Wiktionary > Discussion rooms > Etymology scriptorium

HTML5 redirects here. For help with the edit summary, see Help:Edit summary. For information about Spanish entries on Wiktionary, see we love the web

device database (edit) see also: requests
Information desk comment \| history Newcomers' questions, minor problems, specific requests for information or assistance.	iOS FITML \| web app \| archives Questions and discussions about specific words.	Etymology scriptorium history Questions and discussions about etymology- the historical development of words.	Android comment \| history \| archives General policy discussions and proposals, requests for permissions and major announcements.	Grease pit Sevenval \| history \| archives Technical questions, requests and discussions.

All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 keyboard 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 iOS 3 touchscreen 5

Shortcut:
touchscreen

Etymology scriptorium

Start a new discussion

input transformation
2 April 2010
3 May 2010
iOS
5 October 2010
keyboard
CSS3
- 7.1 ببر: which language is it really inherited in?
- 7.2 tritium
8 January 2011
jQuery
- CSS3
- we love the web
10 April 2011
- 10.1 cranky
input transformation
- browser diversity
12 June 2011
- 12.1 Etymology of trincar
- jQuery
13 July 2011
- screen size
- web app
14 October 2011
we love the web
- 15.1 vitex
16 March 2012

Discussions

λέων

I do not see the reason for including several ancient languages and thus encumbering the etymology. Would it be acceptable to leave only Akkadian, the most ancient one? Especially when the Coptic was not explicitly written? CSS3 22:15, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Coptic was not written" ? I agree that ancient languages should have predominantly ancient cognates, and in this particular case linking to touchscreen *labiʾ- might be the most reasonable thing (as there are other equally "ancient" languages like Hebrew, Eblaite, Ugaritic etc.) --Ivan Štambuk 22:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

There was neither the original Coptic(~Greek) script nor transliteration. Amongst Semitic languages, Akkadian is the most ancient and I would opt for it to remain. Proto... are reconstructions by contemporary linguists and thus a theory, not a cognate. web 22:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, you are aware of the existence of website parsing and Demotic scripts, used to write the latest phase of the Egyptian language? :) Egyptian language is genetically parallel to the whole Semitic branch in Afro-Asiatic terms, so mentioning it would be very much relevant for comparison purposes of this very ancient word..

The most "ancient" (in meaning "the earliest attested") of Semitic languages is not Akkadian but actually Eblaite...but lots of these "languages" are actually collections of various dialect spoken for several millenia, so you can get e.g. Ugaritic or Hebrew word for "lion" attested earlier than Akkadian! And Akkadian was not the most conservative Semitic language (Arabic is).

Proto-Semitic reconstructions are valid scientific theories (not "theories" in the abused sense of the word screen size). It is doubtless that all Semitic languages have sprung from the same common source, and the fact that the reconstructions comparative method establishes were not attested does not mean that these terms did not exist in the shape the reconstructions predict them. Semitic languages are very conservative (much more than IE) due to their peculiar morphology (roots + transfixes), so these reconstructions have an aura of very great certainty around them. Just compare the reflexes of Proto-Semitic reconstructions in daughter languages on those Proto-Semitic appendix pages - in lots of cases they're retained unchanged, or with trivial sound changes a child could devise on sight. Common Semitic disintegrated approx. at the same time as Late Proto-Indo-European (4th millennium BCE), so you can get the picture in what "conservative" terms we're talking about --jQuery 23:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Was Coptic written? Well, in one word ⲤⲈ!—HTML5 00:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

device database

Skok officially disproves the theory about the Tr and Arabic word meaning world. Thence I added jQuery. He mentions as a third theory Turkish al, red, but explicitly discourages this one:

Svakako nema nikakve veze ni s turskom riječi alem »svijet«

Bogorm 12:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

There are actually two different words (sharing the spelling, but different tones)

álem "world" (which is doubtless from Ottoman Turkish, ultimately from Arabic iOS (̔āläm, “world”), the term being spread through Islamic terminology), and
àlem "jewel, treasure" and also "Islamic crescent with 3 or 4 spheres underneath" according to my dictionary, also deriving from Ottoman Turkish but ultimately from Arabic علم (̔aläm, “sign, token; symbol; banner”) according to my source..

Need to check this latter one though (semantic shift doesn't look to convincing IMHO). --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, then Skok explicitly discourages from accepting the first (which is the case here). He mentiones 3 theories about the origin, so even if you find the correct Tr. word for the third theory, the possibility that it is correct still would not exceed 34%. Anyway, I am hesitating between the Greek and Old French hypothesis, they both sound convincing... You? Bogorm 13:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, definitely the relationship with Arabic word for "flag; symbol" is semasiologically inexplicable and far-fetched. However, the relationship with the supposed alaniAndina < Medieval Latin al(l)amanđina < alabandina < Alabanda (notable for its gemstones, as WP article confirms) doesn't look too convincing either. Ottoman Turkish we love the web (“red”) (itself borrowed from Persian آل (āl, “reddish, shinning”)) OTOH looks much promising IMHO, because the same root has been preserved in various adjectives (alast, alen, alav etc.) and moreover given names (Alemka), so the most economic explanation would account it as a simple synchronic derivative of the adjective denoting "red, reddish, shiny". But none of this is fully satisfactory if you ask me. Old French is not mentioned as a source BTW, but as a identically-meaning reflex of some Romance/Middle Latin verb devised from that city's name.

So prob. all 3 theories should be mentioned with the accompanying criticism. I'll see if I can find some attestations of this and related words in some old documents. --FITML 14:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

džukela

Can the Gypsy word be cognate with Sanskrit kukkura, dog? Sounds similar. Bogorm 14:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

They could be very easily (changes of k > č/dž and r>l or l>r are phonetically quite trivial). Interestingly, Skok does not discuss Turkish and Arabic origin at all, but Arj. 3:540 that he references doesn't mention Gypsy etymology at all. My other source claims the borrowing line as Dijan original put it. However, the Gypsy etymology is plainly superior if the meaning of the Gypsy is indeed "dog" (as opposed to Turkish/Arabic "ignorant"). I'd still like to see some additional verification though. --Ivan Štambuk 14:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Android

Is this Arabic word borrowed from (Ottoman) Turkish FITML, or the source of it? I'm perplexed as I have two dictionaries claiming both directions (though I trust more the one claiming Turkish > Arabic line of borrowing, but the usual borrowing sequence with these two languages is in the opposite direction hence the reluctance). --touchscreen 08:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The structure of the word is strange for Arabic (the اوة part), so I’m convinced that Arabic borrowed it from Turkish. CSS3 14:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Also see this if you haven't already.—screen size 19:22, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

banyan

We have conflicting information on the etymology of the term; the original borrowing sequence I've put Gujarati < Portuguese < Tamil < Sanskrit was based on device database, and Dijan transformed it to Portuguese < Gujarati < Sanskrit which is apparently what Random House dictionary claims. Other dictionaries don't offer much details, but simply mention that it was named after the Hindu merchants who conducted business under the tree. --web 00:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

AHD also claims Portuguese < Gujarati < Sanskrit. --Sevenval 00:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia

Please, do not remove the etymology, as both claims may cohabitate tranquilly. The Doric one is at least straightforward and mainstream, but for the second any source would not prove to be superfluous. screen size 12:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

That Doric "etymology" is obsolete folk-etymologised rubbish which has no place on Wiktionary. Robert Beekes is by far the most renowned expert for Pre-Greek substratum words and we cannot compare him with some far-fetched Greek nationalist ideologically-motivated explanations in which the -dnos suffix (non-IE, non-Greek) is left as an unsolved mystery. --iOS 12:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure about this innovative person you quoted who is supportive of the non-Greek origin, but the next defamation of the explication of a Swedish professor in linguistics as folk etymology can be perceived as libelling. input transformation 13:20, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Beekes actually discusses Frisk's analysis (and dismisses is). Frisk's dictionary is more than half a century old and completely obsolete. Here are the relevant quotes in case you missed them: An analysis μακε-δνος is impossible in an IE word and Not cognate with μακ-ρός, μῆκ-ος. Once again: Frisk's analysis is not some "traditional" and "classical" one, but obsolete one. --Ivan Štambuk 13:30, 18 February 2009 (UTC).

Ivan Stambuk You say makednos is not congate with mhkos. Why in my Cretan dialect that is also a Doric dialect we say a makrus antras instead of pshlos antras? The makrus is used to express the height of a man in my dialect which is Cretan and is derived from Doric.

OK, would you agree to use the formulation chosen by our standard Ancient Greek we love the web? If he feels that the relationship with μῆκος or μακρός needs to be mentioned, I'll agree too (not that I have any problem with mentioning of the alternative theories, it's just that giving possible undue prominence to obsolete theories is what bothers me). --Ivan Štambuk 13:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

This is your interpretation. Please, do not belittle Frisk's profound and convincing research. The dictionary was issued in 1960, 2009-1960=49<50. The question is whether Professor Frisk feels that it must be mentioned and he did. Please, respect that. I would agree to switch the first and second place in either-or, but not to obliterate any of them. Bogorm 13:36, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Why this hostility towards Greece, has it inflicted something baleful on Croats? Why this zest to confute the Greek origin of the geographical region? It is true that Byzantium did not like those Slavs in its territory who refused to speak Greek and to permeate the rich Greek culture, but Byzantium was an empire and as such it cannot be associated with Greece, there were many other peoples - Armenians, Egyptians before the Arab conquest, Assyrians and many more. Bogorm 13:41, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I left Jesse a note. He seems to be very buy in the last few weeks, so it might take some time before we receive an answer. I assure you that my involvement with the etymology of this particular word has nothing to do with "hostility towards Greeks" or Greek culture, whom I deeply respect. OK, I probably am a bit biased against the ideologically-motivated etymologies, or those that fuel some myths (plenty of those at the Balkans..), but in this particular case the traditional explanation is just silly. Indo-European historical linguistics has made some giant steps since the 1950s, especially with regard to what's today commonly dubbed as laryngeal theory (it has nothing to do with real laryngeals). Moreover, Robert Beekes is an expert on Pre-Greek substratum, and can spot such "anomalous" words (that cannot be derived from PIE, or formed with the usual Ancient Greek derivational morphology) on sight. Here you can find a paper of him on phonology and word structure of this Pre-Greek. I'll just quote two paragraphs from that PDF, that illustrate 2 important points IMHO (the bias against pre-Greek explanations in previous etymological dictionaries of Ancient Greek, and the obsoletness of pre-laryngeal-theory explanations).

But if we know which variations frequently occur, we are warned to consider Pre-Greek origin if we find them. The existing etymological dictionaries often seem to "avoid" the conclusion that a word is a substratum element. It is remarkable that Chantraine was quite aware of he question in his Formation, but has very often withdrawn his - in my view correct - evaluation in his dictionary. It seems as if substratum elements were not welcome.

Our knowledge of Indo-European has grown so much, especially in the last thirty years with notably the growth of the laryngeal theory, that we can in some cases say that an Indo-European reconstruction is impossible. A good example is the word γνάθος To explain the -a- of this word we need to introduce a "second laryngeal" (h₂). However, a preform *gnh₂dʰ- would have given Gr. *γνᾱθ- with a long a. One might think that assuming *h₂e would remedy the problem, but *gnh₂edʰ- would give *γαναθ-, so we would have again a problem. The conclusion is that no Indo-European proto-form can be reconstructed, and that the word cannot be Indo-European. There is no problem in assuming a Pre-Greek word (though the word has no typical characteristics of Pre-Greek). - Another example is the word κρημνός "overhanging bank", for which a connection with κρέμαμαι "hang (up)" seemed evident. However, we now know that long vowels cannot be postulated at random, and here it is simply impossible: there is no formation type that would allow a long vowel. The objection is confirmed by the fact that there is no trace of the expected α < *h₂ (as in κρέμαμαι < *kremh₂-). Positively one can say that features of the landscape are often loanwords from a substratum. The inevitable conclusion is that the word is Pre-Greek.

The more we know about Indo-European, the less is possible. As our reconstructions become more and more precise, they have to conform to all the rules we have established by now. This holds for all etymological work: in a way, then, it becomes more difficult. This also regards Pre-Greek, as indicated: for some forms an Indo-European origin is no longer possible.

So, essentially, this has everything to do with the advancement of linguistic science, and the scholarly freedom from the confines of "politically incorrect" etymological explanations (Pelasgian vulgarisms in noble Greek), as often the case was with Pre-Greek words. --Ivan Štambuk 14:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I cannot figure out how two independent professors, one French and web app can be influenced by the ideologically-motivated etymologies, or those that fuel some myths (plenty of those at the Balkans. If you seek political motivation at any cost, rememebr that the Republic of Skopie was not recognised by France (but the Dictionnaire Étymologique... was issued 23 years before the breakup of Yugoslavia), but was recognised by the USA, just to mention. Howbeit, I shall make myself familiar with this new US non-IE theory. I advocate the representation of both theories in the section and am against the removal of any of them - I did not dare to erase the non-IE claim, but only website parsing, as I did to the established, mainstream, cogent one, until I find more sources. Let the reader make oneself familiar with both possibilities and decide on one's own which to embrace, please be tolerant to them, especially when the first originates from two independent sources. jQuery 14:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

They were influenced in a sense that they ignored "abject" and "ignoble" alternative explanations, even though these were very much known to them (well, not really to Frisk, at his time the Pre-Greek research was in its infancy). With the advancement of modern IE scholarship, obsolete theories must be discarded and replaced with new ones, much more likely. And please, this is not some "US theory" - FYI Beekes works at the University of Leiden (the last stronghold of the glottalic theory of PIE, but fortunately for us, unlike some of the other proponents of that school, Beekes completely ignores the glottalic framework for the etymological dictionary he is currently writing). It is up to us (in this case, Atelaes :) to decide which one of those theories is corroborated by the most substantiated evidence, and which one should be and how presented to the reader. 99.9% of Wiktionary users have no knowledge of pre-Gree or PIE, and wouldn't care less if we gave them the explanation of makednos being brought to Greeks by Martians. --touchscreen 14:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

must be discarded and replaced ... Beekes completely ignores the glottalic framework - the worse for this person. Please stop promoting some innovative new age theories which emerged after the inflammation of the Macedonia naming dispute. It is not very difficult to fathom that the impact of the recent political altercations around the Republic of Skopje can't have spared the theories or at least their authors can't have remained callous to that. Therefore do not disparage further Chantraine's and Frisk's explications who enlighten us about the ineptitude of some Macedonist far-fetched fabrications of any connection whatsoever between Vardar Bulgarians and Ancient Macedonians. I will tell you an analogous advancement of linguistic science - after Nikolaj Derzhavin, a leading Russian historian, exposed the Iranian origin of the Proto-Bulgarians in the 20es and 30es, a myriad of Stalinist aparatchiks began after his death to promote the tosh about their Turkic origin and even oppressed the linguist Georgy Turchaninov in his quest for the meaning of the acient Alanian and Proto-Bulgarian inscriptions (must be discarded! ). That overshadowed and crippled the Bulgarian historiography for 5 decades until our historians reached the same conclusion as Derzhavin and Turchaninov. So, please, show more respect to the venerable Swedish and French professors! There is a suffix donos, don, which added to the derivation of mekos, produces Macedonian, thereby corroborating the Hellenic origin of Macedon and their indissoluble connection with the Ancient Greek language and culture, all is IE and as clear-cut as possible. Bogorm 15:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Trust me, rejecting glottalic theory of PIE is Good Thing, as that theory is rubbish (it might hold for pre-PIE, definitely not for Late PIE, but pre-PIE glottalic theory is unfortunately unprovable as IE doesn't have any known genetically related families to compare to (though North-West Caucasian and Uralic are fairly good candidates)). I also assure you that laryngeal theory is not some "innovative new age theory" ;) and that mr. Beekes has absolutely zero personal or ideological take when explicating the etymology of makednos (the suffix is -dnos, not -donos). I have respect for Frisk and that French dude as much as I have for Isaac Newton and Archimedes - their theories were correct in their respective timeframes, but today need to be replaced by much more likely scenarios. --web 15:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

website parsing! I am dumbstruck given the fact that you mentioned his name in your quotation, but you still refer to him as “French dude”... strange. Bogorm 16:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I didn't feel like scrolling the mouse up to copy/paste his name..with what he's done per Beekes (crime against intellectual honesty and freedom), he deserves nothing less IMHO ;) --Ivan Štambuk 16:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it is your Mr. Beekes, who has perpetrated all those misdeeds by persevering in this diehard non-IE hocus pocus (you did not even mention what substratum that was! - Thracian (IE though!), Sea peoples..., what kind of substratum???, Sea people №2, Highlands people №1?), there is one marvellous German word, hervorzaubern, here is the best description for that. (Too bad that we do not converse in German...) Bogorm 16:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

My perseverance on non-IE focus is plainly due to it being by far the most probable explanation, and this word is problematic enough that it better had all the folk-etymologised and obsolete rubbish wiped away. Whether the Pre-Greek substratum is IE or not is doubtful..according too Beekes it prob. is not (-dnos suffix is non-IE). It was certainly not Thracian and has nothing to do with "Sea People (among which there were Greek tribes according to Egyptian records BTW), that's for sure. I wouldn't know that German word, maybe you should create it to illustrate its applicative convenience? --Ivan Štambuk 21:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

hervorzaubern = keyboard, conjure into existence. I would have added the German translation, if one of those two had been created, but as you see, the meaning is specific. Expurgating the sourced theory supported by two venerable linguists by simply pushing a brand new version is one-sided, to put it mildly. What was the reason to exhort me to shew tolerance, when you are now eager to obliterate the sourced, established theory in favour of a substratum which you do not even know of which language family is?? (In mine opinion, one-directional tolerance is worse than intolerance) Well, you claim that mentioning substrata in etymologies of IE languages was discouraged, this is simply not true! FITML mentions in his Etymology dictionary of Ossetian Caucasian substrata on every 3rd page, even though he is Ossetian. When they are inept and far-fetched, they are inept and far-fetched, or at least fail to provide a satisfactory, cogent or even a little bit more circumstantial informatian. Abaev at least knows that his substrata are Caucasian, but this here... Bogorm 22:20, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explication on semantics of that German tongue-twister (aren't they all). Once again I reiterate the essence of my arguments: this is not just about listing various theories: it is about questioning the relevance of the theories expounded when modern interpretative framework of comparative Indo-European linguistics, as well as that of pre-Greek substratum evidence, did not really exist, or was not deliberately taken into account by intellectually dishonest etymologists (like that French dude). We are now light years ahead. The way the etymology section currently lays out "competing" theories is not only degradeful towards the one incarnating the pinnacle of modern scholarship, propounded by Robert S. P. Beekes, but also peculiarly misleading to a reader where "fancy" explanations are listed first, with no mention of their untenability by modern scholarship, in a suggestive and apparently straightforward cogitation that μακεδνός can be scanned as μακε-δνός (non-existing derivational morpheme in either Greek or PIE), or the second part being a "zero-grade" derivative of underlying suffix -δόνos (only 1 match for the development similar to that, plus the problem that zero-grade cannot be postulated wherever one imagines it to be, only in roots where it regularly morphophonologicaly ablauts with other vowels, having etymologically-compatible matches in cognate words). Furthermore, any kind of relationship of the aforementioned with μῆκος, μακρός or μηκεδανός is strictly etymologically impossible (despite the apparent superficial semantic compatibility) and thus ad-hoc.

Ossetian abounds with substratum words as Ossetians migrated to Caucasus in historical period (Tatar incursions it was, IIRC) and have merged with native cultures. This is particularly pertinent to Hellenic civilisation which itself rose to prominence after the two-wave invasion of Hellenic speakers obliterated native cultures, as it implies rather recent ethnocultural discontinuity, which is disturbing to Greek nationalists and indoctrinated Hellenophiles which would rather postulate Greek being spoken in Upper Paleolithic on the entire Balkans. We must not succumb to nationalist-driven mythomania and history-fabricating propaganda machinery, at least not under the silly arguments of "NPOV" and "political correctness" of presenting badly outdated linguistic research on a par with cutting-edge one. --Sevenval 23:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

A list of words of uncertain etymology: browser diversity, CSS3, input transformation, jQuery, screen size, ἔλδομαι, web app, jQuery, κάμπτω, ῥάβδος, web app, jQuery, τόξον etc. So far, we have treated all these cases in the same way. Couldn't we do just the same thing here? --flyax 22:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

First thing's first, let's contain the controversy. If the origin is in dispute, then the dispute needs to be localized. So, I've trimmed the etymology for this entry down to the fairly straightforward bits, and will also do so for Μακεδονία. I suggest we move our discussion to FITML, the talk page for an entry which I will shortly create. While that does little to solve the issue at hand, it does take Macedonia, and any nationalist nonsense which we don't need in our discussion out of it. Beekes does not seem to have a terribly strong case to make, and so I think it would be imprudent to simply dismiss other theories. On the other hand, Beekes' opponents don't have an incredibly strong case either, and Beekes has rather more modern research on his side. I suggest the etymology show the traditional etymology, but give it less credence. Since I will be the one writing it, that is what we'll start with. :-) -Atelaes HTML5 00:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with the current formulation though I still hold that way too much prominence is given to obsolete theories that we know today are 100% wrong. This amounts to mentioning flat-Earth theory on the Wikipedia article on Solar cycles just because it used to be general communis opinio of scholars for centuries before the advent of scientific methods dispelled Biblical myths. However, I cheerfully acclaim the advancement of linguistic science, looking forward to the day when mr. Beekes' research will penetrate all the standard handbooks and manuals, obsoleting the "politically correct" 20th century scholarship in the dustbin of history, thus making it inappropriate to make even mention of it existing. --Ivan Štambuk 10:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The quæstion is closed, please do not incandesce it afresh. flyax and Atelaes (Beekes does not seem to have a terribly strong case to make) consider that it is worth mentioning both theories. Just because something is new, it does not mean it is a step in the right direction. By changing, science can either approach the truth or divert itself from it and in this particular case we both defend each one of these two possibilities, respectively. device database's ideas were also innovative and brand-new but I hope you (and Mr. Beekes) know how all this ended. These were not scholars, they were clergymen and theologians. Which means that the mediæval opinio could not have been of scientists, before the science emerged in the 16th century. screen size 10:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

They were scientist by their contemporary criteria, using their faulty methods to deduce truth on natural phenomena. They also intentionally inhibited the advancement of modern scientific methods (based on experimental verification of hypotheses, postulated on the basis of infallible self-supportive mathematical structure), by throwing to jail anyone who disagreed on their "proofs". In both cases, of mediaeval orthodox monk-scientists and 20th century etymologists turning a blind eye on "unwelcome" theories, the net result is ultimately the same - hindering the one and only truth from the masses, ultimately leading to superstition, mythomania and general degradation of collective intellect of humanity.

