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Etymology scriptorium

Welcome to the Etymology scriptorium. This is the place to cogitate on etymological aspects of the Wiktionary entries.

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October 2026

borak

The entry poke borax says it's "From poke borak or poke borack, probably by substitution of the unfamiliar word, by the law of Hobson-Jobson", but the first of those entries just defines itself as an alt form of this, and the second hosts out-of-sync duplicate definitions, without giving any indication of what bora(c)k is. We do have an entry for a word "borak", but poke borak suppresses its headword line from linking there, as if it's not the word that's used in this phrase. So what is the bora(c)k that's being poked? - -sche (discuss) 06:36, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

-hwugu

(Notifying workgroup: Benwing2, Mnemosientje, The Editor's Apprentice, Hazarasp, Caoimhin ceallach, Exarchus, Mellohi!, Victar, Leasnam, Mårtensås, Lambiam, Urszag, Hundwine, Alarichall):

What could possibly be the origin of this Anglo-Saxon suffix? Does the literature say anything about it? (The page has no references; it needs some.) A very strange case! Any educated guesses on it?

The suffix has no Germanic cognates, and seems to have not lasted very long in English (wasn't passed down to even Early Mid-Eng), which could mean that its (limited?) usage happened very early in OE. I posit that it might be related to Old English hwerġen (“somewhere”, likewise limited usage), which, given the meaning, is either a strong possibility or a great coincidence. That word is from PG *hwargin (*hwar +‎ *-gin), therefore -hwugu would be from *hwō (“how; with what”) + *-gin (indefinite-pronoun suffix, i.e. the suffix equivalent of our some-), with the /o/ in *hwō becoming an /u/ (which did happen to hū, additionally losing its /w/, which didn't happen here because it's a longer word with more sounds after the /ʍu/ cluster), and *-gin became *-gyn (rounding) → *-gun (retraction) → gu (denazalization). Ergo, *-hwugun would have been its earlier form. Its lack of cognates may simply stem from its being an Anglo-Saxon innovation.

Is such a derivation possible or is it invalid? For clarification, I think -gin did not become -ġen (read -yen) here, unlike in hwerġen, due to adjacent-sounds influence – same reason for hwu- instead of hū-. ～ bytekast ^{[talk • work • logs]} 06:40, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

*-gin -> -gu seems extremely unlikely, especially given that it became -ġen in another form. You have to appeal to a whole host of ad-hoc analogical transformations. A Reddit user made a more likely suggestion IMO which is that -gu reflects somehow the indefinitizing suffix -que in Latin. If the pre-Germanic etymon had -kwe, the Proto-Germanic etymon would have either *-g or *-w (*-g would also arise if the preceding vowel were -u- in Proto-Germanic, because the labiovelar would have been delabialized). If this is true, the final -u must reflect some later accretion.

Benwing2 (talk) 07:31, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Isn't *-hw/*-uh already the Germanic reflex of *-kʷe? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:56, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

This is the outcome in Gothic in second position but the outcome might be different in final position if the preceding vowel is unstressed. But Hazarasp's suggestion makes more sense. Benwing2 (talk) 17:08, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Apologies for excoriating you, but the development of Old English -hwugu from your putative Proto-Germanic *hwōgin is phonologically impossible: your claim that /ɣ/ would remain unpalatalised due to the preceding /oː/ is incompatible with the evidence (e.g. PGmc. *swōgiz → OE swēġ), the exceptionless "denasalisation" of /n/ and (as Ben notes) rounding you posit are similarly unlikely, and you fail to account for i-umlaut; the expected result of *hwōgin would thus be *hwēġen.

As noted by Holthausen, Horn instead suggests derivation from PGmc *hwō (“how”) +‎ *wegō (the instrumental of *wegaz "way"), literally “in what way, somehow”. This would account for the attested OE forms if contracted into *hwegō; the /u/ of -hwugu is a regular outcome of the u-umlaut of /e/, /i/ after /w/, as in PGmc *wikō → OE wucu (“week”). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 07:41, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Perfect then! Thank you for the detailed explanations and the citation. Please don't apologize for the corrections (or "excoriation" as you hyperbolically called them, which I beg to differ) — they are much needed to improve understanding and to learn. I am not a professional linguist, much less a specialized Germanicist, so I was bound to make mistakes in my etymology anyway, which I expected openly by asking "is it possible or invalid?" (turns out it is "impossible", as you well put it). Welp, at least I got the "how" (*hwō) part right! I just could see its presence there. Horn's etymology makes much more sense and fits nicely: hwǣrhwugu (“where in what[ever] way”, perhaps an ancient way of saying “where in some way”, i.e. “somewhere”), and then hwǣthwugu (“what in what way” = “a thing in some way” = “something”); see archaic sense of somewhat. It's a double instrumental there, an inflected phrase, which explains why it does not get any further inflected as the affixed pronoun does. ～ bytekast ^{[talk • work • logs]} 19:17, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Any etymology would have to explain Gothic hwaiwa "how, in what way" as well, in my opinion. Horn attempts to do this, but his derivation from *hʷai wegai, the dative equivalent to his *hʷō wegō for the Old English form is highly dubious, as the form **hwai does not exist, its grammatical equivalent being *hwammai. Additionally, such haplologies are unprecedented for Gothic, and the form should probably be taken at face value. One possibility is PGmc. *hʷewō < PIE *kʷe-kʷó-h, an extended form of the instrumental interrogative (the *w is from Verner's law). This would develop into PWGmc. *hʷegu, with regular fortition of *w > *g in contact with a high vowel, which would also give OE -hwegu (> hwøgu, -hwugu). SériskaMarka-Lénínattijó (talk) 04:11, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

