etymology Archives

Have you ever really talked about your hands?

March 19, 2020 || Benjamin Yang

Tags: etymology, finger names, Galician, Guaraní, index finger, middle finger, pinkie, ring finger, thumb, wanderwort

Word origins can vary widely within and across languages. For certain concepts like ‘water’, ‘head’, or ‘egg’, the modern words often resemble the ancestors of these words from thousands of years ago. On the other hand, for wanderwort concepts like ‘taxi’ or ‘sushi’, borrowing across languages is the norm. Nearly anywhere you go in the […]

Ferreting Out Etymologies

January 21, 2020 || David Kamholz

Categories: Language and Linguistics

Tags: animal names, chipmunk, etymology, ferret, folk etymology, gopher, marmot, muskrat, opossum, raccoon, skunk, squirrel, woodchuck

Words for animals often have interesting histories. Some, like English mouse, have remained almost unchanged for centuries (millennia, if you go back to Indo-European). Others, like English dog, can be tracked only so far before the trail runs dry. The word for bear was altered in many Indo-European languages through a process called taboo deformation. […]