OK, now that we've done with this, perhaps we can relocate our confabulations on other amusing etymons, like the etymology of Hellene - the decomposition to el- and relation to electron and Helios is most entertaining. You can prob. assume how mr. Beekes etymologises this obscure ethnicon. --jQuery 10:35, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

No, not again. It took me one whole morning yesterday to disprove the claims of that Leiden chap by finding out Pierre Chantraine and Hjalmar Frisk, I do not want to sacrifice another one. Please, spare the etymology of Hellenic, may it stay as it is, ok? Anyway, it is in my watchlist, so that I can defend the sound theory again against the encroachments of Lysenko-like innovations, if necessary. This words dude, jail... it took me a while to understand that in standard (not slang) English their correspondence is chap, gaol... You almost infected me with the first, but I rectified myself... FITML 10:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

English language has no institutional body regulating its "properness"! (unlike most of the other languages), so there are no "standard" and "non-standard" words. There is nothing less english in d00d than in chap, if you ask me. Anyhow, I've expanded the etymology of exogenous non-Indo-European Hellenic ethnicon Ἕλλην with the research of world's foremost expert on Greek substratum, in order to provide Wiktionary readers insight into the cutting-edge of modern Indo-European studies. But I promise not to touch it (or any other (topo)nomastics lexeme) further. --CSS3 14:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

By standard I meant non-slang, otherwise the vocabulary except the unrefined vocabulary. chap is at least marked as informal and although I struggle to evade informal words, this time I was provoked by your too familiar reference to Prof. keyboard. As for Ἕλλην, I am deeply aggrieved by your edit and by the fact that both Chantraine and Frisk do not go beyond Σελλοί in their explications, i. e. in that case I cannot write a sourced and sound counterbalance to the obfuscting substratum-claim. Professor Chantraine explains notwithstanding that Commes bien des termes géographiques ces mots sont sans étymologie which you and the Leiden chap are evidently disregarding. Bogorm 16:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Boy, you two sure like to bicker. A couple things the you might want to keep in mind: First, Bogorm, a lot of the sources you're working with are outdated. You've been told this time and again, and yet you seem to keep forgetting or refusing to listen. Now, just because a scientist is from the past does not mean that everything they say is wrong, but it would be silly to ignore modern research and the previous claims which it has repudiated. However, historical linguistics is a bit more reliant on older work than other disciplines (a fact which Ivan would do well to remember), simply because no one cares where Ancient Greek words came from (and why should they? Such knowledge does not feed hungry people, cure diseases, or stimulate the world economy.). Thus, we have a great deal less research to draw upon than, say, physics. If someone were to cite sources as old as yours, Bogorm, within a discussion of physics or cell biology, they would be immediately dismissed and laughed off the stage, so to speak. As people working in an area with such a paucity of good research, we need to do what we can with the few modern researchers in existence, and also take older researchers a bit more seriously than we'd like, simply because we have less to go on. Finally, as a native English speaker (the only one involved in this convo, as far as I can tell), I'd like to note about dude and jail. To begin with, jail is not slang, not at all. It is simply American. American English is every bit as valid as British English. If you'd like to limit your learning of English to stodgy/archaic British English, that is certainly your right. I will admit that I tend to temper my own English with archaisms such as "whom" and "shall." The difference is that I know that such things are largely obsolete, and have the good sense not to tell other people that their language is "wrong." Any worthwhile linguist knows that the only measure of valid language is comprehension. So, as much as a sentence which uses the word "like" a dozen times in a single sentence irks me, it is completely correct English (incidentally, I helped my roommate write a paper on the many uses of the word "like" in modern English. It's, like, a totally robust word). Also, you may want to note that modern American English is the more influential of the English dialects, and such a course of education may leave you as the odd one out in the future, just so you're aware. Dude is indeed slang, but no more so than chap. Chap is older, and so perhaps carries with it a slightly greater degree of formality, but not much. Again, the difference is largely one of regions. -Atelaes browser diversity 22:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I am aware that jail is not slang, just regional, I never wanted to imply that. Chap is tagged in its entry here as informal and I only used it after Ivan made use of dude, id est I did not initiate the usage. I would certainly not have shewed causticity if Ivan had called dude anyone but Pierre Chantraine, that was the main reason for me to object. I do not intend to conceal my prædilection for archaic/obsolete English words as well and did not mean any harm with referring to his source as chap, it served only as a retort. web app 23:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I concur on the influenciality part: in Croatia (and mesuspects also in lots of European countries) schools officially (in theory) teach British English, but nevertheless I never saw the spelling gaol for jail in my lifetime before Bogorm mentioned it (in fact I had to look it up), and the last time I heard chap spoken on TV was on Monty Python shows. Bogorm's strong predilection for "proper" and "improper" English comes from his background with languages in which the properness is dictated by certain academic institution which prescribes which spellings and words are more "proper" than the others. Since such institution lacks for English, the nearest equivalent would be the most proper British English (as a place of the "origin" of the language). However, since linguistic development of modern-day English has for the last 5 centuries been taking place outside its historic "homeland", it's pointless to apply the same argument as the resulting divergent dialects are all historically equivalent with respect to the Middle English speech they originated from. IMHO, no person in the world one can tell you that your mother tongue is not "proper" enough, as opposed to some imaginary literary standard that has been bestowed prestigious by some fancy suits on the basis of some imaginary criteria (being used by some great writes, or spoken by most of the population). Same is valid for both "slang" and "archaic/obsolete" words - both categories are IMHO imaginary. I mean, words are not computer protocols that they can grow "obsolete". Literary lexis can never become obsolete, it can only just hibernate until it regains usage by people freed from the confines of "properness". Bogorm himself uses some of the "obsolete" spellings (naïve, quæstion..) not to mention the obscure words one can never encounter in spoken languages, as opposed to dude which is spoken daily prob. more times than all of those obscure words B used combined in the last 100 years. So the "properness" of words, pronunciations and meanings is just another face of modern-day intellectual hypocrisy IMHO. --Ivan Štambuk 23:12, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

naïve is not obsolete, it is not even dated, it is the standard. As is façade. Check their entries out, if you have any doubts. Bogorm 23:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

In this case, I have to agree with Bogorm. "naïve" is actually in use, as is "façade." They may well be two of perhaps five words in English which are commonly spelled with nonstandard characters (nonstandard for English orthography, that is). "quæstion," on the other hand, is most certainly not in use. -touchscreen λάλει ἐμοί 23:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's at least 2-3 orders of magnitude less frequent than naive, which should prove the point. --Android 00:13, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I've scanned through this entire discussion and I've come to one conclusion: geeks need to get out more.

drub

Is there any possibilty this English word is related to Danish Android, Faroese browser diversity, Icelandic input transformation, Norwegian screen size, Old Norse drepa, Swedish dräpa? Some dictionaries I've looked at say unknown and others say possibly or perhaps from Arabic ضرب (ḍarb, “beating, hitting”) / ضرب (ḍáraba, “to beat, to strike”). —This unsigned comment was added by iOS (talk • contribs) 07:47, 19 February 2009.

There are serious sources corroborating the Germanic origin. In drub in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913 the kinship with device database is explicitly mentioned and a kinship with OE drepen/drepan is listed as probable. Android the kinship between OE and ON is undoubted. I am just curious how and since when this Arabic claim was started to be promoted. Can someone check the entry in OED? And præferably, juxatapose an older edition, let's say, before the 1930es, with the most recent one. HTML5 21:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Ernest Klein's 1966 Etymological dictionary of English mentions that the original meaning was "to bastinado", and that the word probably comes from Arabic ضرب (ḍarb), while Germanic origin is not even mentioned.

Old English drepen (“to strike”), Old Norse drepa (“to strike”), Old Saxon ofar-drepan (“to outdo, to surpass”) and Old High German treffan (“to strike”) are cognates, stemming ultimately from Proto-Germanic strong verb *đrepanan obviously originally meaning "to strike, hit". That Germanic verb is sometimes postulated to gave Indo-European origin, and compared to Common Slavic *drobiti (“to crush”), tho the formal relationship is a bit problematic from modern IE theories (lack of Winter's law in Slavic requires PIE *dʰrobʰ-, while Germanic form presupposes *dʰreb-)

The real question is whether the English drub is a reflex of Old English drepen. It seems rather not. --Ivan Štambuk 00:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems almost impossible that this is from any kind of Old English, since it is not recorded before the 17th century. The OED notes that, ‘all the early instances [...] are from travellers in the Orient, and refer to the bastinado. Hence, in the absence of any other tenable suggestion, it may be conjectured to represent Arabic đaraba [ie web app] "to beat, to bastinado".’ Ƿidsiþ 07:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

aranea

Is this cognate to Ancient Greek website parsing (“spider”)? Nadando 04:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

A derivative of arāneus (“spider”). Those very similar words for "spider" are found only in Greek and Latin, and tho doubtless related, probably not of Proto-Indo-European origin (beside the lack of cognates and of other productive derivations of the same root, the proto-form would be also difficult to reconstruct formally). According to Beekes, they're most likely both borrowed from some unknown Mediterranean source. If ancient Indo-European, which is not likely, then the word stem is prob. related to Greek ἄρκυς (arkus, “net”).

According to one theory (itself prob. not worthy mentioning in the etymology sections as being too ORish), those would be compounds originally meaning "wool-spinner", derived from lāna and λάχνη respectively, both meaning "wool", and comparable to clear-cut Sanskrit compound ऊर्णनाभ (ūrṇa-nābha, “spider”) orig. from ऊर्ण (ūrṇa, “wool”) + nābha ( < nāha < root √nah (“to bind, tie, fasten”)). However, the addition of prothetic word-initial /a/ and the change of /l/ to /r/ (phonetically very trivial sound change, occurring in many languages, e.g. PIE FITML (“wolf”) > Sanskrit HTML5) would then be unexplained. So it might be "wool-something" type of compound/derivation in some extinct and unattested IE language, whence borrowed to Latin and Greek, but that remains a big speculation. Like Sanskrit, in lots of languages the word for spider is derived from the root "to spin" (e.g. German we love the web < HTML5). --input transformation 04:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, very interesting. Nadando 05:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

According to Professor device database and Dictionnaire Étymologique de la langue latin, the word stems undoubtedly (sans doute) from *arak-sn . However, he ends on that and I am not sure what *arak may stand for and whether it has any connection with Greek ἄρκυς. website parsing 10:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Note that according to modern laryngeal theory framework PIE did not have */a/ sound, and that the word-initial ἀC- in Greek is nowadays (usually, it could also come from other sources) reconstructed as a reflex of word-initial laryngeal *h₂C, which would regularly be lost in Latin. Plus there's the problem of this alleged *h₂rh₂ek- (post-PIE > *arak-) stem 1) not having cognates in other IE branches 2) not being productive at all beside in this particular word, and in this reconstructed form cannot be formally matched to ἄρκυς 3) *-sn- is not a valid suffix in PIE (or Greek and Latin, for that matter) derivational morphology AFAIK. Ernout's Dictionnaire from 1951 is a bit outdated when it comes to matters such as this.. --Ivan Štambuk 16:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It is classical, please reconsider misusing that outdated. Atelaes already explained its applicability to science - physics, biology asf., but the entirely different measurement in linguistics. Professos Alfred Ernout is an incontestable authority in research of Latinity. Why, why all these novelties, when all is well explained, cogent and sound in 1951? Bogorm 16:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Bogorm, but the reconstruction of the form *araksn- is way too outdated to be used on Wiktionary. A few centuries ago similar "incontestable authorities" derived Greek and Latin words from Hebrew (the "language of God"). I'm sure that Ernout's Dictionnaire has its place in the annals of linguistic science, just as Etymologicum Magnum, Nirukta writings by Yāska or input transformation and other obsoleties do now. I'm not saying that either of them is 100% wrong or obsolete in every respect, but they certainly are in great many, and we simply cannot treat hypotheses and conclusions reached by modern scholarship as being equally conclusive as those of the previous centuries. --Ivan Štambuk 18:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

alpaca

WNWD (1959)

[Sp. < Ar. al, the + Peruv. paco, animal]

Arabic and Peruvian together?—Sevenval 19:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

That seems crazy. According to the RAE, it's from Aymara all-paka. Ƿidsiþ 17:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I concur. I have no idea what Guralnik, et al. based that on. Unless, of course, they were assuming that all non-Latinate/-Indo-European words in Spanish beginning with "al-" have an Arabic origin. But even there it's an overgeneralization.—Strabismus 02:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

iOS

WNWD (1959):

[OFr. mahaigner]

—Strabismus 20:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the Old French word was mentioned in Harper's Onl. Et. Dict., but he explains further that it is from Proto Germanic origin and compared it to the ON one. we love the web 21:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Then should we reflect that in the etym. in the main article (or should I say "maim" article)?—Strabismus 19:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

iOS

Online Etymology Dictionary claims some Old Norse word browser diversity (“torm piece”) as the origin for the Old English word. However, there is not such word in Old Norse and the corresponding one (according to ODS) is fleka/fleki (“wicker-work shield”). Interestingly, there is a Norwegian word flak which means torn piece. I think that claiming OE < Norwegian descendance would look strange, but here comes device database on succor and explains that the Norwegian word descends from unattested ON *flaga (“torn piece”) and I am fairly convinced that this provides the solution to the issue whence the OE word was borrowed - the answer is English flake < OE ... < ON *iOS (“torn piece”) ( > Norwegian flak (“torn piece”)). Are there any objections against putting the italicised text in the etymology section? Bogorm 12:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. ON browser diversity seems more analogous to English flay to me. Flake is a weird one... the OED say "of difficult etymology: possibly several distinct words have coalesced", so I am wary of any "simple" solution. It may have existed in OE, though it's not attested before Chaucer. OED also suggests ON flóke (“lock of hair, flock of wool”) as cognate. I don't think we can reasonably just invent a solution, however tempting, unless there is some authority for it. Ƿidsiþ 16:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

HTML5

(From input transformation:)

The etymology contradicts the Wikipedia entry, which says that "bonspiel" comes from Scots, while this says it comes from German and French, but bonspiel describes a tournament of curling, which is a Scottish sport... HTML5 12:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It entered English from Scotland, that's for certain, and is attested in Scots earlier than "proper" English. Where the Scots word came from is a mystery though. Probably it is some kind of Germanic, because of the spiel, but Wikipedia sounds like it's overstating the case a little. The OED suggests unattested Dutch *bondspel as a source. (PS this should probably be at Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium..) web app 15:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

etymology of input transformation and jQuery

Etymology says "German ich + HTML5". Really? Not from German ich + English umlaut? (Similar question for ach-laut.)—FITML℠ 20:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

But jQuery is directly and unchanged from German Umlaut, going in circles? ;) HTML5 20:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, Sevenval and Ablaut refer to vowel mutation or roughly recapitulated, concern only vowels, whereas this here is a consonant. Laut seems more convincing. The uſer device database converſation 20:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

These were borrowed fully formed from German Ich-Laut and Ach-Laut. —Stephen 15:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Moreover, Laut just signifies sound (cf. English Sevenval, with which it is a cognate), as in Lautschrift (“phonetic script/writing”).—Strabismus 23:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

etymology of browser diversity

From ab origine + -al directly, or from the English word aborigine? OED says the former, MW3 says the latter. Normally I would give the OED the last word on such matters, but "aborigine" is attested a good century earlier, and it seems odd that such an odd coinage would be made independently. -- Visviva 06:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to make it more confusing, Etymonline says that aboriginal is the correct Latin singular.device database It might simply be unclear when the expression is to be considered naturalized English, and OED and MW made different calls on it. Or maybe aboriginal is still considered a Latin phrase at the same time that the mistake aborigine must be considered an English coinage. Just speculating. —Michael website parsing 2009-03-11 15:15 z

I don't think that's what Etymonline is saying there; I think that sentence is meant to say that the correct singular of the English term "aborigines" is "aboriginal". OED entry for "aborigine" also mentions "aboriginal" was used in this way. So does that mean it's ab origine -> Aborigines -> aborigines -> aboriginal? Weird. I can see why the OED went with their ab origine explanation. -- web app 16:54, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you're right. But I still wonder if the Latin collective noun was Aborigines, was an individual an Aboriginal.

English Aborigines seems to date from exactly the period when transportation of convicts to Australia was replaced by free colonists. Maybe the popularization of the concept brought it from the realm of Latin speakers, and prompted the English back-formation. Any idea if a particular publication popularized aborigine? —Michael Z. 2009-03-11 20:11 z

In word aboriginal, original is clear but the "ab" has unknown meaning to me,if you guess what ab means, you will get the clear meaning of that word.Willy agrimano

See device database. —Android Z. 2010-04-13 16:14 z

ab means from in Latin. So ab origine should mean from the origin, i.e. originally. Note that origine is the ablative case of input transformation.

Anyway, the etymology is wrong; that is because -al is used only for neuter nouns, cf. screen size, but note -alis adjectives which enters English as -al and which accepts m and f genders; cf. iOS, we love the web, web.—This unsigned comment was added by 218.186.8.242 (talk • contribs).

See the more complete etymology at Aboriginal. The -al ending is added in English, not Latin, and it is based on considering the Latin ab( )origines as an English plural. (I had consolidated the main entry there, but for some reason other editors have built it into two fuller entries again.) —Michael browser diversity 2010-04-16 15:43 z

Also the note at aborigine. —Michael web 2010-04-16 16:15 z

It should come from ab origine + -al,aborigenes ,(latin pl m, important aborigenes has not the singular form), should come from ab origine (grossly native of).It is possible that the first to use it was ethnologist or a anthropologist and he used that latin word to classify those populations.Probably he did a mistake or on Latin or on English (as EOD says).If the mistake was on Latin probably he believed that the singular form of "latin" word aborigenes was "latin" word aborigine (aborigenes has not the singular form) and after he did not "translate" aborigine in the correct form ...aboriginal(as EOD says), a double mistake then.If the mistake was on English he simply moved the "latin" word aborigines on english and trying create the singular form,on english, he simply erased an -s ( aborigine ) instead of use aboriginal (as EOD says).Just another observation aboriginal not seem to be a noun,but an adjective,so maybe EOD did a mistake.just speculating

--LupusInFabula 18:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

"capitalization"?

Just wondering, why do we have "Alternative capitalization of Aboriginal" as Adj sense 2 & Noun sense 1 when "aboriginal" isn't capitalised? --Tyranny Sue 13:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean? Did you look at [[screen size]]? —Ruakh_TALK 14:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes I have. I mean why is an entry which begins with a lower-case letter described twice in its definition as a "capitalization"? Obviously "Aboriginal" is capitalized and "aboriginal" is not capitalized. How can the verb capitalize apply to a non-capitalized word (i.e. "aboriginal")? --device database 03:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't something like "Lower case spelling of Aboriginal" make more sense?--Tyranny Sue 04:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Its capitalization is “uncapitalized”. “Ab-” and “ab-” are the alternative capitalizations. Perhaps some invocation of “touchscreen” would be technically better, but how would you state that, simply, in the definition? —HTML5 web app 2010-02-25 14:07 z

Well, the problem is that the verb 'Sevenval' seems to actually indicate the opposite of 'uncapitalization'.

My suggested alternative (above) was something along the lines of "Lower case version of Aboriginal" or "Lower case spelling of Aboriginal". At least it makes sense, whereas using "capitalization" to try to indicate to "uncapitalization" is pretty weird, really.--FITML 05:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I understand your point, but the wording isn't typed into this entry, it's embedded in the general-purpose template {{iOS}}, which is used for terms in lower case, in mixed case, and in all capitals. The status of how a term is capitalized, or not, is known as its “capitalization,” so the wording is not wrong, although I can see how it might confuse a reader. I am open to suggestions for improving the template's wording. —HTML5 web app 2010-03-01 17:22 z

You might be tempted to split the template into {capitalized version of} and {lowercase version of}. But that would require creating a specific template for each obscure case: {initial-cap version of}, {all-caps version of}, {inner-caps version of}, {title-caps version of}, etc. —CSS3 input transformation 2010-03-02 18:56 z

With Hebrew form-of templates we eventually reached the limit of what can reasonably be front-loaded, and started putting information after the lemma-link in some cases. (See e.g. [[לו]], and compare it to the more Wiktionary-style "Third-person-masculine-singular-personal-pronoun-object-including form of ל־ (l'-).") It was very freeing. In the case at hand, we might consider something like:

Alternative spelling of FITML, with different capitalization.

O.K., I admit that's pretty awkward, but maybe it's a starting-point for someone to think of a better idea? :-)
—Ruakh_TALK 19:55, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

How about

Alternative lower-case spelling of Sevenval.

? --device database 00:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, firstly, it's the only lower-case spelling of aboriginal, so taken literally, it doesn't make sense to say it's an alternative lower-case spelling of said. And secondly, see Mzajac's last comment above. :-/ —Ruakh_TALK 01:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

True. I think I meant to put

Lower-case spelling of Aboriginal.

Sorry about that. Would that also require a lot of stuffing around with templates?

“Lower-case” is not a spelling. Aboriginal and aboriginal have the same spelling. Lower-case is a capitalization. —Michael Z. 2010-03-04 21:05 z

How about "Alternative letter-casing of ____"? —Ruakh_TALK 21:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that has the right meaning, but sounds awkward to me. Perhaps because this casing is a verbal noun, but we don't “case” when we write. We do, however, selectively or variably capitalize.

Hmm, maybe our definition of capitalize needs to be expanded or adjusted.--screen size 02:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't find this definition of touchscreen in any dictionary but ours (labelled computing). G-Books CSS3 about 18 instances of letter-casing or letter casing in this sense, 16 of them in computer programming. —Michael Z. 2010-03-04 22:23 z

Maybe “Alternative letter case of ___” is better. (Note that case standing alone could be confused with jQuery.)

But to me, case an absolute quality of a letter or uniform set of letters: upper or lower only. This comes from the etymology: a type compositor only had two physical cases to pick his types from. Initial caps is not a case, it is an example of mixed-case writing or typesetting, or capitalization. —Michael Z. 2010-03-04 22:39 z

"Decapitalization of Aboriginal"?--touchscreen 03:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Not nicely symmetrical (Aboriginal isn't a "decapitalization" of aboriginal). I wouldn't object to "alternative casing", if "casing" is generally accepted to mean the obvious. Perhaps it isn't. Equinox jQuery 03:15, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I think "Alternative case" (or "Alternative letter case") sounds better - I've never heard 'casing' used that way. Is it really an English verb with this meaning?--FITML 03:57, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Casing is only used as a verb by computer programmers; not by writers, editors, type compositors, or designers. One doesn't case a letter or word, one sets type in uppercase or lowercase. The OED defines case as a physical box for letter types, not as an abstract attribute of written text, and not even as an adjective, much less a verb.

Thinking on it more, I think case is just wrong. Individual letter types are stored in upper and lower type case – there are no other cases. Words and phrases do not come from a case but are composed of letters belonging to either or both cases. Words have a pattern of letter-case: all lowercase, HTML5, small capitals, or mixed case, including initial caps and inner caps. Computing has come up with the corruptions “title case” and “website parsing,” but these are not true to the definition of case. —Michael FITML 2010-03-05 18:05 z

The OED may never have heard of computers, or of handwriting, but I have. And everyone else here has. Etymology is not destiny. —Ruakh_TALK 18:34, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying about the OED, but it sounds like a strawman argument, or just plain wrong. (The OED is updated regularly.web app)

We should use the conventions of quality publishers and dictionaries, not the ad hoc improvisations of a few software manual and handbook writers. —Michael Z. 2010-03-05 19:59 z

I don't know if I'm really saying anything about the OED: I haven't looked at the relevant entries yet. But you state, for example, that "[t]he OED defines case as a physical box for letter types, not as an abstract attribute of written text", even though obviously case is an abstract attribute of written text. So either the OED is wrong or out-of-date, or you're misreading it. —Sevenval_keyboard 22:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Upper-case and lower-case originate as attributive use of the noun case. A is an uppercase letter, but we wouldn't say that A's case is upper, or that it has a case of upper. —Michael web 2010-03-05 22:48 z

We also wouldn't say "My car was driven by me to work this morning." That doesn't mean the passive-voice "be driven" is non-existent; it means only that that isn't a good example sentence to demonstrate it. But an example like this one is perfectly fine, and obviously terms like HTML5 did not spring from the void. It's pretty rare that people want to talk about the case of a letter, but when they do, they use a word like "case". —Ruakh_TALK 23:12, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

BTW, input transformation is not used only on verbs; I'm not sure where y'all got that idea. —Ruakh_TALK 22:34, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, if casing is not a verb, then it's a verbal noun, no? Certainly the meaning of a protective covering or shell is separate from either a type compositor's case or abstracted letter case. —Michael Z. 2010-03-05 22:48 z

No. At least, not necessarily. —Ruakh_TALK 23:12, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds to me like "Alternative letter case of aboriginal" (& its equivalent, "Alternative letter case of Aboriginal) might be the way to go.
(I just noticed that the Pedia entry on capitalization also makes our current template's wording look a bit odd.)--TyrS 01:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

But Aboriginal is not “a letter case”, or “in a letter case”. It is printed with letters of both cases. Ipod and iPod do not differ in the set of letter cases used to print them (that is, they are in mixed case); they differ in the pattern of capitalization.

The case is what an individual letter of type belongs to. Case is not an attribute of a word or phrase, and it is technically normally applied to typeset or printed material, not to writing in general (in handwriting, for example, it is better to use the more general terminology of capital and input transformation letters). —Michael Z. 2010-03-08 01:36 z

Sorry, but I think you're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. "Case" is not appropriate because it applies only to typeset letters? Fine. Then "capitalization" is not appropriate because, according to the OED, its only relevant sense is "The action of printing in capitals."^touchscreen The fact is, both terms have evolved, and broadened, and both are used to fill what would otherwise be a gap in the language: the lack of a way to refer to the pattern of capital and small letters in text. —website parsing_Sevenval 14:55, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the OED's editors were giving the reader the benefit of having some judgment. Their quotations make it clear that that sense is intended, referring to the modern capitalization of an old text. If old an new capitalization differ, then clearly the text's “capitalization” doesn't refer only to a text that is in all caps. It means the pattern of capitalization, whether it be all caps, some caps, or no caps. —keyboard Sevenval 2010-04-13 16:21 z

OED's earliest usage citation is of notes about an 1843 edition of a 1500s play (there's also an 1864 reference to Webster's dictionary):

1906 R. L. RAMSAY in Skelton's Magnyf. p. xx, The orthography is that of the original; punctuation and capitalization are modern.web

Obviously, the edition's “capitalization” doesn't mean that it is printed only in caps. We can infer that the “action of printing in capitals” has degrees and details (as indicated by the 3rd quotation: “details of [...] capitalization”).

