, usually used for prisoners.", I thought it was a cellar used for the storage of ice ! Despite this, I find it strange that if this were the case that only in English and sometimes in Anglo-Norman that this cellar comes to be referred to as . Leasnam (talk) 17:29, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The evidence paints a pretty good picture of what happened. The English referred to what we would today call a "dungeon" as a dung in Anglo-Saxon times. This was until there was exposure to the Old French word donjon, which referred to the main tower in a fortress. The ultimate result, over time, was a conflation of the two in Middle English. Senses of the Middle English word like "an abyss," "an abyssal prison, such as Hell or the world," and "a whirlpool or vortex," distinctly reflect senses of the more straightforward Middle English descendant of Old English dung, donge/dunge/dung. Tharthan (talk) 20:17, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

dominion
while this is up, can we say dominion is a doublet of dungeon? We list the OF word dominion as deriving from L dominium, but there's clearly a suffix in the OF word that we dont specify. Might it be that same -ionem suffix that appears in dungeon? Thanks, — Soap — 06:43, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm not 100% convinced that is completely from hypothetical . First of all, the suffix  makes no sense, as it was used to form diminutives, and *dominiō (the nominative form) would properly mean "masterling", "lordling", not "grand tower". I believe donjon is primarily from, a variant of  and was assimilated in Vulgar Latin to words for "home"  or "lord"  due to early folk etymology, hence the spellings and forms with -m(n). The fact that this term appears so late (12th c.) and only in France and nowhere else in the Roman world does a lot to put doubt on a purely Romance origin. Leasnam (talk) 11:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Chumash (as in the Californian tribe)
We say that the tribe's name derives from "Ineseño čʰumaš ('the Island Chumash people')". This makes no sense to me. I checked Wikipedia, but it says two something weird. The peoples name derives from "bead maker" or "seashell people" in a (presumably Chumashian) language. The language comes from a term meaning "Santa Cruz Islander". I am not sure which etym is right, if any of them are. CitationsFreak (talk) 08:31, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * "Our Mother Tongues" (a website devoted to Native American languages) cites "many elders" as giving the bead/seashell etym. I'll see if I can find the original source for this, although I am unsure if it's needed in the case. CitationsFreak (talk) 08:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * First of all, it's simply wrong to talk about the Chumash as a "tribe", because Southern California peoples before European contact identified with their local groups such as villages or groups of villages and had no collective leadership or identity. They were, of course, aware of the differences in language with neighbors to the north and east, but internally, there was no cohesion. After the Spanish came, the Chumash, like most of the Southern California indigenous peoples, were referred to by the name of the mission in their area. Even today, linguists and anthropologists refer to the "Barbareño Chumash", "Ineseño Chumash", "Obispeño Chumash", "Purismeño" and "Ventureño Chumash". Those away from missions are referred to by geography as "Inland Chumash", "Island or Cruzeño Chumash", etc.
 * The reason I brought that up is because my understanding is that there was no endonym for the people as a whole. There was definitely a distinct and well-developed culture, especially since the people to the east and south spoke Uto-Aztecan languages and probably had their origins from somewhere else- but not a collective identity. Anthropologists tended to divide everyone up by language, and the US Government used those divisions. The local peoples had to follow the US Government because their lives were under US Government control and the US Government set everything up according to its own classifications. If they wanted to own land and have any autonomy, they had to do it on US Government terms.
 * As I understand it from years of reading lots of ethnographic accounts, "Chumash" was originally the name of a single village on one of the islands, which was first generalized to the Island Chumash people, then the people as a whole. Since the Island Chumash traveled quite a bit along the coast, I can see how Europeans might have asked visiting islanders who they were, and they would naturally receive the reply, "Chumash", referring to the village. I suspect that the "bead/seashell" etymology is folk etymology, or perhaps alluding to the origins of the village name. I'll have to dig up some sources. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:42, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * According to the Wishtoyo Chumash foundation, "Chumash" referred to the people living on Santa Cruz Island (the area with the most amoutn of Chumash), and later evolved to encompass everyone in this tribal group. The San Buenaventura mission, quoting the Santa Ynez band of Chumash, says that the elders say it means "seashell people" or "bead makers". Britannica Kids (but not the main site, interestingly) claims it derives from "shell-bead-money maker", and the National Parks Service claims it derives from "makers of shell-bead money", from the way the Santa Cruz band used shells to make money. I feel that this etym is the right one from where the Barbareño term came from, as it is just a combination of the two etyms that the elders claim.
 * As such, I believe the sequence of events is (Barbareño) "maker of shell-money" > "Santa Cruz Islander" > (English) "member of this tribe-group", which lines up with what you said. CitationsFreak (talk) 02:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Possibly relevant: Ventureño dictionary entry for "tšumaš" and search for "money", which links to ałtšum, which in turn links to tšum. Interestingly, there's no trace of the village name here. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:54, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would also like to point out that the "tš" in "tšumaš" has also been written as "č". (I'm also not sure if this is the specific lang that gave us this word, or if Inezeño has a similar word.) CitationsFreak (talk) 07:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Victor Golla writes this in Californian Indian Languages (University of California Press, 2011): ""Chumash is from Central Chumash čʰumaš 'islander', specifically an inhabitant of the Channel islands (called mi-čʰumaš 'islander place')". The term was chosen by J.W.Powell for the entire group with this rationale: "Chumash...the name of the Santa Rosa islanders a term widely known among the Indians of this family" (cited by Golla).
 * As for the deeper etymology, is -aš something found elsewhere in Chumashan morphology or word-formation? Or is čʰumaš ~ ałtšum more of a syllable-jumbling folk etymology? –Austronesier (talk) 11:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

nuf (Dutch)
Origin? 90.241.192.210 10:30, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Dutch Wiktionary states it to be from Low German, from a word meaning "conceited woman". Wakuran (talk) 11:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * proto west germanic ancestor? 90.241.192.210 12:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Probably newer than that. Wakuran (talk) 17:07, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * where did the low german term come from then 90.241.192.210 18:06, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd guess that we don't really know. Proto-Language ancestors are rarely constructed from single terms. It might have come from some older word, it might have changed its meaning for unknown reasons, it might have been a spontaneous coinage. I guess its attestations really are too late for much to be said with certainty. Wakuran (talk) 18:30, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Where do you think it came from? 90.241.192.210 11:15, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

glitschig
already obvious what i want 90.241.192.210 10:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * There's some info at glitch. Wakuran (talk) 11:24, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's from, which is not a terribly common verb in contemporary German, although is quite common, as apparently is the Yiddish cognate .  is some sort of frequentative/intensive derivative of . —Mahāgaja · talk 17:55, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Lurch
Origin? 90.241.192.210 10:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Is this the German word? The Addams Family character is named after the verb lurch, I believe. Wakuran (talk) 11:33, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * yes 90.241.192.210 12:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Will you respond? 90.241.192.210 11:17, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

tota
Any ideas what language of Egypt (or nearby areas) would've given rise to this name for the grivet? ጦጣ or a relative thereof? - -sche (discuss) 05:18, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Romanian diminutive -eag
we have a rare, redlinked diminutive  -eag. is it from ? if so i think it would be worth creating a page just for the etymology. ro.wikt has it redlinked too. thanks, — Soap — 06:14, 20 July 2024 (UTC)