beauty and life of language
| word | utterance, statement (old English) promise (old English) wurda (Proto-Germanic), woord (Dutch), verbum (Latin) Plato: only two kinds of words are needed – nouns, and verbs. …Things and Intentions. …Labels and Actions. But if verbs are actions, then verbs are nothing without nouns… there cannot be an action without a thing doing it. Except ‘to be’. So, does consciousness stand alone? | source: Merriam Webster, Antoine Fabre D’Olivet |
| love* | lufian – to feel love for (Old English) lufu – feeling of love (Old English) leubh – to care, desire (Proto-Indo-European root) from lubojanan (Proto-Germanic) possibly related: lubhyati – desires (Sanskrit) lobhaya – to make crazy (Sanskrit) | source: etymonline.com |
| cheater | once meant rent collector | source: How Language Works |
| decision* | from Old French décision (14c.); from Latin decisionem: agreement, settlement… from past-participle stem ‘decidere‘ meaning to cut-off, de (off) + caedere (to cut) | source: etymonline.com |
| Eskimo | ‘people who don’t cook their fish’ …labeled so by Eskimo neighbors | The Dawn of Everything: A new History of Humanity by D. Graeber and D. Wengrow |
| hazard* | from Arabic words ‘huz’ (meaning luck) and ‘zahir’ (meaning dice)… implying risk and danger | source: research + Planet Word, Washington DC |
| idea | late 14c, ‘concept of a thing in the mind;’ from Greek ἰδέα (idea) meaning the look of a thing, pattern; from the root of ἰδεῖν idein, to see; Plato: things that are seen, highlighting elements of perception without a physical encounter. | source: etymonline.com; wikipedia.org |
| infant | essentially, from ‘not speaking’: ‘in’ = ‘not’ (Latin), fant is speaking (Latin), and ‘infantem’ became ‘young child’ | source: Planet Word, Washington DC |
| journey* | distance traveled in one day (Old English) a day’s length; day’s work or travel (Old French journée) Spanish jornada, Italian giornata diurnāta (Medieval Latin) | source: etymonline.com |
| language* write | from Old French langage, 12th century, meaning speech, words, a people, a nation. from Vulgar Latin, linguaticum; from Latin, lingua, meaning toungue. The act of writing, in European language means to carve or scratch. Write and Script to write seems to be from Old English, meaning to score or to draw the figure of; from Proto-Germanic, meaning to scratch from Old Norse, rita, meaning to scratch… | source: etymonline.com |
| leopard* | lion + panther seems to be from greek leon (lion), and sanskrit prdakuh (panther) from Old French – lebard, leupart from Late Latin – leopardus – meaning “lion-pard, lion-panther” from Greek – leopardos, from leon “lion” (see lion) + pardos “male panther,” likely from Sanskrit – prdakuh “panther, tiger” | source: etymonline.com |
| magic* | magh -to be able, have power (Proto-Indo-European) maeg – I can (Old English) mag – can, is able (Gothic) magan – power, might (Old High German) mekhane – device (Greek) mekhos – means (Greek) possibly related: mahan – great (Sanskrit) | source: etymonline.com |
| neighbor* | In old English, ‘neah’ was near, ‘gebur’ was dweller. | source: Planet Word, Washington DC |
| opportunity* | originally from the Latin phrase ob portum veniens – meaning coming toward a port and referencing the wind; becoming opportunus – fit, convenient; then opportunitatem – fitness, convenience, favorable time and Old French opportunitie – fit or convenient | source: etymonline.com |
| pineapple | Essentially, pinecone-shaped fruit. Way way back, the Romans used ‘apple’ for foreign fruits, and nuts, and vegetables. The English picked up the practice (even a banana was called apple); and, when English explorer John Smith first saw the fruit, he did not know that the name ‘ananas’ was already being used; instead, he saw a similarity to a pine fruit and added ‘apple’… hence pine and apple. Ananas, the name for pineapple in Italian, French, German, Arabic… is derived from nanas–native Peruvian language–meaning ‘excellent fruit’. | source: Merriam Webster |
| october | the name of the month is really the number 8 in Latin; similarly in Italian (Ottobre, where otto is eight). Same with September (seven is septem in Latin)… and November, and December. Long before the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the year started in March, and October was the eighth month. | |
| secret* | ‘se-‘ was apart/alone/separated, in Latin; ‘krei’ was to distinguish, in Proto-Indo-European | source: etymonline.com |
| senate | from Latin senatus, “council of elders,” from senex (genitive senis) “old man, old.” | source: Italian friends; etymonline.com |
| smog | smoke + fog someone in the 1800s wanted to describe London’s pollution | source: Planet Word, Washington DC |
| shampoo | from Hindi ‘champo’ – to press, knead the muscles; perhaps from Sanskrit ‘capayati’ “pounds, kneads.” | source: Friends, etymonline.com |
| ciao | hi/hello/goodbye in Italian, originated from ‘schiavo’ from a Venetian dialect around the 9th century, and meant ‘I am your slave.’ That period witnessed heavy slave trading and human-trafficking throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa | source: Silk Roads |
| east/west | in old Hebrew, east refers to what has passed, or old, and west refers to what is to come |