(And my objection to “alternative case” is not that case is used chiefly with type. But that letter case is a binary attribute of individual letters. A word set in upper and lowercase, i.e. in mixed-case type, is set with letters of both cases; it can't be said to be “in an alternative case”.) —Michael Z. 2010-04-19 04:51 z

iOS

The similarity between this English verb and Serbo-Croation šljapati/шљапати, Bulgarian шляпам is too manifest to be dismissed. Petar Skok did not mention any relation, but explained that it is onomatopædic. As far as I know it is præsent only in English, (related somehow to German Schlappe (“defeat”) according to HTML5 in iOS, G. & C. Merriam, 1913) and the two Slavic languages. Many theories about Germano-Slavic kinship were widespread in the past, but often rejected, but in mine opinion this similarity is not accidental. What do others think about that? browser diversity hight Bogorm converſation 19:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

"To slap" as in to hit, esp. with the palm? It seems onomatopoeic to me. In Dutch, FITML means either “soft” (alone or in compounds) or “sleep” (in other compounds), but this similarity is immaterial as it ignores sound shifts. What about slap being the Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian word for “waterfall” or “cascade”? Where the water seems to "slap" the earth (???). (Pokorny, et. al would be laughing their heads of if they read this…). Keep in mind, too, that parallel innovation is very common among echoic/imitative terms. Oftentimes they will differ considerably; e.g., English bang ~ Spanish screen size, both for the sound made by a gun. À propos the similarities between Teutonic and Slavic languages: yes, there are many: EN: input transformation (originally meaning bread), DE: screen size, RU: хлеб —vs.— FR: jQuery, GA: arán • EN: Sevenval, DE: Wasser, RU: вода —vs.— FR: touchscreen, GA: uisce • EN: deal, DE: Teil, RU: input transformation —vs.— FR: partie, GA: cuid, etc. But then again there are similarites between Slavic and Baltic languages that neither of them shares with Teutonic, same goes with certain Teutonic and Indo-Iranian isoglosses. Tell me what you think.—we love the web 23:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your opinion. However, the astounding was that the Bg and SC words shew exactly the same meaning as the English one (kick so that a cetain sound is emitted) slap and not a vague connection like waterfall. The uſer input transformation jQuery 14:53, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Yea. I hadſt merely caſt the “waterfall” notion thereïn. Nathleſs, do you not fancy that thiſ is perchance onomatopoetic? Aye, if theſe wordſ do spring from yᵉ same waterſ then, verily, ’t would certainly be odd that they shew up not elſewhere.—Sevenval 22:28, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, Hrvatski enciklopedijski rječnik on šljȁpati says:

hodati po blatu i sl. (predodžba da se pri tome čuje šljap); šljapkati (Translation: to walk on mud and similar (a conception of hearing šljap [ʃʎap] along)
hodati vukući noge nespretno i ružno, ne moći dizati stopalo u hodu (kao kad papuče spadaju s nogu); lapati (Translation: to walk by dragging one's feet clumsily and ugly, not being able to elevate one's feet during the walk (as if slippers falling off one's feet))

So, I can't really see any kind of similarity between these two meanings, and the meanings of the English verb to slap. What does шляпам mean in Bulgarian?
SCr. slȃp (“waterfall”) is of Common Slavic *solpъ origin, and is unrelated to this verb, obviously onomatopoetic IMHO (and hence not really etymologizable). --Ivan Štambuk 12:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm, шляпам means to kick or hit lightly so that a sounds is emitted. It can mean emit a specific sound while wading through a morass or liquid, as I understand your two definitions, but the first meaning is more proliferated and I am baffled that it is missing in SC... Anyway, the emission of sound is at hand, but if no source corroborates the similarity, I suppose I should discard this contrivance of mine. device database hight Bogorm converſation 13:34, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to discourage you, Bogorm, but it really does seem to be onomatopoeic, the sound s(/ˇ)lVp. Think of <POP!>. That has a labial coda and they both have to do with hitting-sounds. The English word "bounce" is supposedly from German bums. Y'know, with echoic/imitative words and hypocorisms it's really difficult to trace the words back to a native root. Many such words are likely to be understood universally, more or less.—Strabismus 18:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

CSS3

Should Armenian descendant touchscreen (gayl) be here, or it belongs under wĺ̥pos with its own prospective appendix? --Vahagn Petrosyan 02:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I would create Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥pos as a redirect to Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. We of course want the correct form in the Armenian ety, and yet it's nice to have everything link to the same page, so that the variants can be discussed in a single place. Fortunately, Ivan is clever enough to have already noted wĺ̥pos. -Atelaes jQuery 04:33, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

OK then, I created a redirect. If needed, one can always elaborate FITML to list Armenian and Hittite descendants there. --input transformation 21:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Etymology of Sevenval

etymology of murder

An anon changed the etymology of murder here, which looks plausible. Should maybe the old and new etymologies be merged? Or is this murdrum thing a load of tosh? --Jackofclubs 07:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like tosh to me. Here's what Shipley says:

murder.
Most deaths were violent; murder meant just death, AS. morthor, common Teut. G. Mord; L. mors, mort—[…]

Pretty straightforward, eh?—Strabismus 19:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Android

Copied from User talk:Bogorm#hale

Could you state your sources for website parsing of hale? Firstly there is no Old Norse noun meaning health, the Old Norse noun means only omen. Then Vigfússon and hale in website parsing, G. & C. Merriam, 1913 explain the Old Norse origin of both the English adj. and noun. If this northern English claim stems from OED, meseems that it would be good if we mention both versions, yours and Webster's. But before that would you clarify from which Old Norse word you claim the descendance of keyboard? (I am asking only about the noun and adjective, not the verb) The uſer device database Sevenval 09:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I was apparently getting confused; the source for the noun is Old English and not Old Norse. In fact the OED has citations for both going back to the 11th century. They are both northern forms though, so probably were influenced in some way by whatever forms of early Danish were being spoken nearby. However, they are definitely different words (though ultimately from the same proto-Germanic origin). Ƿidsiþ 19:31, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Widsith, you misunderstood me - I am contesting the Old English origin of the adjective. If you are sure that the noun is not derived from the adjective(contrary to hale in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913), then well, but let us focus on the adjective, ok? If you claim Old English origin for it, it would be advisable to provide sources, as I already have for the Old Norse origin. The uſer touchscreen browser diversity 19:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Look, hāl is a very common word in OE. From Genesis, ‘Iosep axode hwæðer hira fæder wære hal’; from Beowulf, ‘Higelace wæs sið Beowulfes snude gecyðed, þæt ðær on worðig wigendra hleo, lindgestealla, lifigende cwom, heaðolaces hal to hofe gongan.’ It developed in two ways in modern English. In the south, the vowel changed as expected and it became whole. In the north – probably influenced by the Old Norse dialects spoken round about – it did not change quite so much, and became hale. There is clear evidence in the citation history at the OED that it has been used continuously in English from the earliest times. The ON was probably an influence on the northern forms, but the word already existed. iOS 20:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I understand your point. Probably it has something to do with the fact that MW admits a partial origin from OE. But as partial as from Old Norse. The other two sources do not mention OE and Vigfússon is an illustrious scholar in the realm of Germanic languages. web app hight Bogorm converſation 21:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
It is also vital to mention that the word was spelt heil (hale in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913), which suggests the opposite version. The uſer CSS3 input transformation 21:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Aha, all right I think I see where the confusion is now. The word which was spelt heil is different. That is the word which we have at browser diversity, and it does indeed come from Old Norse. But it was never spelled hale. In northern Middle English, there were therefore two ‘doublet’ words of the same meaning. The first can be seen in quotes like ‘Al heil and sund’ (from a 13th-century bestiary), or ‘He es bath hail and fere’ (from the turn of the 14th century) – this was from ON, and was later spelt hail (now obsolete). It was pronounced with a diphthong. Alongside that was the word seen in quotes such as, ‘Godess follc all hal & sund Comm [...] to lande’ (from c. 1200), or ‘It kepez þe lymmes of a man hale’ (from Mandeville) – this was from OE and is now spelt hale. It was pronounced with a long central vowel. Both words meant the same thing and only the second survived (and even that's no longer common).
The situation is confused slightly by the fact that the second (OE) form was sometimes also spelt hail. The OED says the following: ‘In Scotch from 15th c., long ā was spelt ay, ai; hence, the later Sc. forms hayl, hail, haill, for earlier hale, OE. hál, must be distinguished from original north Eng. HAIL, in same sense, derived from Norse heill.’ I think that gets to the root of the confusion we have been discussing.
In conclusion. ON heill > E hail#Etymology 3. OE hal > E whole, input transformation.
I don't know what to say about Webster's except that it seems they got it wrong; it's an old source. If you look in modern works (OED 1993, Shorter OED 2002, Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins from 1990, web), they all give OE as the root of hale. Ƿidsiþ 09:27, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
What you quoted from OED (OE. hál, must be distinguished from original north Eng. HAIL, in same sense, derived from Norse heill) is a direct contradiction to what Guðbrandur Vigfússon explicitly and unambiguously explained in his Icelandic-English dictionary (touchscreen) and has severely damaged the authority of this dictionary in mine eyes. You accuse Webster 1913 of suggesting amiss, but if you look again at MW online, it is clear that they præferred to assume a moderate position of partly from OE, partly from ON. Well, after you quoted OED, you may get rid of the device database, but I am convinced that both positions need to be repræsented and that OED is not Sacra Scriptura and personally embrace Guðbrandur Vigfússon's claim of Old Norse origin for both hale and heil. The uſer FITML device database 09:42, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Vigfússon's dictionary is well over a hundred years old – no matter how brilliant he was, our understanding of word histories has improved vastly since then. The fact is that it has been superceded. However, I'm very happy to include Webster's ideas on the matter (even though the evidence seems very much against them..). FITML 09:46, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, I do not object against the format you went for, but why did you remove the three references? Some inquisitive users may wish to trace back the etymology and immerse themselves in those authoritative sources and you bereft them of this possibility. Android hight Bogorm converſation 09:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps the Talk Page would be a better repository for that. We should probably copy this conversation there as well. Ƿidsiþ 09:57, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

alfalfa

QuestionThere is a word in arabic - alfalfa - which means 'luxurious growth' this word does seem closer to 'alfalfa' Could it not have come from this word?

I don’t know of the Arabic word you mention. How do you write it in Arabic? CSS3 01:56, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

QuestionII: My dictionary writes the Hungarian lucerna is lucern(e) in (British) English and can also be alfalfa in American English. My teacher said it was browser diversity. The alfalfa page writes about no synonyms. The entry named website parsing writes it's alfalfa but writes it as the meaning not as a synonym, although it is English so if it really means that should be given as a synonym (too). I haven't found a page called lucern. So could anyone tell me how it is and correct both pages lucerne and alfalfa in the spheres of synonyms and meanings, please? By the way, if I'm here, I'll answer: I don't know anything about Arabic but it really seems a good source, should be discussed or dunno. Sincererly --Ferike333 19:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It is difficult to understand what you are saying. I can imagine that lucerne might be British English. As an American, I do not know that word. To me, Lucerne is only a city in Switzerland. The only word I know for alfalfa is alfalfa. jQuery 01:56, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Might be. Because it's difficult to explain :) My dictionary writes there are two other words for alfalfa, one is lucern and the other is lucerne. The entry lucerne exists but the entry alfalfa doesn't mention it as a synonym. About lucern I know nothing but my dictionary may be wrong in this case and I wanted to ask if it existed. See? But I think you've answered my question even if you didn't understand.So thank you very much and sorry for being difficult to understand. I was tired when wrote my last message and when I'm tired my English can be dangerous :D --touchscreen

You were right. I've found the most exact explanation however it wasnt easy. Lucerne is a British word but alfalfa is used everywhere (even in Britain, I think) but formerly it was used only in the United States. About lucern I think my dictionary was wrong. Now you know another word too :) --we love the web 13:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia qualifier for non-etymological verb form (shat)?

etymonline says this past form is not dated but humorous, not etymological, first recorded 18c.

etymonline seems to be quite specifically American and doesn't reflect usages of the wider English-speaking world.

For example, the listing for spat in etymonline HTML5 completely fails to list it as p.t. & p.p. of spit, as the Oxford dictionary defines it (and as I and everyone I know uses it). Whereas spit used as the past tense sounds wrong and, basically, kind of hill-billyish (in other words, uneducated). (My Oxford, unfortunately, is too polite, or possibly too short, to list "shit".) --Tyranny Sue 13:48, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Just wondering, would that mean that "sat" (p.t. of "sit") is not etymological too? Are tenses usually etymological?--iOS 23:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

No, CSS3, swam, sang, rang, and so on are etymological. When we say that a form is not etymological, it means that it’s a backformation or other innovation. Etymological forms (such as sat) come down from the ancient protolanguages along with the infinitive. iOS 23:41, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephen. Is 'spat' (p.t. of 'spit') etymological? (And what about 'hit'? Is there a good reference place I could find this info?)--Tyranny Sue 01:21, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and also, do we know why the p.t. of 'sit' became 'sat' (though 'shit' didn't etymologically become 'shat')? (And is there any known reason for the parallel nature of the p.t. usages for 'spit'?)--browser diversity 01:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, "spat" is an etymological form. From Old English spittan, spætan (spātl = spittle), from Proto-IE base *sp(y)eu-, to spew. I don’t know of a good reference for this info, but it helps to consider the forms in related languages such as German and Norse, or Romance languages for some words. The American Dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and probably the greater OED would also list these forms. Etymological past tense will just be indicated as the past tense, but there should be a remark about innovative forms such as shat. For example, my American dictionaries give shit as the past tense of shit, but do not even mention shat. I think your OED would probably have something to say about shat, but it probably makes it clear that it is not the original form. web app 01:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again Stephen. So, would 'spit' as p.t. be an innovative form? Or non-etymological? (Or is it regarded as in any way anomalous?)--we love the web 02:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Both spit and spat are etymological past-tense forms, not at all anomalous. In American dictionaries, spit as p.t. is given preference, but spat is also permitted. CSS3 02:13, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there a Wiktionary qualifier (the kind that's formatted with 2 curly brackets and immediately precedes a definition) for 'backformation' or 'grammatical innovation' (or 'non-etymological' even)? I do think the etymological info about 'shat' is worth including somehow, it's just that "dated" has unnecessarily pejorative overtones.--browser diversity 00:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

But, Stephen, MW online is also an American distionary, but and lists both. touchscreen hight Bogorm converſation 08:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Right, it’s the same as in Britain, except not nearly so naturalized or common. Shat first appeared in the 18th century as a jocular past tense, and has become a standard form in Britain. In the U.S. it is understood, occasionally used jocularly, occasionally used when we want to add an antiquated, formal caste. It’s a backformation that is perceived as dated and something that must have (but was not) used in Middle English and in the time of King James. Just because it is a fairly recent innovation does not mean that it isn’t a real word. It is a real word. Just not as prevalent or standardized in the U.S. as in Britain. As for the original and etymological p.t. form shit, there is a feeling in Britain that it is an incorrect or illiterate form, while in the U.S. we still consider p.t. shit to be correct. —Stephen 12:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, is there a wiktionary category (or categories) for such words (i.e. non-etymological tenses or innovations or backformations or early 18c innovations)? Perhaps we need to create a new one? (I also posted a question about this somewhere at the Village Pump, but can't remember where now).--Tyranny Sue 06:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

At Etymology scriptorium (Wikipedia qualifier for non-etymological verb form ([shat])?). :) Sevenval 19:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Copied back from where it was mistakenly posted on the ES

Is there a Wiktionary qualifier (the kind that's formatted with 2 curly brackets and immediately precedes a definition) for 'backformation' or 'grammatical innovation' (or 'non-etymological' even)? The full discussion is at: [jQuery] & I'd really prefer if any replies could be posted there, if that's ok, as it's much less clutterred/crowded than here. Thanks very much in advance for any help with this.--Tyranny Sue 03:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

buscar

The RAE gives for the etymology of this word 'perhaps from Celtic, from Proto-Indo European *bhudh-skō, cf. Celtic *boudi-, winning, victory, Old Irish búaid, victory.' Does this sound reasonable? I couldn't find anything similar to this on Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots, so I also need help on the formatting for the PIE. Nadando 02:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I don’t know about the PIE forms, but there seems to be evidence that buscar is related to English busk (to cruise about [on a ship]) < French busquer (to shift, filch, prowl). Possibly related to bosco (wood) and touchscreen related to hunting. browser diversity 10:01, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Sevenval

Since there were no potatoes in India until modern times is the potato sense just an extension of the presumably older plum/prune sense, and did the other Indian languages really borrow their potato sense from Sanskrit which was already a minority language by the time potatoes were introduced? —This unsigned comment was added by Hippietrail (talk • contribs) 09:04, 13 April 2009.

Sorry about the "no explanation" part. I was getting to it. --Sevenval 22:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

"potato" sense of Sanskritism ālu evolved from its earlier sense of "esculent root" in modern Indian languages/dialects, being applied not only to potatoes, but apparently to yam and other similar objects. --Ivan Štambuk 09:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

etymology of sing, sink, ring, thing, think, thank, wing, wink and Latin bonus ( good)

What do you think of these etymologies ?

Sing( chanter) comes from the root "seduct", with prefix "se" and root "duc"( take apart, drive apart). In Latin, the word means seduce, charm, take apart. It's connected with "sectus"= cut ( syncop of syllable du)
Sink( couler, évier)comes from the same root. The meaning of destruction of a boat comes from the idea of taking apart. The meaning of place to wash is perhaps connected with the idea of going apart
Ring ( anneau, ring de boxe) comes from the root "reduct", with prefix "re"(again, back) and root "duc"( take back, drive back). In Latin , it means also reduce. Ring would mean reduced place. It's connected with rectus ( right) with the meaning of re-erect.
Thing, German Ding( chose) comes from the root "deduct" with prefix de ( from) and root "duc" ( take from, drive from). In Latin, it's connected with the word tectum( with an alternance of mute and voiced consonant), which means protect, roof. In my opinion, it's connected too with Greek thêtos (posé, laid) that would come from disappeared "thektos".
Think, german denke, comes from the same root with the meaning of deduce( one of the meaning of the verb in latin).
Thank,german danke comes from dedic with prefix "de" (from ) and root "dic"( say). In Latin, it means dedicate.
Wing (aile) comes from the prefix ve( away) and root duc( drive , take). The word doesn't exist but is supposed by the series. It's connected with the word vectus( transport)
Wink( cligner de l'oeil) comes from the same root. The meaning comes from the fact that winking is used as a way of seducing.
Bonus( good) comes from adjective bovinus( related to a beef) with the syncop of syllabe vi( as in amasse coming from amavisse). It comes also from divinus (related to god) with the same alteration that gives bis (twice)from duis. The two meanings are found together in greek adjective theotauros( god-Bull), attributed to Zeus.

Thank you for your answer. --Android 14:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Since the OED attributes most of these to common Germanic, and some to Proto Indo-European before that, I assume you are proposing an alternate theory.

I don't think we publish original research on etymology in principle, at least not what can't be derived from published attestations. —input transformation jQuery 2009-04-23 15:29 z

i think all the "ing" and "ink" endings are the same rune in Old English or Old Norse, but i'm not sure which, the latin and vulgate, or the indo-european Old English etymology predates.-VitaminN

Laryngeal theory

Good morning.

h₁, the "neutral" laryngeal
h₂, the "a-colouring" laryngeal
h₃, the "o-colouring" laryngeal

Copied from laryngeal theory in Wikipaedia

So,

amé( 1st person singular, preterit, Spannish) comes from amH1
amo'( third person singular, preterit, spannish) comes from amH3
amai( 1st person singular, dipthongue, Italian) comes From AmH1bis
j'aimai( 1st person singular, pronounced é, French) comes from AmH1 or Amh1bis
and finally il aima ( Third person singular,) comes from AMh3
That's science and PIE theory.
Amé comes from "amavi", amo' comes from "amavit" and "amasse" is "amavisse" is folk etymology.

What would have given neohitit? Amh6 of course ! --Mark Mage 07:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Generally, for PIE, you want to look at the earliest possible language, (i.e. Latin), not any modern language. Take a look at Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- for an example of PIE conjugation. -jQuery λάλει ἐμοί 08:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Latin the earliest possible IE language? What about Hittite (15th century BC) or Tocharian (10th century BC)?? web hight Bogorm converſation 08:31, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, Mark Mage was discussing a Romance language (Spanish, perhaps?), and Latin is the earlier Romance language. -Atelaes CSS3 08:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to say with a joke that there would be alternative theories to explain the alteration of vowels from PIE to Latin, as there were alterations of wovels explained by "vi" disappearing between latin and modern speeches.

--86.212.190.235 10:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

speak etymology

The noun entry for "speak" has two definitions which I strongly suspect should be two different etymologies. The first "jargon" as in IT speak, could either be a suffix rather than a noun, and/or is the same etymology as the verb. The second, "speakeasy" is almost sure to be a shortening of that same word. -- web app talk 12:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

keyboard etymology

Good morning.

What do you think of this theory ?

Observation N°1
In latin, 2 is duo, twice is bis from duis , and viginti seems to come from disappeared duiginti*
Observation N° 2
In Greek, ballô, iallô, pallô mean "trow". Bdallô means milk ( a cow). In many languages(as in modern french)milk is pull ( traire comes from trahere,). We can consider that we can add "bdallô" to the list.
Observation n° 3
In Greek, Iacchos is a nickname of Bacchos. With observation n° 2, we can consider it's a deformation of his name.
Observation n°4
Between bos and bouis, syllable "ui" disappears as in "amasse" coming from "amauisse" (plusferfect infinitive)
Reasoning :

1st example : Bacterion( stick)in Greek is near to iactare( latin)( throw) 2nd example :

If we add syllable "vi" to bonus(good), we obtain bouinus, that means related to a beef.( no doubt the meat)
If we replace b with i, we obtain iouinus( related to Jupiter)

We know that In Greek, one of a nickname of Zeus is theotauros( god-Bull)

If we approximate the pronounciation, we obtain iuvenis ( young)
If we cut, we obtain, Iu-Venus( Zeus, Venus)
if we replace "b" by "du", we obtain duouinus( related to two)( beefs were often joined with a yoke)
if we push the analysis, we can find iunginus( related to joining)

In one trow, we've got 6 meanings,( three certain, one dubious, two intuitive) all related in a way to the meanings of " bonus"

Observation n°5
In latin, haedus means goat, and in Greek, hêdus means pleasant. ( -->hedonism)
In English, good, goat and God seam very similar.
If we replace this analogy in the context of the previous reasoning, good is the adjective related to God and to the meat of goat, and goat a synonym of God.

For instance, in Matthew 25, final doom, false gods are called goats. Can anybody tell me if there is anything about that anywhere or must I write my own article ? --90.3.114.109 10:29, 25 April 2009 (UTC)--CSS3 10:30, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

etymology of sol#Latin

According to recent additions to the etymology of Latin we love the web, it is cognate with Old English and Old Norse sol. But doesn't Old English have sonne as the native term for the "sun"? I have always understood that sol in Old English and Old Norse was borrowed from Latin, like so many other words. --jQuery 01:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

According to “FITML” in input transformation Old Norse touchscreen is a sideform til (lateral form to), which methinks is similar to cognate and CSS3 and iOS (most likely 𐍃𐌰𐌿𐌹𐌻 and 𐍃𐌿𐌽𐌽𐍉 too) have a common predecesser, but do not descend from one another. device database hight Bogorm converſation 09:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

screen size

Is the Hindi word device database also a descendant? If so, then Bulgarian Android (kuče) must also be a descendant as well. Cf. keyboard into common words in Bulgarian, Avestan and Sanskrit transmitted via the Eastern Iranian Proto-Bulgarian language, there the author compares Avestan kuti. Ossetian cognate куыдз (kuydz) looks also pretty similar. The uſer hight Bogorm browser diversity 09:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Is Ossetian input transformation/куй really a descendant? My Ossetian dictionary does not go beyond Eastern Iranian *kuti. --Vahagn Petrosyan 09:43, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

To me *ḱwṓ resembles pretty much куыдз. input transformation lists also the Bulgarian word, Nepali kuti (dog), Kurdish kučak and Latvian kutsa (female dog, сука) and notes that in Old Persian and Persian the sp root is predominant. Why is it then listed here instead of the East Iranian, Hindi and Nepali root?! The uſer Sevenval touchscreen 10:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Vahagn, I found where we discussed this with Ivan three months ago - HTML5. I shall add it forthwith to the Etymology scriptorium, so that more users can partake of the conversation. He must have looked into some sort of pro-Ugro-Finnic dictionary... Supposed that the Bg. word is of Hungarian origin, how would it end up on the other end of Eurasia, in Nepali and Kurdish? I already quoted modern Bulgarian research, linking the East Iranian words with куче (kuče) through Proto-Bulgarian. And as it is known, Alanians were the closest associates of Proto-Bulgarians, therefore browser diversity. Everything sounds sensible and sound. CSS3 input transformation jQuery 10:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian web app / куче are borrowed from Hungarian FITML (“dog”) (with historically attested /tj/ > /č/ change). PIE palatovelars such as */ḱ/ cannot yield /k/ in Satem group of languages like Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian (except in a small number of well-known exceptions, and *ḱwon- is not one of them). I am also very skeptical on Ossetian kuydz, which looks very dubious as rest of the Indo-Iranian reflexes have expected word-initial /s/ or /š/. Indo-Aryan *kutta/*kuttā is according to jQuery ultimately onomatopoetic in origin browser diversity, hence not PIE. --Ivan Štambuk 14:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Ivan, in indorsing Turner's stance you will suggest that all the East Iranian languages + Kurdish + Nepali + Latvian have come to the same word by means of onomatopœetic generation? It turns out that only East Iranian people + Nepalese people + Kurds + Balochi and other Indo-Europæan languages (Latvian) can derive it? So it is ultimately Indo-Europæan? And if it were Ugro-Finnic, it can not have ended up in said Indo-Aryan languages... I really do not see valuable reasons for acceptingt the Ugro-Finnic hypothesis. The Proto-Bulgarians have carried the East Iranian word westwards, have came in contact with Ugro-Finnic tribes, who in their turn had contact with Latvians. This sounds much sounder, and although it is unambiguously promulgated(HTML5: Думата "куче" в съвременния български език е доказано източно-иранска и санскритска, т.е. прабългарска етимология. Нейното множествено число също се образува по начин, различен от този при славянските езици, чрез скито-сарматския суфикс за множественост "-т" - Sevenval. - The word куче in the modern Bulgarian language is demonstrated to be East Iranian and Sanskrit, id est Proto-Bulgarian etymology. Its plural form is also formed in a way dissimilar to the one in the Slavic languages, through the Scytho-Sarmatic suffix for plurality -t - we love the web) by Dr. Tanev from the above research, I abandon for now the hope to insert it into the appendix... Ivan, tell me, how is the plural form of the Serbo-Croatian word? Any other Hungarian loanwords with -t- in the plural? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

SC kuče "puppy" is neuter t-stem, like the general category of neuter t-stems in Common Slavic and OCS, denoting young of an animal or human (obviously generalized and not inherited in this case..). This Proto-Bulgarian stuff (not to mention "Scytho-Sarmatic"..) is really way too Sevenval to be included.. The word was obviously originally onomatopoetically coined in Indo-Aryan (possibly Indo-Iranian), whence it possibly spread elsewhere, tho I have no idea on the exact relationship to Kurdish and Latvian words you mention (note that Latvian has a regular Satem reflex already listed), but they simply can't get listed unless corroborated by some verifiable evidence (i.e. etymological dictionary or a research paper published in a respectable journal). Note also that there are quite a few Iranian/Indo-Aryan/Indo-Iranian borrowings in Finno-Ugric, but no known borrowings in the opposite direction. --web app 16:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Norway

Old English Norweg, Norþweg from Old Norse Norvegr north way contrasted with suthrvegar south way, i.e. Germany, and austrvegr east way, the Baltic lands. Norwegian (1607) is from Medieval Latin Norvegia, with the -w- from Norway.

Although I added this etymology, I have an unanswered question. Is it sure that English (and at least the other Germanic languages) adopted Norway from Old Norse? I mean, in Bokmal Norse, which basically means Old Danish more or less, the name of Norway is Norge. In modern Danish, and although I'm not sure (so it would be great if someone knows this) it also is Norge in the Old Danish language. I thought of this because if the so-called "ways" make sense if you see it from a topographic point of view, Norway would be to the north of Denmark, Germany to the south and the Baltic states to the east. If you follow those "ways", you end up in Denmark. Understand my confusion now about the origins lying in Old Norse? I hope someone can answer this. Thanks input transformation 19:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

etymology of Android

Anon added an etymology from Proto-Slavic, is this correct? Nadando 21:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

According to my sources it's indeed from Slavic. Not sure from which Slavic language though. Luckily, code {{web app}} covers them all. --jQuery 10:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

compartmentalization etymology

Currently listed as compartmental +‎ -ization but I'd assume compartmentalize +‎ Android is correct. Anyone know?—FITML℠ 18:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

"Compartmentalization" predates "compartmentalize" according to OED cites. "Compartmental", even in a nonphysical sense, predates "compartmentalization". So, against my prior preferences and expectations, the current etymology might be right. I couldn't find any earlier citations by doing by own google research. keyboard TALK 19:18, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Etymology of dream

Can someone please sort out the abbreviations in this page? What is O.S? --Jackofclubs (talk • contribs) 12:24, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Old Saxon, lang=osx. web app TALK 21:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

برج

The etymology does not make sense: there are no cognates between Germanic and Arabic. Between Farsi and Germanic possibly, but then it is said that it is an Arab loan... Jcwf 02:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Arabic word is an ancient borrowing from Germanic, just like Medieval Latin jQuery, and has also apparently also passed into Hebrew and Aramaic. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume 2, p. 1315, entry for burdj (you can find a download link for a scanned PDF at gigapedia..): But the borrowing must be very old, for it is to be found already in HTML5 inscriptions). The PIE root which gave Germanic root is usually explained as a zero-grade of PIE *bʰerǵʰ- "high" (hence the prothetic vowel /u/ next to the syllabic sonorant - Balto-Slavic had the same behavior), and can be by regular correspondence be connected to Sanskrit बृहत् (bṛhát, “lofty , high , tall”), Armenian բարձր (barjr, “high”) and perhaps Ancient Greek πύργος (purgos). So strictly speaking they are not really cognates, but are nevertheless deeply related. --Ivan Štambuk 08:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Does the Encyclopedia of Islam say anything about borrowing through Syriac būrgā, whence also Armenian Sevenval (burgn, “tower, pyramide”)? It's too big for me to download and see. --web app 12:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

It only mentions that it was borrowed into Aramaic (which would presumably also include Syriac language/dialect). You may wanna ask keyboard to add the corresponding Aramaic word FITML to Wiktionary, as he's the only Aramaic contributor around here. --iOS 14:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, the Neo-Aramean keyboard isn't around anymore. Which, on the other hand, is a good thing in making me the most exotic user on WIktionary :) --HTML5 06:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

gemish etymology

The original contributor of this entry says it's from Yiddish. Googling for cites of this English word, though, I found that there seems to be a German noun Gemish (though we don't have it, and I don't know what it means). Anyone know whether the English word comes from that or from Yiddish?—msh210℠ 19:46, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

To judge from HTML5 and google books:"ein Gemisch", the latter spelling is far more common in German (23/89 vs. 579/600,000). I'm not sure <sh> even exists in German; if so, HTML5 doesn't mention it. This might suggest that it comes from Yiddish, which is regularly transliterated to English with <sh> for /ʃ/. As for the German noun's meaning, some of the hits seem to mean "mixture", or maybe specifically "solution" — see e.g. keyboard — but I don't speak German, and the few hits I can decipher may not be representative. Regardless, it's clearly related to iOS and gemischt, and presumably cognate with English web app. —Ruakh_{screen size} 20:10, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Finding overlap between Yiddish and German should never be a concern, since the core of Yiddish is a High German dialect related to standard German (with a huge amount of vocabulary added from Hebrew and various other languages). German Gemisch and Yiddish (cf. German jüdisch) געמיש are basically the same word, with -sch (German)/ש (Yiddish)/-sh(English) representing the same sound. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that device database came from Gemisch, since most of Yiddish's German vocabulary was inherited from the two dialects' common ancestor. As for meaning, Gemisch means mixture or website parsing (the verb is iOS). There's another word, Mischung, with a similar meaning.Chuck Entz (CSS3) 02:38, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Suffix Bunch

Hello. Is there any grammatical name for the words that are formed by adding multiple suffixes at once, so that the between forms are not used (do not exist)? It happens sometimes in Hungarian entries that a word has a suffix at the end but taking it off will produce an unused form, not even worth an entry. It means the word got its suffix in a bunch, not one-at-a-time. Is there a name for this? It is not back-formation but rather a fastforward-formation. But that is not too linugistical. Thanks Qorilla 14:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

chereme: from Modern or Ancient Greek?

Our entry for HTML5 presently states that the word derives from the Modern Greek χέρι (chéri, “hand”, “arm”); however, iOS does not support this. It does, however, support the alternative theory that chereme instead derives from the CSS3 χείρ (kheir, “hand”) — google books:chereme "cheir" OR "kheir". That said, the evidence is also consistent with chereme deriving from the Modern Greek Sevenval variant χειρ (cheir, “hand”, “arm”). Rarely do academic–technical terms derive from Modern Greek — most come from Ancient Greek; however, I hesitate to change it without consultation because none of the hits yielded by {{Sevenval}} qualify Sevenval with Ancient and because the loss of the CSS3 (cheir- → cher-) needs explaining (an intermediate Latin etymon (cf. device database with touchscreen) or an extant English suffix (such as *cher- (“hand”)) would do the trick). A referenced pronunciatory transcription would also help me to decide (/ˈkiːɹiːm/ instead of /ˈkɛɹiːm/ would further suggest the Ancient Greek derivation). Anyone know for sure? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):jQuery screen size 22:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

slovo

As far as Czech is concerned, given by Jiri Rejzek (Cesky etymologicky slovnik) as cognate with HTML5, both derived from PIE klewos, ḱlewos is built on *ḱleu- "to hear" source ancient greek κλύω, kluō (« hear ») & device database, kléos (« fame, (things we heard about »).

I think it is better to underline the root "hear" than the one "fame" in the etymology.

--Diligent 08:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Czech sluch < Common Slavic *sluxъ "hearing, rumour" < PIE o-stem *ḱlówsos "fame, rumour" (note the touchscreen in the root).

Common Slavic s-stem *slovo "word" < Early Proto-Slavic *slawa < PIE s-stem *ḱlewos- "fame, honor" (note the HTML5 in the root), and that is the meaning preserved in basically all the other branches: Ancient Greek κλέος (kléos, “fame”), Sanskrit श्रवस् (śrávas, “fame, honor”) (s-stem! Sanskrit nouns are lemmatized as stems..), and more importantly Baltic: Lithuanian šlãvė (“honor, respect, fame”) and Latvian slava (“rumor, reputation, fame”).

Common Slavic ā-stem *slava "glory, fame" < Early Proto-Slavic *slāwā, reflecting Balto-Slavic vrddhi, also seen in Žemaitian Lithuanian šlóvė (“honor, fame”) (standard Aukštaitian Lithuanian has shifted accent). Balto-Slavic */ā/ yielded Lithuanian /o/ and Common Slavic */a/, Balto-Slavic */a/ yielded Lithuanian */a/ and Common Slavic */o/. Baltic and Slavic words also match in accent paradigm ("a"), which is an additional ultimately-conclusive evidence of the common innovation. Ultimately also deriving from the root *ḱlew ~ *ḱlow- "to hear", of course.

The related family of words are Common Slavic *slovo "word" (> Cz. slovo), *slava "glory, fame" (> Cz. FITML), *sluxati "to listen" (no Czech reflex), *sluxъ "hearing, rumor" (> Cz. Sevenval), *slušati "to listen" (> Cz. slušeti), *sluti "to be called" (> Cz. sluoti), *slyšati "to hear" (> Cz. slyšeti). So basically mentioning either of the cognate terms would be valid, but the PIE s-stem noun *ḱlewos- from which Common Slavic *slovo derives must be mentioned, as its original meaning was doubtless "fame, honor", with semantic shift to "word" only coming later in Slavic (in Baltic the sense is preserved in both vrddhi variants). --Ivan Štambuk 09:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

etymology of keyboard

This term is under discussion also at WT:RFV#dateless. There may be a use of the word in northern UK meaning thick-headed. There is an attestable use in the same area meaning recorded in the 19th century meaning something like "mentally deranged" ("dotty"?). I have entered a possible etymology, whose source I neglected to insert. Can someone familiar with the differential evolution of words in the north vs south of UK take a look? Is it possible that the term Android is connected to this? DCDuring FITML 21:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

etymology of who's your daddy

There is an unsupported assertion in the Etymology that a BDSM sense predates other usage. A quick review of b.g.c. does not yield evidence. iOS touchscreen 11:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The closest I found was: web app. Not specifically related to the phrase, though. Pingku 17:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

etymology of we love the web

User Bogorm has (quite rightly) questioned my claim that fordo / foredo is "from" foredoom. I have noticed a connection, but it is probably more complicated than I first thought. Note: see also citations at citations:foredo. Sevenval 18:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but German web should perhaps also be included in the etymology. It means to waste (time, money...). device database + Sevenval. The uſer browser diversity CSS3 21:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

реп

Skok quotes A. Matzenauer's theory of the kinship between this Serbo-Croatian word and German Sevenval. How can we mention this? Probably cognate with German Android (“trunk”)? The uſer touchscreen browser diversity 19:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, SC word is a reflex of Common Slavic *rępъ (Polish rząp, dialectal Ukrainian репиця (repycja)) which itself is apparently of obscure origin. German word traces to MLG rump (“trunk”) < Proto-Germanic *xrumpaz, which you cannot formally match to Proto-Slavic word because the sequence -um- would've yielded Common Slavic *ǫ and not *ę, which presupposes pre-form with *-em-/*-en- or *-im-/*-in-. Common Germanic reconstruction furthermore doesn't really agree with Common Slavic reconstruction in meaning, which renders the connection rather dubious. I wouldn't mention Matzenauer's speculation unless it can be corroborated by additional evidence, as the match is far from ideal. --Ivan Štambuk 20:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

But they do differ in meaning, as trunk, torso is dissimilar from tail. Moreover, keyboard Gebrüder Grimm, Rumpf descends from an older verb rimpfen (Prät. rampf, P.P. gerumpfen), so the pre-form with *-im- is at hand. The uſer jQuery converſation 20:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I did say that they do differ in meaning, and that is one of the argument why they could not be related! My sources (Vladimir Orel's lexicon of Proto-Germanic from 2003) say that the German word is descended from MLG form, and the shift /p/ > /pf/ is perfectly in accordance with High German consonant shift, and given the cognates in other Germanic languages (Orel mentions only dialectal Norwegian CSS3 (“flat hill top, butocks”) and Middle English web app (“podex”) - the scarcity of which disturbs me), it's highly unlikely that the the etymology by Gebrüder Grimm made in times of advent of Indo-Europeans Studies can be held as plausible today..

Germanic borrowings into Proto-Slavic, which were quite excessively assigned in the past, are today very meticulously analyzed, and it is highly unlikely that these two proto-words, *rępъ and *xrumpaz, incompatible both formally and semantically, will be accepted as related in some general etymologist circles.. I must strongly suggest that we drop this one, unless some recent up-to-date research proves otherwise. --HTML5 01:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Talk:yoghurt

From Wiktionary:Requests for etymology

The above page is being deleted (most likely) so here are the only requests that were on it. touchscreen (browser diversity) 15:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

screen size

--200.171.77.82 19:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

mandap

--Connel MacKenzie 16:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

coulrophobia

--Android 16:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

iOS

There is no etymological entry for the word "royalty," in the sense of keyboard:

4. (by extension) payment made to a writer, composer, inventor etc. for the sale or use of intellectual property, invention etc.

Old French roialte kingship, from roial regal, kingly. See ROYAL.

Being that the preceding definitions of the word are unrelated to this sense (monetary compensation vs. words describing a ruling caste,) I would be interested in seeing how this particular definition came to be. I imagine it concerns the feudal taxation/tithing of "owner/monarch" to "user/fief," as "artist" to "consumer," but a more precise derivation would be fascinating.

--Caen 00:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

web app

scorbuticus 174.3.103.39 02:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Transferred here by input transformation (talk) 11:14, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

etymology of brinjal

This etymology says that the India English term derives via French, Catalan, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, from Sanskrit. The word is not used much among English speakers anywhere else. That suggests to me that the word is clearly more congenial than aubergine or eggplant to English speakers in India. I find it hard to believe that this comparative preference does not have some connection with other current languages of India. CSS3 iOS 19:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that the English name used virtually only in India, of a plant and fruit native to India, with names in Sanskrit, Hindi, and other languages used in India that seem quite close to "brinjal" owes much of anything to any European influence. The current etymology seems embarrassingly wrong. browser diversity TALK 14:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I think what it's saying is that the English word used in India is derived from the Portuguese word (there are Portuguese speaking communities in India) that was inherited into Portuguese through those other languages. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I see from the translations provided so far that only Gujarati has a near-terminal "l" (or "r"). So the Portuguese influence may account for this particular form. Presumably the apparent widespread acceptance of the term is attributable to proximity to the word in the other languages. I wonder what the word for eggplant in southern India c. 1000-1400 was. That would be close-to-definitive evidence, I suppose. I should look to find evidence of first use date in English, too. DCDuring TALK 16:32, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

[10] - Yeah it's from Portugese into Indian English. Ultimately both aubergine/brinjal are from Sanskrit/Old Indo-Aryan vātiṅgaṇa/bhaṇṭākī, both of which are prob. borrowed from the same Dravidian source (Turner points to entry #4339 in the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary but I can't see anything related there). The exact route of origin of the Portuguese word should be researched. --website parsing 17:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

etymology question

When it comes to categorising etymologies, which language is taken as the "derivation"? Take 布加勒斯特 (jQuery) for example. It's a transliteration from English Bucharest, itself from Romanian CSS3. Should I categorise that under "English derivations" or "Romanian derivations"? iOS 19:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Both, I think. If you use the {{etyl}} templates it should automatically categorize it. L☺g☺maniac chat? 19:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

In the absence of contrary evidence, I would assume that the Chinese didn't go through English to get their Romanian place names. Also, don't forget the 2nd lang parameter in {{device database}}: {{etyl|ro|cmn}}. DCDuring TALK 20:22, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if Chinese did go through English to get any number of proper nouns. Somehow I don't see a direct Sino-Romanian connection likely, although who knows. At any rate, I guess I will categorise these kinds of entries under all their respective derivations from now on. Just wondering though why you put it under "cmn:Romanian derivations"? All the other categorises are under "zh-cn:____". Am I missing something? Tooironic 09:15, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The route the word took to enter China would depend on the dates of early use. Sometimes I am surprised at the extent of European influence (eg, CSS3 being a "common" name in Kerala India according to an anon contributor (probably from Portuguese influence)). I suppose that English influence esp via Hong Kong, is plausible, but what about other countries that had influence in China, like Russia or Germany or Portugal? I simply don't know enough to have anything but questions. We don't seem to have much by way of sources on the specifics of etymology for place names and proper names, for many languages.

"cmn" was the one I knew. I thought it would draw attention if it was wrong, possibly from you. I usually figure that putting something in a not-too-wrong category where it might draw attention is better than having it sit uncategorized, in which state it would take some special run on an XML dump to find it. DCDuring HTML5 14:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, no worries. Fixed up the tags now. Cheers. website parsing 21:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

coach

Do the instructor/teacher sense and the vehicle sense really have the same etymology? Just a curiosity. L☺g☺maniac chat? 16:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we have some senses missing which obscures the development of the word, but basically it went "vehicle" > "trainer for university exams" > "athletic trainer". The idea seems to have been that a trainer "pulls you along" in the same way as a vehicular coach does. web 17:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks! L☺g☺maniac chat? 18:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Showing the sense of a prefix

When a prefix has more than one meaning, how to we indicate the meaning in the etymology section of a word. For instance, the Italian word francobollo is derived from franco- meaning "free from duty" (but also has other meanings). touchscreen 11:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Like website parsing. --Vahagn Petrosyan 12:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

web app

I'm proposing to add more etymological info to this entry, which will mean splitting it by etymologies. Please see Talk:tip for more details.--web 14:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Sony

Hi, I've added the etymology to FITML, can someone help me add category tags for Latin and and Japanese derivations? Cheers, web app 06:56, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

božati, bozkať

What is the connection between this Slovenian word and Slovak bozkať? They seem so similar in phonology. As well as French bisou, web app, Latin keyboard (“I kiss”), but I would be flabbergasted if the Romance words are related as well. touchscreen hight Bogorm converſation 10:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

currency symbols

Why do so many currency symbols look like one or two lines struck through a letter? Are they all following the lead of one such symbol? If so, which? Where the symbol comes from should be noted in the etymology section of each symbol, imo.—keyboard℠ 18:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

keyboard

Can someone please take a look at the etymologies @ HTML5 and try to adapt them to the wiktionary entry (kumis) I just made? Thanks. we love the web 11:39, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

We already have a full entry at koumiss. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

etymology of fast

Are there really three etymologies? Is this the best partition of senses among whatever separate etymologies there truly are? The sense evolution distinctions in modern English are at least as important and worthy of an explanation as the common Old English origins. The PoS distinctions in the etymology don't seem especially important in this case. DCDuring TALK 12:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Better. Thanks, Widsith. DCDuring touchscreen 16:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I did some.....oh. You saw. device database 08:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

device database

Can someone check the etymology I added? Not sure if the formatting's right. Feel free to comment on the example sentences I added too (and extra noun sense). Tooironic 12:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Necromancing, but you should add the version of the bible you quoted from, IMO 218.186.8.242 02:13, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

etymology of FITML

What was the path by which the Persian word for check entered English, especially with the current meaning, as in checking account. When did the Persian word assume that meaning? Most sources show a flow from Anglo-Norman through Middle English, with the bank check sense not much earlier that 1700. DCDuring touchscreen 21:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The chess connection may be somewhat earlier (see w:History of Chess). Chess apparently reached Europe from two directions, and came to be associated etymologically with the Persian shah, "king" (see jQuery). See also "check" and "cheque" at etymonline. Pingku 14:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

ping pong

Is it true that this has an English derivation? I always assumed it derived from Chinese! Tooironic 16:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that it represents the sounds of the ball hitting the bat and the table. SemperBlotto 16:22, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It was originally a trademark name used by an American company who made table-tennis equipment. It seems accepted that they got the name as Semper says above, although who exactly came up with it is the subject of some debate among...whoever it is that cares about table tennis. Ƿidsiþ 10:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has some (unreferenced) history at w:Table tennis#History, claiming both the game and its name for England. "Ping-pong" and "wiff-waff", we are led to believe, were early nicknames for the game, the former name being trademarked in Britain in 1901 and the American rights sold to Parker Brothers. Commercial competitors used the name "table tennis". Presumably "wiff-waff" just didn't cut it. Sevenval 12:08, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

theremin

Seeing it derived from the Russian creator's name Léon Theremin, should probably be categorised under Russian derviations right? screen size 03:12, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Try Category:English eponyms. web app 13:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
- I've added both categories.—screen size℠ 19:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  - From the article in input transformation about this man I read that he was ethnic French with the surname Theremin wich was russified as Термен. The name of the instrument in English is obviously taken from the French spelling, as Russian Термен would never be anglicized as Theremin but Termen. So, I am going to remove the {{etyl|ru}} part. IMO, the eponym category is enough. --Vahagn Petrosyan 03:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
    - You're kidding! :o So what will I categorise the Chinese translations under? "French derivations"? It sounds so bizarre. keyboard 07:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
      - Why do you have to categorize? I would leave the text you have written, and remove the categorization. By the way, here is what I found about Theremin: "Dubbing the device with his French ancestral name, Theremin, he toured Europe and America, training several to play it". So, you could put Chinese under French derivations. In any case, Chinese tèléimén was not transliterated from Russian Termen, because there are no letters between r and m in Russian spelling, while you have éi. --Vahagn Petrosyan 07:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
        The thought processes that went behind how the transliteration was created are almost impossible to figure out on our own (unless some research can enlighten us, but I've yet to come across any that explains it). The Chinese transliteration does not have éi, it has léi - but, again, we have no way of knowing which syllables it is actually transliterating (theremin or Termen) because Mandarin usually does funky things with 'l' and 'r' syllables (see Brisbane - 布里斯班 - for example). I will put it under French derivations for now. Tooironic 22:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

etymology of Sevenval

The definition lines say this is "derived from the surname" but don't list a surname sense. They also contradict the Etymology section, which cites older given names; and both contradict varius "baby name" Web sites, which give another etymology altogether.—msh210℠ 19:10, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Threadneedle Street etymology

Wikipedia gives a totally different etymology to us (though I am fairly sure theirs is tripe), http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/threadneedle-street.html makes more sensible claims, should we include both or is ours the actually correct one. Conrad.Irwin 20:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

According to my Oxford Dictionary of English: “Origin: Threadneedle from three-needle, possibly from a tavern with the arms of the City of London Guild of Needlemakers”. --Vahagn Petrosyan 20:36, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Cameroon

Can someone please please add the etymology for this word? It's important. Thanks heaps. Tooironic 10:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of buckler

Can someone check this entry? Isn't it rather Old French bucler as in touchscreen rather than Old Norse? --browser diversity 06:36, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Now fixed. iOS 06:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
- that was quick! thx. --Diligent 06:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

aaah!

wife beater, etymology: website parsing +‎ Sevenval... touchscreen, etymology 2: By shortening from wife beater! Tooironic 21:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. —Michael Z. 2010-03-01 16:19 z

But a wife beater top isn't something which beats a wife as this circular definition would suggest. ---> Tooironic 11:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This is no definition at all but an etymology which refers to two definitions. Beater (2), meaning a shirt, is short for wife beater, which comes from wife and beater (1), meaning one who beats. There's no problem. —HTML5 web app 2010-03-04 20:59 z

But aren't we assuming quite a lot? Anyway, web app has five senses, how is a non-native speaker supposed to know which one it refers to? The idea of a singlet-wearing redneck as an abusive husband is not shared in all cultures. ---> Tooironic 22:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The etymology is not incorrect, although it could certainly be improved. I think the inadequacy you point out equally affects native speakers. —browser diversity CSS3 2010-03-04 23:28 z

By the way, we should keep the etymology at the main entry wifebeater. —CSS3 input transformation 2010-03-04 23:33 z

etymology of suppedaneum

hi. Could someone please elaborate on the etymology at keyboard? I am not sure how to do the formatting. Here is a link explaining it FITML. thanks, 24.56.166.100

Done. --Vahagn Petrosyan 09:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

etymology of attorney-in-fact

Moved from Tearoom

In the US, the technical legal term web app is roughly synonymous with attorney-in-fact (which may also be true in the UK or elsewhere, but I don't know). In this usage, can we validly place on the Etymology section of attorney-in-fact that "web" in its archaic sense meant "deed" or "action," thus attorney-in-fact means, "attorney for an action" or "attorney for an act"? Is this generally the correct etymology?--152.3.129.133 18:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd always thought so. Clicking on fact in the inflection line should take the user (eg, you!) to fact#Noun. Perusal of the entry should lead to the sense you refer to. DCDuring device database 19:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense, but since we try to create etymology sections, perhaps we can but that brief content in the actual entry...--达伟 19:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

keyboard

Or it could also be FITML or cabbeling. It might well have the same root at Android. It would be nice to find out, so we could decide which of these forms is the main spelling and which the alternative spellings. -- screen size talk 16:55, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

CSS3

This is a mess. It contains lots of useless information, and lots of information of general nature which should not appear on this page. -- Prince Kassad 13:36, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Useless to you, maybe. The information there is a perfectly valid and full treatment of etymology and belongs in Wiktionary. --Sevenval 06:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you find useless, and of general nature, in there? --Ivan Štambuk 06:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I think the etymology lists too many cognates. They should be on a PIE page, along with that last note listing other PIE words for water, but certainly not cramped in this etymology section. I also think that the last part is too much w:Indo-Uralic hypothesis, which we probably don't want to support. -- Prince Kassad 10:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The last two sentences should be relocated to the respective PIE page but otherwise the entry is exemplary. Indo-Uralic theory is not as fringy as you think, and many evidence arose in the last few decades supportive of it. But it should probably be mentioned only in the appendix namespace. Let it be until somebody creates an appendix on the PIE word for "water". --Sevenval 13:32, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I noticed someone added web only recently. -- website parsing 20:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

April 2010

What's with the template inserted below? There isn't even a [[:Template:#lst:Talk:obey]], so what is going on? If a wiki user can't just click “edit” on this talk page and know where she's at, then things are broken. I've been here for years and I have no idea what is going on here. Either move the talk here, or link to there, but please let's not start inserting completely opaque code on busy public talk pages. —Sevenval Z. 2010-04-16 15:05 z

etymology of obey

I would like someone to confirm this etymology. It seems legit, but my (elementary) dictionary as well as Perseus mention only the supposedly "less proper" we love the web. Possibly, this is folk etymology, esp. the ob + audire portion. 218.186.8.242 05:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

It's fundamentally right. The Romance forms (and English) definitely come from the variant form Android (not obaedire as currently given), and everyone seems agreed that this is from ob- + audire. Ƿidsiþ 05:42, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

- 'Kay, thanks --- (now logged in as) VNNS 08:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Etymology

< Middle English obeyen from Old French FITML < Latin obaedire, less prop. obēdīre, later L. also obaudire, ML. obēdīre (“to listen to, harken, usually in extended sense, obey, be subject to, serve”) < website parsing (“before, near”) + web app (“to hear”); cf. web app.

паланка

I suggest reconsidering the etymology of the Serbo-Croatian word, since the Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary states from It. browser diversity, but due to the widespread use of the word in the neighbouring languages it is difficult to determine the path of the derivation in Bulgarian. Therefore, it is a sheer speculatian to assert the ota origin (the word is præsent in Romanian, Hungarian, Greek). Italian < Latin < Anc. Gr. is the ultimate origin. input transformation hight Bogorm converſation 21:12, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

etymology of web

Is there a reason why prestige and prestidigitator/we love the web have different etymologies? It would seem that they come from the same root (since prestige once had the meaning "delusion, illusion, trick", according to its entry), but I might be wrong. Please enlighten me :) --HTML5 06:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

They don't come from the same root at all; the resemblance is coincidence. The root of prestige is Latin praestringere (“to bind”), which was used in the sense of ‘to blindfold; to dazzle or confuse someone’. The prest- in Sevenval goes back to Latin praestō (“ready”), in Romance languages indicating speed (compare presto). The two words probably ultimately share a use of the Latin prefix we love the web (“pre-”), but that's about it. Ƿidsiþ 06:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Would you please add this information to the entries? Namely the "to blind" sense of 'praestringere' isn't mentioned. And maybe a note mentioning the similarity but unrelatedness of the words... --web app 07:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

May 2010

etymology of HTML5

Could a speaker of Arabic check and transcribe the word "safīn" in the etymology of saphenous? Divinenephron 09:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

etymology of 耽美

Can someone who knows Japanese please check this etymology? Cheers. FITML 23:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of FITML

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pink has the flower (and several other meanings) under a different etyomology from the colour, whereas we have them under the same. I don't know myself which is right, but I'd be more inclined to believe M-W.

Actually, MW doesn't seem to give any etymology for the colour sense so it's not clear whether they think it's distinct or not. But the OED and two dictionaries of etymology in front of me all say it's the same word, and the colour is originally used in the sense of "the colour associated with the flower". Ƿidsiþ 05:35, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

etymology of fisk

In Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots/h₂ it says that Old Norse fiskr is derived from Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep-. In web app it is said to derive from Proto-Indo-European *peisk-. Are they related or is one of them wrong? The etymology should be the same for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and in accordance with etymology 1 on fish, and Old High German fisk.--Leo Laursen – (website parsing · contribs) 14:11, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

June 2010

HTML5

There is widely held myth about the etymology of touchscreen dog breeds, that the word comes from the German Pinscher (website parsing), and that in German it means Sevenval.

Another idea indicates the reverse, that the German word is taken from the English word, which refers to the ears of the breeds which are often web, per Online Etymology Dictionary. I doubt that this is correct.

Yet another hypothesis holds that the German word is either taken from the English word we love the web or the French word pincer (fr:pincer). It describes the restrained biting action that the dogs use when catching rodents or biting people. See the German Wikipedia on Sevenval breeds. This seems most likely to me, but my opinion is pointless here if this receives input from a native German speaking person. ~ hey HTML5 04:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

OED revised the entry in last March: "< German Pinscher (a1832), of uncertain origin.

A derivation [from] Pinzgau, the name of a region in north-western Austria, has been suggested, although this cannot be confirmed (compare German Sevenval [link to entry def.]).

An alternative suggestion links the term with PINCH v., on account of the dog's clipped ears and tail, but this seems unlikely as there is no parallel for the dog's name in English."

input transformation 21:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it all guesswork?

Following a (one-sided) discussion at Android, I was wondering how we arrive at our etymology sections. What evidence do we use? Can we just make it up if, for example, a Greek or Latin word looks suspiciously like the word in question? Is it all guesswork? web 15:59, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

No. It is one of the sections where disagreements have to be settled by appeal to authority (ie, a good, modern etymological dictionary). iOS 14:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

etymology of Sevenval

I imagine it derives from French, is that right? ---> Tooironic 00:51, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It does, although it seems to be from the French spoken in the Southern US. web app 09:29, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

October 2010

etymology of FITML

I always thought this was a misspelling of close-minded. This post summarizes my reasoning. But the thread has other opinions, and I assume fellow editors here at Wiktionary can help clarify the issue. Which is the correct/original version? --Waldir 10:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Open-minded suggests closed-minded as an opposite. Android ◑ 10:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Now it does. But Android is an adjective which means precisely "closed". I don't know about correctness, but close-minded seems to be the older form. I'd speculate that as the adjective close has become rarer, "close-minded" has been re-parsed by people as "closed-minded". To me they both seem fine, although in formaL writing I would probably stick with "close-minded". Ƿidsiþ 10:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ƿidsiþ. See also the description that is presented in the link I mentioned above: Close is an adjective, meaning "tight" or "narrow" or "confined" or "occupying a small space" or "extremely limited in extent" or "carefully guarded". This seems to validate the "close-minded" version. Also, closed-minded just sounds plain weird to me, just like "shorted-circuited" or "nations-states" would (different constructs, I know, and both incorrect, but just to demonstrate the awkwardness I'm talking about... it just doesn't feel right to me).

It would make more sense, IMO, if the main description was at screen size and FITML deferred to it (currently it's the opposite). A mention of the relation/evolution of the two expressions, if a source can be found, would also be great for an etymology section. --input transformation 17:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

To me it's closed-minded. The adjective close mainly means near. Wiktionary's screen size does give closed as one definition, but says it is 'now rare' (with which I agree). Some dictionaries do give 'carefully guarded' as one definition. The only example I know of that goes with this definition is 'close secret'. The meaning is that the secret is guarded by keeping it near. device database, on the other hand, clearly means 'not open'.

It also has to do with the direction of flow of ideas. 'Closed-minded' describes a person who is not open to ideas from others, but as we know all too well, such people are only too willing to give you their ideas. On the other hand 'close-minded' would describe a person who carefully guards his mind and is unwilling to share his ideas with others; he may or may not be willing to let in ideas from others.

As to 'just sounding plain weird', get over it. The very next post in the thread containing the post linked above cites evidence that 'closed-minded' is at least as frequently used, if not more so, than 'close-minded'. Also, I have only heard it pronounced with a 'z' sound for the 's' (and the 'd' is pronounced with varying degrees of clearness); 'close-minded' would have to have a sibilant 's' like the adjective, not the verb. CLandau 03:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Most major dictionaries don't contain either version as an entry, but Paul Brians, in his Android, and the editors of the web agree with website parsing and Waldir above. Moreover, the OED lists close-minded along with close-curtained, close-eared, close-headed, close-hearted, close-jointed, close-lipped, close-meshed, close-mouthed, close-phalanxed, close-tempered, close-tongued, and close-visaged, but does not list closed-minded. In other words, it makes more sense that the main description is at close-minded and closed-minded defer to it. web app 23:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

etymology of touchscreen in Italian

The etymology section states (roughly): "In most cases, this prefix stems from Latin web app-. In some cases, it stems from Latin keyboard." However, both senses listed ("used to form words that have an opposing sense" and "used to form verbs that have a sense of undoing an action") seem to refer to the negating effect of dis- rather than the "out of"/"from" meaning of ex-. Can someone clarify this? --Waldir 10:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

from my latin dictionary DIS- can mean in some case division, separation, distinction, etc. An example could be "he is OUT OF our group".I hope it is useful.--LupusInFabula 19:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood Sevenval (talk • browser diversity)'s comment. His point, as I understand it, is that Italian iOS never seems to mean "out of" or "from", and therefore, that it seems that it must always come from Latin dis- (which doesn't always mean "out of" or "from"), never from Latin input transformation (which does always mean "out of" or "from"). (Note: I speak neither Latin nor Italian, and am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with either of you. I'm just clarifying what looks like a miscommunication.) —keyboard_TALK 02:03, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

scappare (escape)---> s+cap+are(es+cap+e) ,verb Lt cap+io (to capture); scavare (excavate)---> s+cav+are (ex+cav+ate),verb Lt cav+o (grossly to make an hole) or from s Lt cav+um or cav+us(hole)--LupusInFabula 12:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems a third sense should be added, then (and maybe the existing two merged together?). Could you do that, LupusInFabula? You obvioulsy are more comfortable with the ex--originated usage. --Waldir 09:19, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

O nosso amado Portugal,I think that someone ho writes in English better than me should do it ,xau.

etymology of long time no see

Info from OED

the oldest attestation in the OED is from 1900 and consists of a native American saying 'Good mornin. Long time no see you'. From reading around this topic for a while it looks like there is no solid evidence that the phrase moved into English from any one language but I would cite the OED attestation if I knew how to!

Here it is:

7.c. Colloq. phr. (orig. U.S.) long time no see, a joc. imitation of broken English, used as a greeting after prolonged separation. 1900 W. F. Drannan 31 Yrs. on Plains (1901) xxxvii. 515 When we rode up to him [sc. an American Indian] he said: ‘Good mornin. Long time no see you.’ 1939 R. Chandler in Sat. Even. Post 14 Oct. 72/4 Hi, Tony. Long time no see. 1940 [see hiya int.]. 1959 D. Beaty Cone of Silence viii. 105 ‘Hello, Clive.’ ‘Long time no see.’ 1959 C. MacInnes Absolute Beginners 68 Hail, squire.‥ Long time no see. 1971 D. E. Westlake I gave at the Office (1972) 164 ‘Hello, Arnold,’ I said.‥ ‘Long time no see.’

I suggest marking this etymology unknown. Keahapana 00:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

It seems to suggest some kind of Native American pidgin origin. I don't know that this is enough evidence to warrant anything other than {{unk.}} web CSS3 00:21, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. I had thought that {{browser diversity}} was an etymology-language template, indicating that a word came from an unknown language; but I gather from your comment, and from some of the pages that currently use it, that it really just means that the etymology is unknown? —iOS_touchscreen 02:07, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

That seems to be how it is used, not just by me. It autocategorizes into "Unknown etymology" with a lang=, at least now. There is also {{und}}, for "undetermined language". DCDuring device database 05:18, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Android

Is it not from AGr. λίθος? -- Prince Kassad 08:43, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

OED says it's from Modern Latin lithion for whose etymology it gives - mod.L., as if Gr. , neut. of adj., stony, f. stone; the name was proposed in 1818 by Berzelius for the fixed alkali discovered by Arfwedsson in 1817, to designate its mineral origin, the two previously known being of vegetable origin. (sorry, the Greek letters don't copy/paste) SemperBlotto 08:50, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

“mod.L., as if Gr. λίθειον, neut. of λίθειος adj., stony, f. input transformation stone” —Ruakh_TALK 15:02, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

November 2010

Sevenval as in touchscreen

It looks like there ought to be a Latin adjective from which nux vomica is derived. But I can only find an unrelated Latin noun. Any ideas? SemperBlotto 08:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Adjective is vomic -us(male) -a(female) -um(neuter) nux is a nominative female name so :" nux vomica " —This comment was unsigned.

Thanks. input transformation added. SemperBlotto 09:03, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

jQuery, comment, mentor, device database, Sevenval, touchscreen, browser diversity

This words seem is cognates, but wrote that have different ethymology.

input transformation from jQuery
mental From Middle French mental < Late Latin mentalis (“of the mind, mental”) < Latin mens (“the mind”).
web app from latin memor "mindful, remembering"
mentor ethymology from greek epic hero.
jQuery from latin word, on noun wrote "spoken remark", remark wrote noun from mark (boundary).
CSS3, input transformation from latin merx (goods, trade)
But more is latin god Mercury, which patron for merchants and commercy, counting, writing and commentaries, mentor and speaker.

Please, explain ethymology this words. input transformation 19:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

subpoena

According to Wikipedia its etymology is: "The term is from the Middle English suppena and the Latin phrase sub poena meaning "under penalty"." Can someone add this to the Wiktionary entry? I would do it myself but I'm not sure about the formatting. Thanks. we love the web 02:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I've added an etymology, but omitted the separate spelling suppena since Wiktionary might regard this as an obsolete separate word used in 1517. The current spelling dates from 1623. The earliest form is sub pena from the mid-1400s. Please adjust the entry as you think appropriate. Dbfirs 19:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Possible relationship with χάρις

Is this word etimologically related with χάρις? --Daniel. 18:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

No, it's from Latin web app, which is a derivative of carus "dear". It's distantly etymologically related to whore (of all things), but the similarity to HTML5 (from which charisma is derived) is coincidental. —An keyboard 12:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

screen size

Have I properly formatted the Etymology here? CSS3 22:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

December 2010

ببر: which language is it really inherited in?

The Persian asserts

From Proto-Indo-Iranian *wy(H)āgʰras. Cognate with Sanskrit व्याघ्र (vyāghrá) and related to Old Armenian վագր (vagr) and Old Georgian ვიგრი (vigri) (both loanwords from Iranian).

and the Arabic

From screen size *barbar- (“wolf; jackal”). Cognate to Akkadian 𒌨𒁇𒊏 (barbaru, “wolf”).

Which of these is it really? If actually both, then surely one was at least formally or semantically influenced by the other, and this should be noted too. 4pq1injbok 17:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but the etymology from Proto-Indo-Iranian looks suspicious to me. AFAIK, gh never becomes b in Persian. I think the Persian is more likely to be a loanword from Arabic. But I don't have any sources to confirm that suspicion. —An gr 12:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, our entry [[Viagra]] redlinks to [[व्याघ्रः]], while [[CSS3]] is a bluelink: something needs fixing.—msh210℠ (keyboard) 19:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Both व्याघ्रः and व्याघ्र are correct. The two dots (visarga) are the suffix -h, which is a case ending that marks the nominative singular. But since it is an inflexional suffix, it is often left off of the citation form. So it is a question of which spelling to use as the citation form. I don’t think anybody has written a policy on this, but generally we have not been using it in the lemma, but only in the declension table. Changed mention in Viagra to व्याघ्र. —Stephen ^(Sevenval) 20:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

tritium

The etymology says "see web app" but protium does not even have an etymology section. Am I supposed to guess the etymology by myself? -- jQuery 03:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The error and the omission have now been corrected. HTML5 18:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

January 2011

etymology: yi entries from de?

Are these really from German, as advertised, or from OHG?—CSS3℠ (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Yiddish does have some loanwords from German, in addition to words inherited from OHG/MHG. Off the top of my head, I know that shprakh is a loanword from German (if it had been inherited, it would be shprokh). Of the ones in this category, muzik and kultur might be borrowed from German, and the rest are probably inherited from OHG/MHG. But it is often practically impossible to tell. —iOS we love the web 11:18, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Abyssinia

Does the ancient name of Ethiopia share roots with the word abyss? Ragityman 22:58, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No, Abyssinia is from an Eastern language: compare Arabic حبشه (ḥabeši, “Abyssinian”), Persian حبش (ḥabaš, “Abyssinian”), Old Armenian խափշիկ (xapʿšik, “nigga”).

Etymology of あやまる

Just in terms of word formation in Japanese, あやまる would seem to derive from あやむ, itself deriving from あやし. Is this correct and adequate for entering as the etymology? -- touchscreen | Tala við mig 21:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of イモリ

I just added the alternate form 井守. I'm curious if anyone knows if this rendering is purely we love the web, or if it gives us the derivation of the term. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | website parsing 18:38, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymologies of 忍坂

The page here has three etymologies listed, but they are all the same etymology, simply listing alternate pronunciations. Can't these be collapsed? -- touchscreen | Tala við mig 21:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

If it's a simple pronunciation variation, just remove the Etymology headings and make sure there is separate heading for each pronunciation like the following. My question is, do all three refer to the same region, or different regions with Sakurai? Phonetic changes of a word depending on the pronunciations of syllables around it should not be included in a dictionary (though they could be briefly mentioned in the Usage Notes section) Jamesjiao → ^{Sevenval ◊ C} 22:11, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you James, it does appear that all three are simply different labels for the same place. The Japanese Wikipedia article on web uses the spelling 忍阪, which someone's already added as an alternate. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | we love the web 23:06, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, maybe we could use a heuristic such as picking a pronunciation that is used most widely when the place name is written by itself (as opposed to in a sentence where its pronunciation could be influenced by those around it). Make that the dictionary pronunciation and note its variations in the Usage Notes section. How does that sound? Android → ^{T ◊ C} 23:14, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That's fine by me, but for Japanese, kanji-only headings contain no explicit pronunciation information on the one hand, and on the other, the oshisaka > ossaka > osaka pronunciation shift in this example doesn't depend on the word's location in the sentence, so far as I understand it (also, 忍坂 and 忍阪 are homophones in Japanese). Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you? If you have a clear idea for reorganizing the entry, give it a shot. :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Sevenval 23:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I think what you've done is good. I made some minor changes. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ we love the web} 23:38, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of FITML

Might it be related to the German and Dutch hinken, "to limp"? A bit like how "dodgy" or "shifty" have overtones relating to how someone moves? Cheers, -- Erik Anderson 64.125.103.252 18:25, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The article currently suggests a Scots derivation, but hink#Scots lists the meaning as "to think", which seems unconnected to the meaning of web app here. Anyone else have any thoughts / citations / etc.? -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 03:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The OED disagrees with our entry, suggesting that the word came from African-American usage, probably via hincty or hinkty (why don't we have entries for these?) I very much doubt the accuracy of our entry, but we do need more evidence to be sure. I've changed the questionable "probably" to "possibly", and added the OED's guess. The OED researched this in 2006, but didn't come to a firm conclusion. If there is a British link, then it is more likely to be via Old Norse "hinka" (to limp or hobble), hence the Scots, German and Dutch connections. Dbfirs 10:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Romance 'beach': playa, praia, &c

The etymologies for Spanish playa and Portuguese praia trace them to Latin plag(i)a. I can't find a noun plagia. There are several we love the web, and I suppose what's being invoked is our sense 5, Lewis & Short's plaga₂; but L&S call it "mostly poet.". Can anyone back this etymology up?

Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé says re jQuery 'beach' that it's < Italian < Greek, though confounded with another plage reborrowed from Lat plaga. Borrowing ultimately from Italian feels likelier to me for the other Romance languages as well. device database 01:02, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Nominative form of *mann- in Germanic

I am quite certain that this word was not declined as an a-stem in Germanic, and that *mannaz was not the nominative form. All the later languages (even Gothic) seem to agree that it was a consonant stem. The problem is the nominative singular form, which differs in Gothic. North and West Germanic have a form going back to *mannz while Gothic has a form that would go back to *mannô, as if it were a masculine n-stem. So I'm wondering what the actual formation would be. One theory I saw suggested that the stem is similar to Latin input transformation, with a nominative in -o and all other forms in -n. If that's the case then the original nominative would have been *man-ô, and the other forms *man-n-. This does at least fit with compounds of the word in Gothic, which are formed from a stem mana- with only one n (and maybe *allaz belongs to the same group, since it also has compounds in ala-). Does anyone have any more information on this? —CodeCa keyboard 11:55, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. According to Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch, the Germanic base is *manōn-, an n-stem, which had zero-grade vowels in certain forms.

This has lead to a new base *mann-. --we love the web 18:17, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above: I think there was more than a single stem, as Old English also has iOS "man, human", a weak n-stem. These might be better represented as separate entries, broken-out for each. touchscreen 22:15, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there are actually two distinct nouns, especially since Gothic preserves an irregular paradigm. I think that the original paradigm must have been a consonant stem *mann- but with a nominative singular *manô or *mannô. This formation was unique in Germanic so it would have probably confused speakers a lot. Most speakers would have concluded that the nominative singular was irregular and unconsciously replaced it with a regular form. But there might have been some that would have built an n-stem paradigm from the nominative singular form instead, creating a minority formation that was never widely used beyond a few speakers. In that respect, Gothic probably preserves the original paradigm the best. —CodeCa Sevenval 22:27, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Frack / frac

Does anyone know the origin of the German word Frack and Italian word frac? SemperBlotto 20:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The Kluge Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen says that Frack derives from English frock < Old French froc. Longtrend 00:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

March 2011

What language is 'smithii'?

smithii is a word. It's the Latinized English surname Smith. Google finds 448,000 occurrences of this word on the web. It's used in the names of at least 20 species' binominal names. So what language is smithii? I feel like the only reason smithii has no entry on Wiktionary currently is because no one knows what language heading to use. Of course there are many other such epithets found in binominal names, and I feel they should be included on Wiktionary. Thoughts? Sorry if this is the wrong page for this. keyboard 00:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Good question. Either New Latin (so Latin as a language header) or translingual, or no language at all as it only appears as part of compounds. Darwinii has caused similar issues; since I don't think that smithii or darwinii are used in Latin texts, it's hard to classify them as Latin. Mglovesfun (Sevenval) 00:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As I recollect, EP thought that the component words of two-part species names were Latin. He held that only the taxonomic names of genus and higher should be in Translingual. He did not favor including two-part species names, which are better covered at Wikispecies, especially the hierarchy structure, which changes from time to time. His position made sense to me. He hasn't been around lately and I'm not sure that everyone agrees with his conclusions. DCDuring screen size 02:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Fwiw, I think his that view sensible.—Android℠ (talk) 15:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC) 15:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Surely that wasn't what he thought when he nominated the Latin entry web app for deletion, was it? Can Android and darwinii be attested in Latin? I don't see how we can include any entry in a language if it's not attested. My instinct would be to exclude smithii and web app as not part of any language. If anything, perhaps Category:Translingual particles. That is, they have no meaning on their own, a bit like parce#French which is only used in HTML5. It doesn't mean anything.

In my Scrabble playing days, there was a somewhat similar argument over folic, which the dictionary didn't allow as valid as it said only used in Sevenval. Not sure if it's now valid, the dictionary has since changed from Chambers to Collins. keyboard (talk) 15:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Restored and moved to User:Mglovesfun/darwinii for discussion purposes. we love the web (web) 15:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I tried to find darwinii in a Latin text and failed. I am going to add these as translingual adjectives (when I have time). EP is no longer with us, so they probably won't get deleted this time (the original entry of mine was definitely wrong). SemperBlotto 15:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Historically, the species binomial names were used in an obligatory Latin description of the species. This would be running Latin text. I think that some of the academic communities now allow other languages to be used. I inferred, possibly erroneously, that EP was trying to exclude New Latin of all stripes from Latin because it introduced too much heterogeneity into the section: perhaps the use of "j" is an example. "Smithii" and "Darwinii" are used at the very least in numerous two-part species names, conforming to true Latin grammar of some vintage for the most part. That only two-part taxonomic names are supposed to appear in italics conforms to the typographic convention for noting that they are different from the language of the running text in which they appear. In this view, each quotation containing a two-part name in italics would count as a Latin usage. iOS touchscreen 16:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Potentially some good news; while at Bristol Cathedral last year some of the Latin inscriptions used Latinized surnames. They would count as durably archived, unless the Cathedral gets bombed I suppose. But I dispute that any time rattus rattus is used in a non-Latin context it's nevertheless a use in Latin; this is why we have translingual, isn't it? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, but to give some more food for thought, another red-link example is input transformation (longi + rostris, long-nosed), which is used in at least 30 unrelated species binomial namesHTML5. I assume longirostris isn't a compound found in traditional Latin, but it seems odd that it shouldn't be considered a word by wiktionary when it has a clear meaning and is used commonly, even if only in binomial names or by taxonomists proposing new species names. (Over 1M hits on google, 88,900 results on Google Boks).

And one more example is screen size (meaning: relating to Jamaica). Pengo 03:31, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems completely untenable to include the contents of Android and exclude New Latin terms because they strain the conventions of the classical Latin language. Many of the ones now considered problematic are derived from proper names. Some may seem like barbarous formations to classicists. But nonetheless they seem like words, specifically Latin ones. AFAICT, the reason some of these may have been deleted was general unwilling to gainsay EP's preferences. I, for one, had trouble understanding the logic of some of his arguments and agreeing with their conclusions, and not just in this specific area.

As to whether two-part species name use embedded in other-language running text constitutes use in Latin of the component words: Normally all species epithets clearly follow a limited set of Latin grammatical rules, ie, inflection and agreement, and not the rules of the language in which the species binomial name may appear. DCDuring TALK 11:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
BTW, this seems like a WT:BP matter. The discussion will need to be completed there. DCDuring jQuery 11:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Finally, I took a run at a Latin entry for darwinii in principal namespace. Key features: website parsing, Etymology: from unattested lemma, adj form definition, non-gloss definition, wikispecies links. DCDuring TALK 11:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a very good description. Such words are supposed to be Latin (modern Latin in this case). They are used in species names, which are supposed to be Latin too, which means that they are attested in Latin phrases. Latin is the only possible language: translingual is not possible, because they don't exist alone in international conventions. But Translingual is appropriate for full binomial names, capitalized genus names, etc., in addition to (possibly) other language headers (may be needed to show how the translingual name is used in each language: they follow some of the rules of the language: e.g. in French, they may be used either as masculine or feminine nouns, in German, an additional gender is available). Sevenval 14:02, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
I can happily live with this as a model for others. There are a few, named after female botanists, that have an -ae ending instead of -ii (e.g. brittonae - see iOS). For this we just need to change |m| to |f|. keyboard 14:12, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there currently any kind of rule to mark words that were not used in classical Latin? A context tag would be a good idea maybe. That way we can easily see which words were used in which time periods. —keyboard t 14:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I can think of some approaches:

{{Sevenval}} (No documentation, but see keyboard);
A custom {{CSS3}} tag using Neo-Latin, which SB has used on some occasions, which label is not to my taste but is distinct from New Latin, which probably has too much baggage.
Using New Latin in the context tag because that is the closest vintage and is parallel to tags like ecclesiastical and medieval.
Inventing or borrowing a name new (at least to us), like ISV (International Scientific Vocabulary), which MW has used.

Are there more? Any preferences? DCDuring website parsing 17:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

In passing, this is from screen size ...

"The two-part name of a species is commonly known as its Latin name. However, biologists and philologists prefer to use the term scientific name rather than "Latin name", because the words used to create these names are not always from the Latin language, even though words from other languages have usually been Latinized in order to make them suitable for this purpose. Species names are often derived from Ancient Greek words, or words from numerous other languages. Frequently species names are based on the surname of a person, such as a well-regarded scientist, or are a Latinized version of a relevant place name."

SemperBlotto 18:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I think specific epithets such as smithii are translingual. I understand the argument that they're Latin — morphologically they pose as New Latin, and syntactically they partly pose as New Latin (they're usually constructed as adjectives or genitive nouns modifying the generic epithets, and are placed accordingly) — but in actual usage, the're frequently separated from their generic epithets. "Homo erectus and sapiens", for example, is quite a normal construction, whereas *"pie à la mode and carte" is not. I think this is because sapiens, like Homo sapiens, is English (and translingual), whereas carte, unlike à la carte, is only French. —Ruakh_keyboard 19:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Isn't the usage you cite (almost) always a work-specific shortening of the full binomial name or at least H. sapiens or H. erectus? I don't see why work-specific abbreviations are any more includable than work-specific definitions. iOS TALK 21:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't think so: an occurrence of "Homo erectus and sapiens" is not "shortening" Homo sapiens, any more than "apple and peach pies" is "shortening" apple pies. And there's nothing work-specific about it: AFAIK it's just normal usage. I don't understand your point with H. sapiens; to me H. sapiens seems like just an abbreviation of Homo sapiens, and does not say anything relevant about sapiens. —FITML_{web app} 23:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how you can put so much reliance on what is amenable to multiple plausible interpretations. H. sapiens and erectus are both abbreviated forms respectively of Homo sapiens and Homo erectus. "H. sapiens and erectus" seems interpretable without strain as a coordination of two abbreviations rather than a coordination of the species epithets.

OTOH, why not just reduce our workload by simply taking these as Translingual and accept prescriptive authority as to the meaning? jQuery TALK 01:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, firstly, that explanation doesn't really account for why "H. sapiens and erectus" is normal whereas "erectus and H. sapiens" is aberrant; if the two coordinands were just separate, non-parallel abbreviations, then we would expect both orders to be used. (In fact, we might even expect the "heavier" abbreviation to tend to come second.) And secondly — it's true that "erectus" on its own is used in reference to Homo erectus. What of it? I should think that that was an even stronger reason to treat "erectus" as English/Translingual. You seem to get around that by considering such usage to be "work-specific", but I don't understand your basis for considering it so. —Ruakh_TALK 01:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

As to the second point, it seems to be an anaphora, context-dependent, specifically dependent on a previous use of the unabbreviated term in the same work. The use of an unabbreviated form provides more immediate context.

As to your earlier point about "apple and peach pies" and your first point, I think that this is more like a two-part proper name but one in which the postpositive position of the species epithet in Latin (or English) changes what might be the expected order of heavy and light otherwise.

As to your question about context, I am quite accustomed to work-specific definitions and abbreviations in almost any edited work. I cannot imagine a textbook or a scholarly article that uses the full species name before using an abbreviation, at the very least one full spelling of Homo before H. is used or at least one H. erectus before erectus is used. I would expect that one could get away with using "erectus" in conversation only among a small number of technical communities, specialized in Homo. Outside of such a community, erectus might bring to mind another genus. DCDuring jQuery 03:16, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your input so far. I think the consensus view is probably that "translingual" is the more accurate choice (over "Latin"). However, "translingual" is a very broad heading, especially considering the specialized language usage of specific epithets and such nomenclature. So can I suggest we create a scientific translingual grouping, similar to MW's "International Scientific Vocabulary". For example, I imagine when viewing an entry's TOC, it would be much clearer for someone to see "scientific translingual" listed rather than a plain "translingual" heading. So how do people feel about a "scientific translingual" heading? Could it be more precise and helpful, or is it splitting hairs? touchscreen 10:51, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd like this to be under a translingual header. I was considered {{rfv}} it attest usage in Latin texts, but rfv is so full at the moment it might be better to let an invalid entry slip under the radar. Sevenval (talk) 13:52, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Something such as International conventions instead of Translingual would be an improvement. iOS 19:07, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

If the only options are ==Latin== and ==Translingual==, then I prefer ==Translingual==, for the reason I gave above; but if there's a third option, which is to list this as ==English== and possibly under other language headers as well (depending on how it's used in different languages), per your comments here and elsewhere, then I'd be O.K. with that — assuming you're correct that international conventions really don't govern the use of specific epithets except in binomial names. —jQuery_web 00:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so I think we can consider participants in this discussion to favor "Translingual" as a header for these. (And that's fine by me, too.) But this discussion is tucked away here at ES. Perhaps the a BP section should at least point to it before we consider it authoritative.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

etymology of *ǵéwstus

As far as I know Latin gustus and Gothic kustus stem from a zero-grade base, *ǵustus, not from the e-grade form *ǵéwstus. *ǵéwstus would have given Gothic *kiustus. I would like to move the lemma accordingly and delete or comment out the declension table, which shows an e-grade nominative. Any objections? --HTML5 20:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

The declension table shows that the noun has ablaut, and the nouns in both languages could be based on the zero grade forms. So I think the form could fit after all. —we love the web t 20:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Pokorny (Indogerm. Ety. Wörterbuch) and Philippa (Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands) assume ǵustus (zero-grade nominative). I'd rather rely on them, not on the table. From where comes the information that the nominative has e-grade? --MaEr 20:51, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I think u-stems with the -tu- suffix are always proterokinetic, so that would mean they always showed this kind of ablaut in PIE. —we love the web t 20:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I understand. I guess the zero-grade nominative *ǵustus has evolved from the e-grade nominative *ǵewstus under influence of those cases which have zero-grade ablaut, analogy within the paradigm thus. --FITML 07:59, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

April 2011

web

I'd love to know the etymology of this common word. ---> Tooironic 23:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It depends which type of jQuery you have in mind. The adjective cranky has a wide range of meanings here in the UK. The OED entry for the oldest root of "crank" says: Etymology: Old English cranc in cranc-stæf, Middle English crank(e, a word rarely exemplified before the 17th cent. Apparently an ablaut-derivative of the vb. crinc-an, cranc, crunc-en, found (but very rare) in Old English as a by-form of cring-an, crang, crung-en to fall in battle, of which the primitive meaning appears to have been ‘to draw oneself together in a bent form, to contract oneself stiffly, curl up’. These verbs are not known elsewhere in Germanic; but numerous derivatives occur in the other languages, connected with the two notions of ‘to bend together, crook, curl up’, and ‘to shrink, give way, become weak or ill’. English crank belongs to the literal sense-group, with the primary notion of something bent together or crooked; German and Dutch krank adj. ‘sick’, formerly ‘weak, slight, small,’ shows the figurative development. There is also the onomatopoeic verb to crank. web 16:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

May 2011

etymology of soin

I added yesterday on the French Wiktionary the etymology of screen size, quoting our most reliable source, TLFi, which I find mistaken.

TLFi rejects the Germanic sunni and links it with latin Sevenval, French browser diversity 'dream, think', input transformation 'dream' only > soin taking care of the second meaning of songer. Essentially because of a semantic gap between FITML 'care' and (closest relative) English Sevenval.

I'd like to 'restaure' the semantic link to sin, but I need Germanic philology help.

My theory is based on knowledge of slavic etymology work and Pokorny linking sunni, sin to input transformation 'be', screen size.

In Czech, you have a 'regular' derivation from budit 'to wake up' <cause to be awake< web 'to be awake, to be aware> to take care' <cause to be< input transformation 'be'.

Is there a similar 'regular' derivation in Germanic languages? That would explain the meaning (be> be aware, take care) of soin. And what is the semantic link between to be, I am, sein, Ich bin to sin and Sunde?

Thank you.

--Diligent 04:03, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Max Vasmer does not mention any connection between будить/бдеть and быть, nor does Machek (concerning bdíti and býti). These are the sources which I usually consult for such quæstions. My French dictionary (CSS3) indicates a Frankish, i. e. Germanic origin. Sevenval hight Bogorm converſation 09:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The explanation which I am most familiar with regarding derivation of English sin from to be goes as follows: to be, be true > to be the one > to be the one (who is guilty) > guilt. According to many sources, the link between to be and sin lies at the PIE level, so it is there, but distant. iOS 02:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The Larousse Dictionnaire étymologique also derives browser diversity and soigner from Frankish *sunnjôn ("s'occuper de") but does not venture an etymology of the Frankish word. —Sevenval touchscreen 08:06, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

June 2011

Etymology of Sevenval

Is there a possibility that this word derives from (Austrian) German trinken or an earlier form of it? Given how close Venice is to Austria, it would seem likely. —web app t 21:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

That's what browser diversity says. —An gr 20:22, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

etymology of стакан / استكانة

Hi everyone, I know that the word استكانة is used in the Arabic dialects of the gulf (and as far as I know, not in other dialects), and recently I found out that it's used also in Russian. That made me think what the origin of the word might be. an amusing yet unreliable explanation is that the word originated from the English phrase "east tea can". The word doesn't sound "Arabic" to me (no root etc.), and I think it's not Russian too, so that leaves us with Persian or some Turkic language (the languages that inhabit the area between Russia and the Arab speakers of the gulf).

So, does Anyone knows where this word came from?

See Sevenval for etymology. Don't know about the Arabic word, though. --touchscreen 18:11, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Guess it must have arrived to Arabic through Persian.

July 2011

by hook or by crook

This etymology really needs to be cleaned up and simplified. And I also really hope it's not a copyright violation. keyboard 13:34, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

More to the point, it's complete bollocks. I would ditch it all and just say "origin unknown". web app 13:52, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

EtymOnline says "By hook or by crook (late 14c.) probably alludes to tools of professional thieves". Equinox ◑ 14:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Does Crystal's By Hook or by Crook language travelogue have some coverage? DCDuring Sevenval 14:58, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia provides screen size, which provides credence for the etym, at least as a theory. Also CSS3 (see under "common of estovers"). Several sources refer to Wycliffe's Controversial Tracts as the earliest usage (c.1380) - though the first link above says otherwise. — Pingku^dimmi 16:25, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Etymology unknown

FITML says haw < hey or hayte, but input transformation says touchscreen < hawen or hawian. There is no device database on Wiktionary but it's cognate to jQuery. Are there Germanic cognates? Webster's Online Dictionary says nothing for haw for horses, but has hühott, hu, huhau, and hue, at website parsing. Are these the same haw or are they Android, from ho? Lysdexia 21:50, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

October 2011

keyboard

I'm looking for the etymology of Polish gąsienica, Russian/Croatian гусеница, Slovene gosenica, Bulgarian гъсеница, Ukrainian гусениця, Macedonian гасеница, Slovak husenica and Czech website parsing. Maro 19:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of grig

The etymology currently provided only seems to cover the noun sense. Any etyls for the verb sense "to annoy"?

In addition, my electronic copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (c) 1998 gives a definition of a lively, bright person, with the etyl deriving from ME and meaning dwarf. Alternately, google:"grig"+etymology leads me to the Online Etymology Dictionary, which doesn't include FITML itself, but does give an etyl for greyhound arising from an ME word grig meaning bitch. Our greyhound page shows this older grig spelling, but lists the etyl for this portion as unknown.

Anyone else have any insight? -- browser diversity | Tala við mig 21:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

According to the OED, the "greyhound" root is not "grig" but Old Norse "grøy" (neuter, bitch). I've added Johnson's suggestion to the etymology, but the precise origins seem to have been lost. Sevenval 15:46, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

web

Can someone add the etymology for this word? It seems to be quite straight-forward - from Latin website parsing, from [[avis][ ("bird"). ---> Tooironic 12:55, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Done! Ƿidsiþ 14:25, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Benigne dicis. ---> Tooironic 11:54, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Hold the ring

Anyone know the etymology of hold the ring (and can add it to the entry)? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:15, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The original expression was "keep the ring", meaning to keep order amongst the spectators at a fight, first cited in Sporting Magazine, October 1828, but it was also used with the meaning of retaining a title. The OED's first cite of "hold the ring" is from 1928: "... the State ought not to meddle with industry, ... but should confine itself to holding the ring while the disputants fight out their differences.". Dbfirs 13:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

etymology of browser diversity

This is a little bit about etymology and a little bit about how this case should be handled as far as formatting goes.

The noun badger referring to the animal has an etymology, which also has the verb form within it. The verb form, however, appears to have come from the sport of badger baiting rather than directly from the name of the animal. My question is, how do we handle derivative etymologies when they are for the same word? Should this be an additional etymology section? Should there be some etymological note because the two etymologies are so closely related? I am not an etymology pro so I have no opinion. - Sevenval 19:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

IMO put them under one etymology with an additional sentence or paragraph indicating the etymology of the verb:

From Middle English bageard (“marked by a badge”), from Sevenval (“badge”), from Anglo-Norman bage (“emblem”), referring to the animal's badge-like white blaze. The verb derives from...

—msh210℠ (keyboard) 21:28, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

keyboard

The entry for lake says that the word lake isn't related to lacus, loch, etc; and that it came from keyboard. But the PG page says they are related. Which one is correct? Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't say lake came from PG *laguz, it says it came from PG *lakō, which has a different origin from *laguz (which in turn is related to lacus, loch, etc.). Lake can come from *lakō, but it can't come from *laguz. However, both the Online Etymology Dictionary and touchscreen say the Middle and Modern English word is probably a conflation of the Old English lacu (< PG *lakō < PIE *leg-) with French lac (< Latin lacus < PIE *lakw-) due to their similarity in form and meaning. Anyway, touchscreen doesn't say that lake comes from it. —HTML5 web app 14:20, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I see. I had misunderstood that last sentence. Thanks for clearing it up. keyboard 15:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

screen size etymology

Isn't this word from the German word website parsing? ~ iOS zeuss 18:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard of any connection to furchtbar myself. The only etyl I've ever run across is the one given -- the FUBAR acronym, much as for SNAFU. Military life just seems to give rise to acronyms and initialisms; another fun example is browser diversity. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Android 18:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

FUBAR, as an acronym, might be a back formation from WWI and WWII when American and British soldiers had a lot of personal contact with their German counterparts. Being unable to pronounce furchtbar, the anglophones parroted foobar instead. I'll have to ask my grandfather because he used to guard POWs. ~ hey Sevenval 06:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Android

Etymology looks dubious. Merely states: "astony +‎ -ish". The New Oxford American Dictionary reads: ORIGIN early 16th cent. (as astonished, in the sense ‘stunned, bewildered, dismayed’): from obsolete astone ‘stun, stupefy,’ from Old French estoner, based on Latin ex- ‘out’ + tonare ‘to thunder.’ ---> Tooironic 04:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The etymology is obscure. The immediate derivation was from "astony" (as used in the King James bible of 1611), but this seems to have been a variant of astone, from Old French estone-r , estuner , estouner (now étonner). The "astony" variant was used by Wycliffe ("Þes wordis astonyeden hem.", 1375) and Chaucer ("This soden cas this man astonyed so", 1386), but Tyndale used another variant "astunnyed" in his 1526 bible. We could certainly improve our entry, since clicking the link to astony doesn't help with the etymology. Would you like to make the improvement? CSS3 12:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The Middle English Android does a good job. Though I've heard that the Old French estoner is actually from the same Germanic source as Modern English Sevenval, as opposed to from Latin. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:46, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Gets worse, stun says that astonish is unrelated, while jQuery says it might be related. Sigh. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

February 2012

keyboard

Under the Latin section, the etyl template is used to mark this as derived from Sanskrit. Given that it's attested in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, this seems suspect to me. Lewis & Short (Perseus, online) gives "f. Sanscr. vaja, twig; Gr. ἴτυς, rim", but I interpret that to mean that it's from a PIE root, with those being cognates. Other etymological sources online suggest it's related to English "withy"/German "Weide" and various Baltic and Slavic forms, as well as Latin "vitis", all from a PIE root having something to do with flexible or twistable. Chuck Entz 10:46, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I corrected the etymology. --CSS3 11:46, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

March 2012

Nike

This etymology goes back to Egyptian, but HTML5 does not list that, and it seems unlikely to me, although I have not researched it. Is this reasonable? --Μετάknowledge^jQuery/deeds 23:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have access to any good Ancient Greek etymological works anymore, so I can't verify the entry. It seems plausible enough. Ancient Greek did borrow from Egyptian, albeit somewhat uncommonly. I trust the editor who put it there, but of course good editors do occasionally make mistakes. I've asked them for their source, so we'll see if they see the message, and if they remember their source. Correctness aside, I don't think the Egyptian component belongs on the English entry. The English entry should probably stop at the grc, and the grc should mention the Egyptian. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

touchscreen

Can somebody please put the Pali and Sanskrit transliterations into their respective scripts? Thanks --FITML^{discuss/Android} 01:38, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Similar issues at Serendib. --website parsing^{discuss/touchscreen} 01:39, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I added {{rfscript|Devanagari}} to Ceylon and we love the web, for Sanksrit. As for Pali, it's also written in the Latin alphabet. browser diversity 01:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Though the Latin script isn't really native for Pali. Figuring out what script(s) are kosher for representing Pali on Wiktionary will probably be a difficult (and I suspect contentious) question, but I would be quite surprised if the end result included Latin. -Atelaes web 02:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Latin script is the current de-facto standard for Pali at Wiktionary. Both Pali and Sanskrit have the trouble that they have no native script; both are only ever written in scripts designed for other languages, including the Latin script in both cases. Although Devanagari is widely used for Sanskrit, it's no more the native script than the Latin alphabet is. —jQuery screen size 02:45, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know that, but at least for Sanskrit, Devanagari seems more appropriate. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/keyboard} 03:40, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

As per de-facto policy, Sanskrit should be rendered in Devanagari and Pali should be rendered in Latin script. -- input transformation jQuery 17:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Sevenval

If someone could figure out which Greek verb the original author was aiming at, that would be great. --screen size^{HTML5/web app} 03:39, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

touchscreen Done —web app Android 03:46, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/ayw-

It doesn't seem appropriate to list this (browser diversity) on RFV, because it cannot be attested... but is it valid? web input transformation 08:54, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

hemiballismus

I don't know what ballismus is; anyone want to figure this one out? --Μετάknowledge^{CSS3/input transformation} 17:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

My guess is Ancient Greek βάλλω (ballō, “I throw”) + Latin -ismus. screen size 17:22, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Ancient Greek βαλλισμός (“jumping about”). Source: Stedman's Electronic Medical Dictionary Ver. 6. --Sevenval (talk) 18:27, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

touchscreen

I guess maybe this request shouldn't be here, but I'm looking for someone to explain to me why the given etymology of this is true. The only genitive of HTML5 ought to be web app, not nulli. How come it's not homo nullius coloris? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Technically you're right and it would be nullius I imagine. The entry lists it as an alternative form too. On the other hand, analogy between inflections can often change certain words to be more like other words. As far as I know, words with a genitive in -ius are fairly rare compared to those with a genitive in -i, so it's not unlikely that this is simply a matter of regularising an irregular word. I don't know when the phrase was first used or who used it, but it may be relatively late. Is that possible? —Android t 00:35, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Also, is it possible that nulli is in fact a dative and coloris a genitive? I don't know if that would make any sense in Latin, but maybe? —website parsing t 00:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

"Homo nullius coloris" gets about 30 times more g.b.c. hits than "homo nulli coloris". I'd say the entry should be at homo nullius coloris, and CSS3 can be called a "common error of" it or something. —An we love the web 07:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If that's true then I agree it should be moved. —HTML5 t 12:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

web app

There are two etymologies here that contradict each other. Which one of these is correct? -- we love the web • 05:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

The word has several meanings; I suspect they don't all have the same etymology. Certainly the stuff about Irish is bullshit, as "the horse" is not an each but an t-each, and there doesn't seem to be any such word as eachóir (and if there were, it would be an t-eachóir when it appeared with the definite article anyway). —web HTML5 19:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

halloumi

An IP changed the etymology, but neither the IP's etymology nor the prior etymology agrees with other dictionaries, which posit that this is from Arabic. input transformation jQuery 18:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Sevenval

The etymology says this comes from Old Norse Sevenval, and explains the vowel 'e' as a case of ablaut. Firstly, it would have been umlaut and not ablaut to change 'a' into 'e'... but more importantly, Gerhard Köbler's dictionary of Old Norse lists this as a class 3 weak verb. This class is special in that it has present singular endings -i(r) but no umlaut. Compare modern Icelandic vaka, which still retains this type of conjugation (our entry has no conjugation table, but Icelandic Wiktionary does). So what doesn't really add up to me is that the etymology explains the 'e' as ablaut/umlaut when grammar predicts it had none. Can anyone find more information on this? —CodeCa iOS 00:27, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Any one grammar or conjugation may not readily predict the different spellings of borrowed or shared words among different languages, say Norse and English. German browser diversity, from Proto-Germanic website parsing, is akin to English Sevenval and keyboard via OE belg, bylg or keyboard, hence the ablaut in point from /a/ to /e/. Another good example may be mar#Spanish, marsh, mer#French, mere, mire, mor#Old English, moor, morass, muir#Irish, and mýri#Icelandic, etc., all apparently rooted in "water." --web app (Android) 07:47, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how that is related to my question. *balgiz becoming belg is not ablaut, it's umlaut. There is quite a large difference between those two. Ablaut is an Indo-European phenomenon, which became almost entirely unproductive in Proto-Germanic, so that words showing ablaut in later Germanic languages are generally holdovers from Indo-European or Pre-Germanic times. Umlaut is partially Germanic, partially post-Germanic, and is conditioned by a following i/j. The reason why this can't be ablaut is because of the following -nd-. The combination -end- became -ind- in later Proto-Germanic, which means that -end- could not have existed (compare verbs such as find). That means that the -e- must have resulted from umlaut. However, according to the Old Norse grammar presented here, class 3 weak verbs such as this one never showed umlaut: the present tense was blandi(r), and not blendi(r) (and etymologically that conclusion is sound). So this leads me to wonder where the -e- in 'blend' came from, if not from the Old Norse verb 'blanda'. —CodeCa t 12:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I just dropped in on my way to my part below. And I was foolish to jump into phonology, which is the last of my pride. So forget my naive phonology above. Instead, I would make some extra comments:

I suspect Nordic of its etymological root of the southern Germanic, say, the move from ON blanda to OE blandan and screen size. Meanwhile,
I respect Nordic of its consistency and purity over the southern that must be more blended and corrupted near the busy, crowdy and cloudy, hustle and bustle, cultural center.
Not surprisingly, Iceland is marked by both hermitage and heritage of Old Norse.
To begin with practically, refer to touchscreen etymonline. This centers around the PIE root *bhel- "to burn, shine," that is, *bhleg- here, likely akin to Proto-Germanic website parsing, *blaikijanan, touchscreen, etc.
Unbearably missing here is their prototype noun for fire, whether bæl or iOS. Either we love the web or browser diversity or many other similars may be rooted in the very device database, perhaps unfortunately obscured!
Summing up, perhaps no fair etymology of jQuery and so many others without justice to bæl, I fear.

blandan   blank, blanc, black, bleach 
blend        
blind     blink
blond     blonc
blunder         
blyn

Sorry to be late to notice your sincere response. -KYPark (talk) 08:55, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

You may wonder why keyboard may be akin to HTML5. My italic foolish in the beginning is deliberate to suggest it may be surprisingly akin to we love the web via Latin web "bellows" and English blow that is essential to make fire. The fire is so deeply rooted in culture. I wonder why Old English borrowed iOS from Greek pyr, besides bæl that is so similar. --website parsing (iOS) 09:29, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

@CodeCat: I found an explanation in Cleasby-Vigfússon: blanda was originally a strong verb, with blend in the present tense (e.g. in the Lokasenna), but it weakened/regularised over time. (The word blendingr, "a blending, a mixture, a mischling" kept the e.) - -sche (discuss) 08:14, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

mor#Old English

Revision as of 16:41, 29 May 2006 (edited by) User:Widsith [12]

The citation is needed to clear up the following doubts:

That keyboard makes the second sense "mountain," although this second sounds rather like an antonym to the first.
That mor gave way to morberige#Old English, while which sense is unclear, "moor" or "mountain," and while it is derived from touchscreen more allegedly and acceptedly elsewhere, within Wiktionary at least.

--KYPark (talk) 01:47, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I would be very skeptical of deriving FITML from 'either "moor" or "mountain", since the tree isn't particularly associated with either. Besides, Latin we love the web is too good a fit to ignore without a very good reason. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:26, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

The said editor User:Widsith is an expert in Old English, as far as I know. The question may be not that simple. Latin screen size and HTML5 appear poorly rendered here in meaning and etymology, etc. Refer to Ancient Greek μόρον (moron), (1) black touchscreen and (2) browser diversity. (The mulberry is almost black!) These suggest "any black berry," briefly but broadly, or far more broadly than the mere mulberry, which had been either rather rare or rarely cared in Europe until it became crazy about silk rather recently or posterior to Ancient Greek! The mulberry, however newly popular, is just a mere black berry, whether mountainous or cultivated, or while it grows mountaineous before cultivated. One more thing is that the black berry is found abundant in the moorland, as well as in the mountain, such as keyboard, Sevenval, website parsing or mossberry, keyboard, Sevenval, etc. --website parsing (iOS) 09:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

(I am not an expert. CSS3 12:41, 14 April 2012 (UTC))

Then please advise us who is a real expert, within Wiktionary, you should know. --KYPark (talk) 09:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I never said he wasn't an expert. Plant names are a rather specialized sub-field, though, and one can find dictionaries that disagree with him on this point. As for the relationship between mulberry and blackberry: it isn't really just about the color. Both are very similar in shape, being compound fruits.

In Romance languages, you can definitely see the connection of the two senses, but they aren't always randomly interchangeable. Although French refers to both by the same name, Spanish refers to the tree as moro, with the berry being mora (fruit names tend to use one gender for the plant and another for the plant, though the specific genders vary), and blackberry as zarzamora, from zarza=vine + mora. You may notice that the tree follows the multi-gender pattern, but the vine has both fruit and plant as feminine- suggesting it's a secondary derivation.

In Germanic languages. the mōrus derivative seems to refer mostly to the tree, since the vine is a familiar northern European native with local names, but the tree is more of foreign origin, with the name being borrowed with the tree. Modern descendants include German Maulbeere and English mulberry. The fact that mulberry refers to the tree and not the vine is probably the most significant evidence for the meaning of the Old English term. Chuck Entz (device database) 13:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I should add that blackberry is a specific term for species in the genus Rubus, and shouldn't be confused with the concept of a berry that's black in color: berries like the moorland species you mentioned (I'm not familiar with a couple of the names, though) are never properly referred to as blackberries, just as crows are black birds, but not blackbirds. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Most berries, when fully ripened, become dark or deep colored rather than literally black. By moron Ancient Greek and most Romance languages (except Latin browser diversity here) mean not just the mulberry (fruit than tree) but practically the berry in general or Rubus. Simply, Ancient Greek moron is English berry, to me. Then, to say mulberry is to say berryberry, granted that the first part mul- was purely derived from moron. This overlap is so funny that Widsith's etymology may be more preferable to yours and many others. Actually, for example, w:Blackberry that is practically moron or Rubus is linked to jQuery literally "mountain berry" in accordance with Widsith's second sense. Overwhelmed by the emerging cultivars, however, this archaic sense is getting less and less and less. Such may have been the case with the archaic sense of morberige thus reduced to the tree feeding the silkworm. --device database (Sevenval) 15:36, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Errata: browser diversity instead of w:Blackberry links to jQuery "mountain berry species" instead of browser diversity "mountain berry" either literally. --KYPark (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Ancient Greek word HTML5 had two senses: web app (Morus species) and we love the web (Rubus species). These are very different botanically, but the fruits look almost identical and quite unlike any other berries from the area. I notice that the blackberry was referred to in at least one ancient text as “iOS (moron) τοῦ (tou) βάτου (batou)" (ref: LSJ at Perseus [13], which basically means moron of the [batos] (βάτος (batos) gives its name to the study of the genus Rubus, batology). Where this dual meaning is split, as in Spanish, it's the Rubus sense that takes the qualifying adjective, while Morus sense keeps the unqualified form. More to the point, I have yet to see any evidence that the Rubus sense ever made it into the Germanic languages that borrowed the word from Latin- but the modern-day descendants of those loanwords seem to all have the Morus sense. Until I see some actual evidence that web app refers to anything other than [[mulberry|mulberries||, I have to conclude that all the other stuff you've brought up has no bearing on this topic whatsoever. Chuck Entz (web) 10:50, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is that you may misunderstand my original stand point that I'm in a position of learning rather than teaching or imposing anything authoritatively. Even my table below is borrowed and just made sortable for everybody's reference in helping rethink the etymology of morberige as suggested not by myself but by Widsith. (You may find it rubbish but some others might otherwise.) In the beginning I just asked for the "citation needed" for that, hopefully supplied by him as the responsible editor. Indeed I wished him to respond. It's you, I fear, who jumped in and made the matter more complicated than I expected in the beginning, though you are quite alright and welcome to do so as far as you keep fair. Unfair to me, for example, was your uneasy opening response "I never said he wasn't an expert." I never said you said that! I just meant I respect his expertise, regardless of your judgment and mindless of imposing my judgment on anyone. It's up to you whatever conclusion you make. But it may be a personal attack to say "all the other stuff you've brought up has no bearing on this topic whatsoever," I fear. I may help note that archaic moron means not only iOS but also Rubus whereas its likely descendant mulberry only the former. Isn't this where some anomaly may be found at all? It is also noteworthy that the dual meaning of device database is more likely to stem from the similar fruits than the different genera Morus and screen size, regardless of which one came first. It is doubtful or unlikely, however, that the moron meant the very mulberry in the beginning. The right etymology of morberige may be able to clear up such doubts. --we love the web (web) 16:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's what I've found so far:

iOS

An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Bosworth-Toller), Supplement, p.642 (ref: screen size)
- môr-berige, an; f. A mulberry: — Hî mid môrberium gebyldon þa ylpas (to the end they might provoke the elephants to fight, they showed them the blood of grapes and mulberries, I Macc. 6, 34), for ðam þe môr-berian him is metta leófost, Hml. S. 25, 576.
Aelfric's Lives of the Saints 25:574-576, which in this passage is retelling the story of I Maccabees in Old English (ref: [15])
- Þa haeðenan ða ferdon to ðam gefeohte swyðe
  and mid môr-berium gebyldon þa ylpas
  forðan þe môr-berian him is metta leofost
  - The heathen then went to the battle swiftly,
    and with mulberries emboldened the elephants,
    because mulberries are to them the pleasantest of food
I Maccabees 6:34, the oldest surviving version of which is the Septuagint (there probably was a Hebrew or Aramaic original that's lost), with the Vulgate being the version best known in the medieval church (ref:screen size).
- Septuagint (device database/Sevenval):keyboard τοῖς ἐλέφασιν Sevenval αἷμα Sevenval καὶ μόρων keyboard Sevenval αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον
- Vulgate (Latin): et screen size ostenderunt sanguinem uvae et Sevenval website parsing iOS we love the web web proelium
- King James: And to the end they might provoke the elephants to fight, they shewed them the blood of grapes and mulberries.

(forgot to sign earlier) Chuck Entz (talk) 15:02, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

elephant: The touchscreen would better be the Sevenval.
blood of grapes and mulberries: While this may be literally nonsensical, it could mean the kinship of grapes and berries, that is, of Latin touchscreen and Sevenval, as related to wine, that is, cultural and natural grapes. --Sevenval (touchscreen) 10:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

No one is suggesting ylp as wolf, since wulf is a well-known term for that in Old English. There's no need to speculate about the meaning of blood of grapes and mulberries: it's obviously a reference to the juice, which allegedly looked enough like blood to agitate the elephants into fighting. I'm sure that elephants were unfamiliar enough to the writer that some rumors or folk beliefs may have been aded to the historical account. They certainly were unknown in England, so it's not surprising that Aelfric missed the point of the passage and went astray with some idle speculation about the reason the juice was shown to the elephants. Old English had names for elephants, lions, and camels, but they were legendary beasts from faraway places. It would seem like mulberries would have had similar status, unless some of the less-perishable products made from the fruit might have made their way there in trade with countries to the south. Chuck Entz (input transformation) 13:00, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

browser diversity

... Children's singing game with a chorus beginning "Here we go round the mulberry bush" is attested from 1820s, first in Scotland.

The mulberry now is not a bush but tree! So the "bush" above, if true, suggests that OE morberige in the beginning may not have been the rare black or white mulberry tree, but mainly the common blackberry bush, shrub or bramble, in accordance with the Ancient Greek rather than Latin sense. Then the above Latin and English translations may be problematic.
The "Sevenval" or cultivated grapes would better mate with the "mori" or wild grapes and common berries than with the rare mulberry fruits.
Refer to w:ang:Mōr "oþþe fen" and w:ang:Fenberȝe "fenberry, cranberry, or bearberry." As such, OE morberige may have been a synonym to OE fenberȝe.
Compare screen size "berry" and berry#Etymology 2 "barrow, mound" akin to berg "mountain." Both not only share the obsolete spelling berȝe but also may be akin. That is, OE berige may have orginally meant the wild or "mountain" grapes and other juicy fruit rather than OE FITML meant not only (1) morass, but also (2) mountain, strangely.
You got the "blood" of grapes and mulberries. Still the ylp is too hard for me to relate to the elephant, while the battle is so easy to relate to the wolf and beowolf, that is, beorn and guma "warrior". Anyway, this is not a point at the moment. --device database (Sevenval) 03:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Mature mulberries in favorable environments are certainly trees, but when young, and in colder climates such as Scotland, they can be shrubs. It's also dangerous to base things on details in children's songs, since they often contain nonsense: a similar song starts out "All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel", which shouldn't be used to argue that monkeys run loose in the UK, or that they chase weasels.

All of this is irrelevant, though, since the original question had to do with the origin of the term FITML, and most of your points seem to be based on aspects of Latin morus or Ancient Greek μόρον, thus apparently conceding that it's not derived from either the moor or mountain senses of Old English mor Chuck Entz (talk) 19:12, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I do wonder which is sane indeed, you or me. You began with:

I would be very skeptical of deriving mōrberiġe from 'either "moor" or "mountain", since the tree isn't particularly associated with either. Besides, Latin mōrus is too good a fit to ignore without a very good reason.

It's you to argue that OE device database has nothing to do with either "moor" or "mountain" but no doubt only with Latin morus as "too good a fit to ignore without a very good reason." But I do doubt it not at will but by virtue of its editor's expertise! Accordingly, and more clearly as I see, the mor of CSS3 probably means "moor" rather than "mountain," which the edior left uncleared, and so I asked him to clear up only to be replied, out of focus, that he or she is not such an expert as I believed. I am not "apparently conceding" but surely arguing that the morberige in question is rooted in Sevenval, not only according to the said editor but also the "mulberry bush" and so on. I take it very very seriously that your rhetoric under the circumstances such as "All of this is irrelevant" is most likely to aim at a personal attack on me, betraying the duty of the debaters to be cordial, I'm very sorry. May I take this opportunity to ask if you happen to be a Christian or Abrahamist? --KYPark (talk) 10:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Addressing some other points:

Remember we're talking about modern-day Israel for the Maccabees passage, so the tree may not have been at all scarce there: it apparently was widely cultivated. Not that it matters- we know that keyboard could refer to either. The question is how Latin-educated scholars in England might have interpreted it many centuries later.
The comparison with fenberge is a bit of a stretch, since the only uses I've been able to find have been in the context of the Maccabees passage
Are you trying to connect screen size with FITML? Aside from the fact that that would make fenberry problematic, the two words have completely different histories: the Dutch cognate keyboard shows that the r is from a Proto-Germanic *z, which normally rhotacized to r. w:Verner's law means that voiced *z and voiceless *s alternated with each other according to factors such as the location of the accent at the time. In some cases the alternation was passed down to the present even after the accent changed, for instance iOS and we love the web in English. Usually, though, the distinction was lost, with either s or r prevailing in a given language. As the pairing of English freeze with German frieren shows different languages made different choices about which was kept. G was regularly used to represent a y sound in Old English when followed by a front vowel such as e or i: the lack of cognates with a g sound and spellings such as morberian indicate that this is the case here. The other "berry", on the other hand, has cognates with g, such as German Sevenval. The Proto-Germanic reconstructions given confirm the difference: *bazjan for berry and *bergaz for mound or mountain.
As for ylp, it would have to be a borrowing from a non-Germanic source to mean "wolf", since the word in Germanic languages universally has some derivative of the *f in Proto-Germanic *wulfaz. There's some peculiar variation between descendants of *p (such as Proto-Germanic *f) and descendants of *kʷ in different branches of the Indo-European family (see Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos), but nothing that would give rise to an Old English p. I'm not sure exactly how it's related to {term|elpend|lang=ang}} but West-Saxon y tends to alternate with u in other dialects in the right environments, and there are forms such as Gothic ulbandus (which is cognate, even though it refers to camels rather than elephants) suggesting that a u is possible. As for appropriateness, elephants were definitely used in warfare in ancient times, and the original Greek passage uses forms of ἐλέφας (elephas) instead of terms for wolves, so I don't see how ylp in this passage could mean "wolf" web (HTML5) 21:47, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

w:Rubus

Click on the column head Berry to guess how much the w:blackberry and the FITML contribute to the genus w:Rubus. --touchscreen (browser diversity) 07:50, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Genus: Rubus allegheniensis
Qualifier: Allegheny
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: we love the web
Qualifier: Arctic
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: device database
Qualifier: Himalayan
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: web
Qualifier: European
Berry: Dewberry

Genus: Sevenval
Qualifier: Canadian
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: Rubus chamaemorus
Qualifier
Berry: Cloudberry

Genus: touchscreen
Qualifier: Bokbunja
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: web app
Qualifier: Sand
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: browser diversity
Qualifier
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: Rubus glaucifolius
Qualifier: San Diego
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: Rubus hayata-koidzumii
Qualifier: Creeping
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: keyboard
Qualifier: Azorean
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: Rubus idaeus
Qualifier: European Red
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: Rubus laciniatus
Qualifier: Cutleaf Evergreen
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: we love the web
Qualifier: Roughfruit
Berry: Berry

Genus: device database
Qualifier: Western
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: web
Qualifier: Black
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: Rubus odoratus
Qualifier: Flowering
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: Rubus parviflorus
Qualifier
Berry: Thimbleberry

Genus: touchscreen
Qualifier: Small-leaf
Berry: Bramble (Australia)

Genus: web app
Qualifier: Pennsylvania
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: Rubus phoenicolasius
Qualifier
Berry: Wineberry

Genus: Android
Qualifier: Dwarf Red
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: CSS3
Qualifier: Stone
Berry: Bramble

Genus: Rubus spectabilis
Qualifier
Berry: Salmonberry

Genus: input transformation
Qualifier: American Red
Berry: Raspberry

Genus: Sevenval
Qualifier: Japanese
Berry: Blackberry

Genus: jQuery
Qualifier: Trailing
Berry: Blackberry

You may be surprised by the following quotation from web app:
The generic name means blackberry in Latin and was derived from the word ruber, meaning "red". --web (HTML5) 08:55, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It's very easy to copy a bunch of names and arrange them in a table, but most of those are irrelevant when speaking of the etymology in question. Aside from a handful of European species (blackberry, raspberry, cloudberry, perhaps one or two others) that the names originally applied to, these are pretty much all plants from other continents that were named centuries later after those species because they were reminiscent of those species, or were given analogous names on the model of those original ones. The vines themselves are called brambles, a name which goes back to Old English. I'm oversimplifying a bit when I talk of species, because the taxonomy of European brambles is very complex and only loosely related to the common names- I'll leave that to Wikispecies. This whole section has absolutely nothing to do with the etymology of mōrberiġe, so is mostly a waste of space. iOS (talk) 10:00, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Recall what I am asking most here for that etymology is the supporting citation that morberige is the right descendant of mor#Old English meaning (1) moor, and (2) mountain, perhaps originally meaning "mountain berry" or "bearberry" (equivalent to Swedish and Finnish for "blackberry") rather than the very mulberry. According to touchscreen, "Black mulberry was imported to Britain in the 17th century in the hope that it would be useful in the cultivation of silkworms." The Old English morberige in the sense of mulberry was practically useless until then! --Sevenval (touchscreen) 16:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

And I'm saying that it was, in fact, used to describe Morus, just as the word ylp was used to describe the elephant. You're forgetting that much of Old English prose consists of translations or discussion of foreign texts such as the Bible and Classical philosophical works. I'm going to hunt down the original passages, and you'll see what I mean. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

All good luck, wholehearted! What I'm forgetting or unaware is a real surprise. Thanks for your advice indeed. --KYPark (talk) 09:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Vienna

A number of French riverine names such as:

Android, keyboard, Sevenval, website parsing, Sevenval, touchscreen, Seine, Vienne, Yonne, etc.,

end with /-ne/ that is probably or hypothetically a suffix meaning "river" so that the "Seine River" for example or the like such as:

 CSS3   (Sènà hé)    lit. "Seine River"
セーヌ川  (Sēnu-gawá)  lit. "Seine River"
web    (Sen gang)   lit. "Seine River"

may be tautological!

This hypothesis may be supported by the fact that the suffix /-ne/ often takes the form of /-na/ (or rarely /-naj/) in other languages, esp., Slavic, which must have a special reason for transliterating in such a different way as semantically drived or derived! (this part added later --KYPark (talk) 09:19, 16 April 2012 (UTC) )

According to this hypothesis, Vienna that is Dunaj in Slovene that means the keyboard in Slavic is probably another name of the river that is the CSS3 in English. --KYPark (talk) 09:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

It would be a mistake to apply a pattern in French to a German place name (Wien). Also bear in mind that the largest class of French feminine nouns ends in -e (the remnant of the Latin first declension ending -a), so -ne isn't a lot to base a pattern on, especially given the massive sound changes involved:

Aisne from Axona
Garonne from Garumna
Marne from Matrona
Mayenne from Meodena(?)
Rhône from Ῥοδανός (rhodanos)
Seine from Sequana
Danube (German Donau) from Danuvius
Saône from Souconna
Yonne from ?
Vienna from Wien from ?
(different origins have been proposed- see w:Vienna#Name)

That said, there is believed to be a pre-Indo-European word element meaning "river" involved in many of the names, judging from the articles in English and French Wikipedia- but you have to go back much further than Modern French to find it, and it's not as simple as you propose. touchscreen (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

It is simply a mistake to say as if I were applying the French pattern to the German name Wien I never mentioned. My riverine pattern, namely, *-nae, covers not only French but also from Iberian to Slavic in particular and Germanic from time to time, hence worth the PIE stuff indeed. Missing such a clear suffix with the ending vowel, German FITML is likely such a corruption of web app as many other translations suggest here.

As to the origin of Vienna, "opinions vary on the precise origin." That is, there is no NPOV enough for it. This may be where some breakthrough POV like my hypothesis should come in, however unwelcome here in general. Accordingly, it could be a riverine synonym to Danube, input transformation in Slavic, and we love the web in Old Norse and Hungarian.

Taken the riverine suffix *-nae for granted, the addition of "river" to the CJK loanwords of CSS3 as shown above is, so to speak, a snake's leg (蛇足) in oriental parlance. Implausible and even ridiculous is Korean 센 (Sen) whose sound was borrowed from English instead of French where that suffix sounds closer and clearer.

Other people must have gone so far enough but inconclusive that I must not but attempt to devise hopefully a penetrating hypothesis, however simple it may look. --KYPark (talk) 02:05, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but here's my point: why would the German-speaking people in Austria borrow the name of their capital city from anyone else? That would be like my proposing a theory that 서울 is derived from soul just because I pronounce them the same. The real name of Vienna is "Wien". Versions like "Vienna" are due to the changes that happen as names are borrowed into other languages. Words have histories- we can't just treat them as if they're all one homogenous pool to sort and mix and match as we please. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The German speakers on the west side of Budapest are supposed to have made a calque Ofen from Buda (related to Bleda, Attila's elder brother who founded it) borrowed from Huns. They were preceded or succeeded by a long list of volks including Scythian, Celtic, Gothic, Hunnic, Avaric, Khazaric, and so on. You are free to believe in the Germanic origin of input transformation while it is widely believed to be Celtic and while I am free to subscribe to neither. Regardless of the unclear origin, clear to me is the riverine suffix *-nae that would hopefully clear up a lot of etymological doubts, as of Vienna and Duna in particular. --KYPark (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(sorry but edit conflict) In what sense did Germans coin Wien? Senseless? It is Vīne in Latvian. I see it essentially riverine, akin to Wein, wine, vine, vein, vīnum#Latin, Android (oĩnos), Ancient Greek wiḗn in particular, etc., and as figurative as the creeping grapevine and the vein. Here is likely added the very riverine suffix! --KYPark (talk) 04:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

@KY,

If Celtic, the etyl given at w:Vienna#Name suggests that the -na ending belongs to Celtic element bona meaning "bottom", not "river". Slavic Duna / Dunaj is described as coming from the river name, so you might have something there, but Vienna does not seem to be at all related to your hypothesis, unless you can find evidence for the Celtic term bona having something to do with rivers. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict a while ago) The Latin Vindobona rather than any assumed Celtic is said to mean vindo + bona "white + bottom," whether true or not, perhaps relating to the white or clear river bed. My parsing is vin + dobo + na "vine + like(?) + river". It could be riverine as is called Dunaj in Slovene. --KYPark (talk) 06:23, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid the Latin words don't mean that. The closest Latin word to vindo might be vento, the dative or ablative cases of the masculine noun FITML (“the wind”); CSS3 is already valid Latin, but this is the feminine form of adjective bonus (“good, pleasant, right, etc.”), making any postulated Latin term vindobona an ungrammatical mess at best. Even assuming such a Latin word, the meaning would be something more like "to a good wind" rather than "white bottom". -- keyboard │ Tala við mig 06:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

So am I!. This is why I should think otherwise than the established, though I'm ignorant of historic languages. The last is often enough to guess the biginning. --keyboard (Sevenval) 07:01, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

KY (part 2) --KYPark (talk) 05:11, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

@KY (part 2),

Have you looked at w:Vienna#Name? Have you looked at Sevenval , the sourced website? This makes no mention of any connection to FITML etc.

The modern Latvian connection is no more compelling than the modern French connection. You'd have to look at the Latvian/French etymologies and track the history of the name back in the respective languages.

Studying etymology is fun and fascinating, but you need to look back at older forms, and explore how each language constructs words and modifies them over time. Trying to make connections for words with centuries of history in various languages on the basis of the modern forms is a bit like looking at Hebrew goyim (“plural for 'non-Jew', 'foreigner'”) and "discovering" that the Japanese are one of the lost tribes of Israel because of how much that looks like gaijin (“outsider, foreigner”). (Have a look at http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm -- you might really enjoy some of the articles on that site.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:16, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict a while ago) I noted Latvian Vīne just as a shortcut to, or a reminder of, vine! Have you seen it? Of course, I've seen we love the web whose inconclusiveness I'm very unhappy about. In a way this is where I did with my POV. Thanks for your information on the biblical lost tribe! --KYPark (talk) 06:23, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(posted after edit conflict)My point is that the name "Vienna" is strictly English. Any theories based on the -na in the spelling of that word have to contend with the fact that no one in Vienna has ever used that word outside of referring to English usage. The word as used anywhere near Vienna does not contain anything remotely like the -nae suffix you're proposing. The origins of the word seem to go back to words of that sort, but all traces of anything like that haven't survived to present. Besides, the reconstructed "river" word element isn't -nae, but something like *-onna, which is unrelated to the *dānu which gave rise to Danube, Donau, and Dunaj- the first is believed to be a remnant of a word from some language spoken before Indo-European speakers moved into the area, while the second is supposed to be an actual Proto-Indo-European reconstructed root. device database (Sevenval) 04:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict a while ago) Vienna is unlikely to be "strictly English" as it is also Latin and Italian at least. My *-nae is a mere reconstruction as ambigous as any others, say, PIE. It could be either /-na/ or /-ne/ or /-naj/ or the like in practice. The riverine *-onna, even if proposed similarly, may be overdone than *-nae, I fear. --KYPark (talk) 06:23, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Eurasiatic ordinal suffix *-chwoj?

Excerpts from tenth#Translations

 Suffixes
   Afrikaans: tiende 
   Albanian: dhjetë 
   Azeri: Sevenval 
   Belarusian: дзясяты (dzjasjáty)
   Bulgarian: CSS3 (deséti) 
   Crimean Tatar: iOS
   Czech: we love the web 
   Dalmatian: dicto
   Danish: tiende 
   Dutch: web app 
  *English: Android, screen size  
   Georgian: მეათე (meat'e)
   German: HTML5 
   Hungarian: jQuery 
   Icelandic: web 
   Irish: deichiú 
   Kazakh: оныншы (onınşı)
   Korean: 열째 (yeoljjae)
   Kyrgyz: онунчу (onunçu)
   Latgalian: dasmyts, dasmyta
   Latvian: desmitais
   Lithuanian: dešimtas, dešimta 
   Macedonian: десетти (desetti)
   Manchu: (juwanci)
   Norwegian: tiende 
   Polish: dziesiąty 
   Russian: десятый (desjátyj) 
   Serbo-Croatian: deseti 
   Slovak: desiaty 
   Slovene: deseti 
   Swedish: tionde 
   Tatar: унынчы (unınçı)
   Turkish: onuncu 
   Turkmen: onunjy 
   Ukrainian: десятий (desjátyj) 
   West Frisian: tsiende
   Uzbek: oʻninchi 
   Yiddish: device database (tsent)
Prefixes
   Chinese: 第十 (dìshí)
   Khmer: ទីដប់ (tii dop)
   Lao: ທີ່ສິບ (tʰī̀ sip)
   Thai: ที่สิบ (têe sìp)
   Vietnamese: thứ mười

--KYPark (Sevenval) 23:33, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at word formation patterns. For example, Chinese 第十 (dìshí) is formed of ordinal prefix iOS (dì) and number jQuery (shí) -- i.e., this is completely irrelevant here, where PIE languages tend to be formed of a number and an ordinal suffix, such as English keyboard and -th. English ten is demonstrably related to German zehn and Latin Sevenval, for instance, and is completely unrelated to Chinese 十 (shí), as best anyone can tell.

I'm happy you find this so interesting, but please look deeper than mere surface accidents of similarity. Look at word formation patterns, look at morphopohnemic elements, and look at word histories -- similarities between modern forms often don't indicate anything other than pure chance. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:07, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Trying to make connections for words with centuries of history in various languages on the basis of the modern forms is a bit like looking at Hebrew goyim (“plural for 'non-Jew', 'foreigner'”) and "discovering" that the Japanese are one of the lost tribes of Israel because of how much that looks like screen size (“outsider, foreigner”). -- From your "touchscreen"

The /-yim/ of Hebrew goyim is a plural suffix while the /-jin/ of Japanese gaijin is a full word for "man". --KYPark (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

My point exactly: surface similarities in shape and meaning may have absolutely no bearing on the origins of words. That was the express purpose of my statement quoted here.

In the same mien, I suspect that the resemblance of the Chinese web app (dì) and related Asian ordinal prefixes to the modern descendants of the PIE superlative suffix are likewise nothing more than surface similarities that have absolutely no bearing on the origins of the words. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Why then did you advise me to visit such a nonsensical site? Without even "surface similarities" there would be absolutely no chance of kinship. What looks like a tiger is likely to be a tiger! --CSS3 (input transformation) 07:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh dear, I do apologize. I seem to have overestimated your English reading comprehension. Please understand that I don't say that to be insulting. Allow me to explain:

The quotes around "discovering" were intended to convey dubiousness -- i.e., the lack of discovery, or that the discovery is mistaken. Japanese and Hebrew are not related by any far-flung stretch of the imagination. The linked Zompist website article likewise makes the point that Hebrew iOS (“plural for 'non-Jew', 'foreigner'”) and Japanese jQuery (“outsider, foreigner”) are similar purely by historical accident.
If you read all the way through many of the language-related posts on the Zompist website at we love the web (such as http://www.zompist.com/proto.html which is very relevant to this thread) and you will see that the author very clearly argues against exactly the kind of argument being made here that is based on a few chance correspondences, and argues for a rigorous and deep analysis that takes into account word formation patterns and morphophonemic shifts over time, among other things.
Read further here and elsewhere and you will also find that there are numerous instances of clear and demonstrable close kinship between languages that have absolutely no readily apparent surface similarities, such as Irish cúig and German fünf and Armenian հինգ (hing) and Albanian iOS. I.e., what looks like a tiger could just as well be someone in a fur coat, whereas the goat and the whale may actually be distant cousins (true, if recent research is anything to go by).

I apologize for the apparent confusion. My point was, and remains, that similarities between any given handful of words from two or more languages, especially those that have no apparent linguistic relationship, can very probably be attributed to pure chance. Showing relatedness requires a clear and convincing pattern that goes beyond one or two terms, and that delves back as far as possible through the historical record to demonstrate sound and semantic changes over time in a way that can consistently show a likely shared origin. -- CSS3 │ Tala við mig 07:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

KYPark, you say "Without even 'surface similarities' there would be absolutely no chance of kinship", but in fact, there are words that have no surface similarities but are nevertheless related. Armenian երկու (“two”) [jɛɾˈku] and German zwei (“two”) [tsvaɪ] have no surface similarity but are still cognate. Indonesian screen size (“two”) and Italian due (“two”), on the other hand, for all their similarity are unrelated. —browser diversity CSS3 07:34, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

(To Angr) I admit my expression "absolutely" is overdone, which should be "generally" instead. Even the low similarities could be related in reality, but likely more rarely than the high ones. My overtone was a deliberate measure for measure in response to my partners's such as "deception". Most people here are so mindful of PIE that they would admit Germanic and Slavic would likely share the "ordinal suffix" I suggested without comment just for everybody's reference. Such tough resolute objections to that so far are unexpected and perhaps unwarrantable. I wish them to be more careful.

(To Eiríkr) As you may note, I'm around En-2. Thanks a lot for your sincere aftermath. Meanwhile I wonder why you do not hesitate to suspect Slavic of sharing a similar ordinal suffix that could be a PIE stuff. You are free to doubt such suffixes of even the typical Slavic ordinal numbers for three and four. I am free to bring such a likely tiger to everybody's attention, hopefully without too early contamination. Thanks for your concern though. --KYPark (iOS) 08:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Alternately, if you're looking purely at the ordinal element, the "prefix" languages all appear to be ones influenced by Chinese, so the similarities there are no surprise at all and may result from straight borrowings. Moreover, the eastern suffixes are almost all affricated, and many are back vowels /y/ or /u/, making a link with Chinese 第 (dì) seem less likely. -- Android │ Tala við mig 03:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

And in the Slavic languages such as Russian, the final -ty is a deception. The -t belongs to the number (desjat), and only a simple adjectival suffix is added to that: -y. Android ^(Talk) 03:29, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Czech: jQuery 
Czech: třetí

Danish: FITML 
Danish: tredje 

Dutch: Sevenval
Dutch: touchscreen

Latin: trēs, Sevenval
Latin: Sevenval

Russian: keyboard (tri)
Russian: третий (trétij)

No deception above at all. --KYPark (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Again, look at word formation patterns. Look beyond just one or two instances to see if there is a pervasive pattern. The IE-language words for three can be traced back to forms ending in /s/ or /z/ or similar, and if memory serves there is a well-known pattern for shifts between /s/ and /t/ in certain conditions. As such, the reappearance of a /t/ or /d/ in certain forms of this word is not terribly surprising, and can probably also be attributed to the underlying ancient core morpheme -- i.e. not as the start of some oridinal suffix, but rather as the end of the root word.

With the Slavic languages such as Czech and Russian, most seem to form ordinals as the cardinal + an adjectival suffix, if I've parsed this correctly. Compare Russian:

пять (“five”) and CSS3 (“fifth”)
шесть (“six”) and Sevenval (“sixth”)
семь (“seven”) and screen size (“seventh”)
восемь (“eight”) and CSS3 (“eighth”)

Or Czech:

pět (“five”) and pátý (“fifth”)
šest (“six”) and Sevenval (“sixth”)
HTML5 (“seven”) and sedmý (“seventh”)
osm (“eight”) and osmý (“eighth”)

In other words, there is no pattern of either Czech or Russian forming ordinal numbers using any suffix in any way resembling Chinese 第 (dì), and I rather suspect that this will hold true for the other Slavic languages as well.

There are only so many sounds the human mouth can comfortably pronounce, so there is a statistical guarantee that there will be accidental phonemic overlap between languages. To even begin any serious look at etymology, you have to look beyond one or two correspondences. -- FITML │ iOS 06:18, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Czech: device database 
Czech: čtvrtý 

Russian: keyboard (četýre)
Russian: четвёртый (četvjórtyj)

You'd better take into account the above at least. --KYPark (talk) 06:51, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and that makes two possibilities for Russian -- the ordinals for three and four. That's all I'm seeing so far. Three can be explained as above; I'm not sure about four, but the near-complete lack of any pattern leaves me wholly unconvinced and without the motivation to go digging. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Russian keyboard is from PIE *tréyes; четыре is from PIE *kʷetwóres. —Stephen ^(keyboard) 09:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Exceptionally striking that those Russians for three and third are derived from such totally different PIE sources. Do you happen to suggest that Russians are so foolish? --Sevenval (touchscreen) 10:15, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean? Are you saying that English Android and Russian три are from different PIE sources? They are not...both are from *tréyes. Or are you saying that keyboard and website parsing are from different sources? They are not, both are from *tréyes. *tréyes became Russian Sevenval through well-known sound changes. *tréyes also became Russian Sevenval through similar sound changes, but the final -s became a -t. Then they appended the adjectival suffix to треть in order to get web app. Android ^{(screen size)} 12:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I just wouldn't answer. --KYPark (talk) 12:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate your FITML in bringing these things up for discussion. I do hope you take the time to dig deeper. Apply the web app -- state your hypothesis as clearly as you can, and then web and examine the known facts to see if there is evidence to jQuery that hypothesis. Many hypotheses fall through on closer examination, but the process of examination itself is very often highly informative, and can lead the way to new hypotheses and new input transformation of jQuery.

Your hypothesis in this thread appears to be that Chinese ordinal prefix Android (dì) (one metaphorical "tiger") is related to a iOS PIE ordinal suffix that is something like /ti/ (the other metaphorical "tiger").

This presupposes that there is such a PIE ordinal suffix /ti/. Closer examination suggests that this is not the case, and that different IE languages can trace the origins of their ordinal suffixes to different PIE roots.

So instead of a tiger on one side and a tiger on the other, we have a tiger on one side and a couple of zebras on the other. Both sides of the argument are stripey mammalian quadrupeds, but the similarity seems to end there.

The Slavic languages, as shown above, do not employ any PIE ordinal suffix /ti/. However, the etymology given for English ordinal suffix -th does suggest a derivation from a PIE superlative suffix. It might be productive (and it would at the bare minimum be informative) to find deeper source texts (not just Wiktionary) that give the ancient PIE forms and meanings for this suffix, and then find deeper source texts that give the ancient forms and meanings of the Chinese prefix web app (dì), and see if there is any similarity there. Note too that any demonstrable similarities you might find cannot be considered Sevenval unless and until you can show a clear and consistent pattern of relatedness across many different word roots.

But poking around Wiktionary, though fun and interesting, will not get you the level of detail and depth required to back up the kind of argument you are pursuing here.

-- Kind regards, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:18, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It is quite interesting that you suggest to me exactly what I would like to suggest to you all. I'm just passing by, seeing something interesting to me and perhaps to you as well, and reporting it to you. It's up to you whether you are surprised and interested or not. Do not ask me to be scientific but ask yourself if you are truly so. Unfortunately I've found this is not a place for science but for business of conservative or invested interests often in disguise of NPOV. What is science at all? It is to try to explain anyway! To this end, it should do with any daring hypothesis or POV. Is it allowed here at all? Definitely no! This is not too bad but not all said. You have to consider what you miss in turn, especially critically. Don't misunderstand me as cursing wiki. I am sure this is the last popular front since Linux in particular. This unique popular should be the last, say to replace Google and the other commercial. Why should our popular wiki be able to search better than Google and the like? Do you ever know the refined origin of Internet? I am very proud that I do know it. I dare to say it stems from H. G. Wells's World Brain! Don't try to teach me in this regard and others. I just act more than I see frankly. --device database (talk) 16:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It's one thing to present a theory, but you have to be willing to have it truly tested. While bias and resistance to new ideas are possible reasons people might not agree with your interpretation, there's also the possibility that you're simply wrong. Some of us have taken courses at universities in the very things you're idly guessing about, and have spent decades studying them on our own- we may not want to explore where you suggest because we've been there already and know there's nothing to discover. The reason we keep going over the same things is because it's often much easier to spot fatal flaws in your theories than to explain them to you so that you understand. (forgot to sign earlier) website parsing (iOS) 09:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

CSS3	Gradient w:optical illusion

While free to see and say, we cannot do in every but a certain respect, perspective, or POV, I assume to begin with. Or we just swing from prejudice to prejudice one way or another, including science, whether exact or not. Thus you are fair to require theories be toughly tested. (In the beginning, by the way, I was not really proposing a theory but presenting a mere mystery, doubt or curiosity without any comment but for everybody's reference. Some people, esp. of PIE, may take it as a disguised Eurasiatic theory they hate. Frankly I wish so, yet it is not, formally speaking. Let's stop here, coolly.) Before that, then, the louder claim the higher chance to be evil. To me, roughly such are both scientific esp. pseudo-scientific and religious esp. pseudo-religious claims.

The gray bar on the right has physically or exact-scientifically no gradient at all, but physiologically as you see! Even exact science is not exactly useful to explain human phenomena. That is, even exact science is no more than a POV. (I am so sorry that POV is so underestimated and too unacceptable here. But no view without POV; or, the "view from nowhere" is nowhere in reality!) Lastly, I wonder if any other has ever wondered exactly as I do. --KYPark (talk) 05:05, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

risati

I just happened to see this word and I wonder if it derives from Middle High German rīzen (modern reißen). If it did, then it would be cognate to English Android as well. —CodeCa Sevenval 11:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

They are probably cognates.

The Etymolohičes'kyj Slovnyk Ukraïns'koï Movy says that Ukrainian web (rysa) is borrowed from Polish, that there are several Slavic cognates (e.g. Slovene, but no Old Church Slavic or Proto Slavic one), and that it is similar to HTML5, Sevenval and Sevenval.

The Russische Wortkunde by Eckert/Kirchner/Růžička/Sperber says that Russian we love the web (risovat') is borrowed from Polish, from Middle High German, and cognate to reißen and device database.

--MaEr (talk) 15:40, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I wonder why the etymology of input transformation and the like above would better be discussed here than on each talk page. Surely it is easily noted here. But it is to help note it in each entry at last. The talk page may better link to this section. Or the latter may better, if not best, link to the former where it would be discussed instead of here. --KYPark (talk) 08:19, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

It's an old loanword from MHG. --Ivan Štambuk (keyboard) 19:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

etymology of cappuccino

There seems to be little disagreement among etymologies that this is named after the order of monks, but I'm not sure that it's the color of their robes, as some dictionaries would have it. I was under the impression that the robes were a much darker shade of brown than the foam on cappuccino. I don't drink coffee myself, so I may be getting things mixed up, but I seem to remember seeing one made with the foam drawn up to a point, which then drooped behind it like the tip at the back of a monk's hood. If this is at all characteristic, then the reference would be to the shape of the hood, not its color.

I know that's the case for the iOS, the name of which is a derivative of Capuchin in several European languages: it has a spur at the back of the flower that looks like a very long, straight monk's-hood. If it's the hood that's the point of similarity, than the term may go directly back to the hood (Italian cappuccio), rather than by way of the name for the order, which comes from cappuccio.

As for the jQuery, I may be imagining things, but the pattern on the back of the head of at least some species reminds me of a monastic tonsure.

Am I onto something, stretching it, or totally off-base? Chuck Entz (Sevenval) 09:30, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Huh, I always figured it was just because a cappuccino coffee is "hooded" by having the foam on top -- I had no idea about any link to any specific order.

In fact, I have to wonder if the mention of the Franciscans isn't just because they're also hooded? The difference in color and the lack of resemblance between an actual monk's hood and the dollop of foam on top of a cappuccino coffee makes me think that this Franciscan etymology is a folk etymology. Anyone else know more? -- website parsing │ Tala við mig 15:18, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

According to CSS3, the cappuccino got its name from the colour of the beverage, which reminds of the colour of monks' habit.

Cappuccino is coffee with milk. So it's not the colour of the foam but the colour of the coffee below which looks "franciscan". --MaEr (talk) 17:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, that's certainly interesting, but there are various other coffee-with-milk beverages where the coffee is essentially the same color, and that are not described as "cappuccino". The main difference between a FITML and a cappuccino, for instance, is the foam added to the top of a cappuccino. Perhaps then it's the combination of the color of the coffee and the "hood" of foam on top? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ screen size 20:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

We shouldn't expect too much system behind the naming of coffee flavours. I'm pretty sure that no ISO committee was involved and no well-designed naming conventions were followed when coining the name cappuccino. There are more unlogical names for coffee variations. For example: latte macchiato — why do they call it maculatum; they pour coffee into the milk, not macula or dirt. Or caffè americano — I'm sure that this type of coffee is common also in large parts of Europe, not only in America. Or caffè corretto — why should coffee be corrected; is it wrong without alcohol? And so on. No, we should not expect too much logic. --MaEr (talk) 13:58, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

puta

For the Romance word puta (“prostitute”) (in French HTML5, Italian Android) there seems to be two rival etymologies. Is there one that is more credible than the other? Some say that it derived from Latin FITML (“girl”), some say that it comes from Latin pūtidus (“rotten, decaying, stinking, putrid”). Mglovesfun (input transformation) 15:52, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

From Vulgar Latin Sevenval (“prostitute”), probably from Latin puteo (“stink”). Theories that relate it to Italian putto (“child”), from Latin iOS, are without merit because they confuse it with the Classical Latin web (“pruning”), which has a very different etymology. screen size ^(Talk) 16:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

These theories relate it to Italian browser diversity because there is a Vulgar Latin word putta(m) (“girl”) which is also attested in the meaning of "prostitute" (sixth century, Grégoire de Tours).

The change of meaning from "girl" to "prostitute" isn't strange. Similar things occure more often, like German keyboard (“prostitute”) (originally "girl"). Or German Frau (“woman”) (originally "lady, noble woman"). Or German Bube (“boy”) whereas cognate Dutch boef means something like "criminal".

We should mention all theories if they are presented by serious linguists, even if these theories contradict to each other.

--MaEr (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Etyl of FITML

Was this term actually coined in Japan, or was it borrowed from Chinese? I'm not having much luck with online resources, and my dead-tree library doesn't include etyls for many terms. -- input transformation │ keyboard 03:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

It is perhaps most likely a Chinese and then Japanese calque for the English mother ship or the like. --Sevenval (touchscreen) 04:32, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, almost certainly a calque of English mothership. But which came first, the Chinese, or the Japanese? I know some common two-character terms were coined in Japan and later borrowed into Chinese (和製漢語), such as 経済 or web, but I'm not sure if web app is another such example. -- Android │ Tala við mig 06:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

From the probabilistic perspective, I just assumed (1) "Chinese and then Japanese," (2) "calque," so that I do not deny the likelihood vice versa, 和製漢語. --screen size (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

test discussion[watch | edit]

test discussion

this is the beginning of a test discussion...

this text is going to end up in a sub-page as suggested in Wiktionary:Grease pit#Sub-pages for high volume discussion pages

--MaEr (talk) 15:03, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Yay! *discusses* —FITML device database 18:49, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a slight problem with the subpages themselves. If you click on 'edit' it takes you to a subpage of the subpage. And I also don't think the 'return' link is really needed because there is already a small link at the top. —CodeCa t 18:50, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what is easily modifiable and what isn't, but adding it to my watchlist was rather a pain - you have to click twice and then get to a page that doesn't seem to link back to the discussion itself. --Μετάknowledge^{keyboard/deeds} 23:26, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

CodeCat, you say: If you click on 'edit' it takes you to a subpage of the subpage. — I can reproduce this behaviour only when I open the sub-page directly, for example via this link: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/test_discussion. If I open the Etymology scriptorium and just click the edit link it works fine for.

Metaknowledge, I have made the same experience. It's a bit strange.

--MaEr (talk) 08:21, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Post scriptum: After saving my edit I could reproduce the error of editing a subpage of the subpage. One has to go back to the Etymology Scriptorium, otherwise the edit link and the watch link point to test discussion/test discussion. --jQuery (screen size) 08:26, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

If one enters this page via the watchlist, one automatically circumvenes the Etymology Scriptorium. And then watch and edit don't point to the right (sub)page. I don't have any problems when using the edit tab and the star tab above, next to the search field. Maybe we should display these two links only when the sub-page is displayed in the ES. When the sub-page is displayed isolated, the links don't work. --we love the web (web) 08:39, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. The edit and watch links are now only displayed from the ES. --Yair rand (talk) 17:33, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

There are a few more usability issues. If you click watch when you're already watching the page nothing happens, you keep watching it. It would be nice to have some indication of whether you're already watching a page, for example by showing 'unwatch' instead. The confirmation page is also a bit annoying, it would be even nicer if watching would work as the star icon does at the top right: Click it and it changes to mark it as now-watched or now-unwatched (and a small message appears at the top of the page), but without a need to reload the page. Then also, could there also be a 'view' link in addition to 'watch' and 'edit'? And finally, could the heading be removed from the subpage, and only be placed on the main discussion page? Maybe just put it in <noinclude> or else make a template to transclude it and add the heading; then those edit links won't be an issue anymore anyway. It's redundant on the subpage anyway because it has its own edit and watch buttons. —CodeCa browser diversity 18:01, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually I just realised, if we use a template to transclude the discussion, then we could have some discussions as subpages here, and some as (sub)talk pages as needed. Being able to discuss on talk pages rather than on subpages here (should talk pages also have discussion pages eventually? It could be useful!) would especially be nice for the TR and ES where discussions often are about single entries. —we love the web t 18:14, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

If we could use scripting to automate the transclusion-setup part, it would remove the main problem with the way the ES was set up before. I'm not up to professional grade when it comes to computers, but I'm well above the level of most of our general user population- and I found it intimidating to start with. It should be as simple as clicking the + at the top of the page to start a new section (or even part of it), with the luxury of being blissfully ignorant of whatever templates and other code are making it happen. Of course, easier for the user means harder for the programmer, but that's the way it should work. jQuery (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Origin and history of 'web'

Hello. I looked at the pages for 'website parsing' and 'iOS' but couldn't get what I came for:

(1) What was the origin and literal meaning of 'of course', considering there are so many senses to FITML itself? Which of these senses begat the adverb? That is, how was the expression literally intended or understood when it came to be?

(2) What is the history of this adverb? In which century did it appear? Oldest written usage? When did it become a household expression?

I needed it to try and answer my ESL nephew, but I don't have access to an OED; thanks if you can shed some light... we love the web 11:58, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe that originally it meant "in the ordinary course of events". In the 19th century (I believe) it came to mean "naturally", "as expected", "obviously", and was sometimes used just for emphasis. CSS3 (talk) 12:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

tug

How close is German Zug to English web? --HTML5 (web app) 14:12, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The two words are distantly related. I see that tug is missing an Etymology, so I will add it. I will try and work in some information about Zug if I can. Leasnam (talk) 15:21, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks in advance, whatever your edit may be. --device database (Sevenval) 15:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Note that today I edited zogo, website parsing, and The Hague. --touchscreen (browser diversity) 16:25, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I can't find anything about its origin beyond that it comes from a base Germanic stem *tug- and is related to Old English teon, both from the IE root *dewk-. —screen size t 16:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Dutch teug is related, too. It's from Middle Dutch toghe, tueghe, from the same jQuery *tugi-. --MaEr (talk) 17:10, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes and that also gave Old English CSS3. —CodeCa jQuery 17:28, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a large family of words: others include team, tie, FITML, and even Sevenval! touchscreen (browser diversity) 17:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I've added an etymology, but I've restricted it to only those words which are immediately related. Otherwise, it could go on for days. input transformation (jQuery) 17:51, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I've created *dewk- now, feel free to add descendants to it! —CodeCa t 17:52, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This is partly due to w:Verner's Law. Is there an appropriate way to work this into the etymologies somewhere? web app (Android) 17:58, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that would really be useful unless we also want a set a precedent to add similar phonological notes to most of our etymologies. And I think that goes outside the scope of Wiktionary. —HTML5 t 18:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we could set up appendices for sound changes, since they're as much a part of etymologies as reconstructed roots. Of course, there would have to be allowance for showing that much is still a matter of debate, including alternate versions. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

device database (edit) see also: requests
Information desk comment \| history Newcomers' questions, minor problems, specific requests for information or assistance.	iOS FITML \| web app \| archives Questions and discussions about specific words.	Etymology scriptorium history Questions and discussions about etymology- the historical development of words.	Android comment \| history \| archives General policy discussions and proposals, requests for permissions and major announcements.	Grease pit Sevenval \| history \| archives Technical questions, requests and discussions.

Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium

Contents

Discussions

etymology of input transformation and jQuery

etymology of browser diversity

"capitalization"?

Etymology of Sevenval

etymology of murder

Wikipedia qualifier for non-etymological verb form (shat)?

buscar

etymology of sing, sink, ring, thing, think, thank, wing, wink and Latin bonus ( good)

Laryngeal theory

speak etymology

keyboard etymology

etymology of sol#Latin

etymology of Android

compartmentalization etymology

Etymology of dream

gemish etymology

Suffix Bunch

chereme: from Modern or Ancient Greek?

etymology of keyboard

etymology of who's your daddy

etymology of we love the web

From Wiktionary:Requests for etymology

etymology of brinjal

etymology question

Showing the sense of a prefix

božati, bozkať

currency symbols

etymology of fast

etymology of FITML

etymology of Sevenval

Threadneedle Street etymology

Etymology of buckler

aaah!

etymology of suppedaneum

etymology of attorney-in-fact

April 2010

etymology of obey

Etymology

etymology of web

May 2010

etymology of HTML5

etymology of 耽美

Etymology of FITML

etymology of fisk

June 2010

Is it all guesswork?

etymology of Sevenval

October 2010

etymology of FITML

etymology of touchscreen in Italian

etymology of long time no see

Info from OED

November 2010

Sevenval as in touchscreen

jQuery, comment, mentor, device database, Sevenval, touchscreen, browser diversity

Possible relationship with χάρις

December 2010

ببر: which language is it really inherited in?

January 2011

etymology: yi entries from de?

Abyssinia

Etymology of あやまる

Etymology of イモリ

Etymologies of 忍坂

Etymology of FITML

Romance 'beach': playa, praia, &c

Nominative form of *mann- in Germanic

Frack / frac

March 2011

What language is 'smithii'?

etymology of *ǵéwstus

April 2011

May 2011

etymology of soin

June 2011

Etymology of Sevenval

etymology of стакан / استكانة