faltarle palos para el puente

"He's a few sticks short of a bridge" sounds a lot like "he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic", so it sounds like a Spanish version of the snowclone. What's the etymology of the snowclone? PierreAbbat (talk) 20:06, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there are some variants in Swedish as well, such as "not have all the horses at home" and "not have all the knives in the cabinet drawer". Wakuran (talk) 11:11, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the origin, but it's more than a single snowclone, it's a whole class of expressions with its own name: full deckisms. There are others like this one based on something missing from a complete set: Appendix:Snowclones/few X short of a Y, then there's one's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top/his driveway doesn't go all the way to the road, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer/not the sharpest tool in the shed (see Appendix:Snowclones/not the X-est in the Y, which are a form of litotes). Similar are not have both oars in the water/not firing on all cylinders, bats in the belfry/a kangaroo loose in the top paddock, the lights are on, but nobody's home. They are all understated and playfully indirect The ones I've followed back in Google Books seem to start in the 1980's and 1990's, but here is "three bricks short of a load" from 1969. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:00, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

blah, blah, blah

Onomatopoeic, but any relation to Spanish hablar “speak” at all? Xylon Chacier (talk) 17:53, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Likely not, as in 1918 English usually didn't have any close connections to Spanish. Wakuran (talk) 19:35, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree that blah blah blah is unlikely to have any connection to Spanish hablar, but there were certainly varieties of U.S. English (especially in Florida, Louisiana, and the states that had once been part of Mexico) that were in fairly close contact with Spanish even in the first quarter of the 20th century. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:02, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

Anyway, as English likely already would have had the similar native words blab, blabber, babble and blather, mixing in another language here probably just confuses matters. Wakuran (talk) 21:11, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

English excluders?

There is an old Norwegian word for women galoshes, ekskluders (or just "skluders"). Not even sure if it is plural. Very poorly attested. Looks English. May it be from English *excluders? But what do they exclude? Water? Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:47, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

It might be a pseudoloan. If English excluder has ever been used (in singular or plural) to refer to something waterproof, I've never seen it. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:11, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

It sounds as if it might be a student joke word or so. Although ekskludere as a verb is somewhat common as a synonym to utelukke. Wakuran (talk) 07:42, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Apparently it must be from English, see snow excluders on Google. I also found a Norwegian book which says they were used by women in Trondheim at winter in 1940-s, but no snow directly mentioned. A dictionary of Trøndelag dialect has this word but does not says it was used by women. A commentary on Internet says they were used by women in 1930-40s. Otherwise no more attestations. Also, looks like pluralia tantum. Not sure if it is worth to include, but it seems to be same as English/American "snow excluders". They were used before 1930-s tho. And they are pretty poor attested they too. Tollef Salemann (talk) 08:47, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Googling produces the result 'Apparently "snow excluders" are what we now call gaiters.' Wakuran (talk) 09:17, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, it would be nice to have pictures from those days. Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:45, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

They had a archive picture of excluders which look like galoshes, not gaiters, but it was removed, because somebody complained that the galoshes on the picture were not real excluders, since they suppose to be made for women. So it could be galoshes, but it sounds more like gaiters if they were used at winter. Tollef Salemann (talk) 14:27, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

Chinese Hanzi 蟲

(Notifying workgroup: Blahhmosh, Fish bowl, Justinrleung, Geographyinitiative, 沈澄心): The Shuowen Jiezi character shown in the "Glyph Origin" section of 蟲 looks like the Shuowen Jiezi character of 車 plus the Shuowen Jiezi character of 舁. It looks like the character in that page is actually the Seal Script form of 輿. Perhaps we should transfer that character to our 輿 entry and replace the Shuowen Jiezi character in our 蟲 entry with the Seal Script character found in the 蟲 entry of the Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants. (If so, we might need help from the Grease pit to sort out Template:Han etym.) Can someone check this? Intolerable situation (talk) 14:57, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

@Intolerable situation: Thanks for notifying us of this. It's an issue of incorrect file naming at Wikimedia Commons, where this image is hosted. I've renamed this file, so now the image only shows up at 輿. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:24, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

propreantepenultimate

What's the exact origin of the pro- in propreantepenultimate? pro- lists three origins and Latin prō- (“forward”) and Greek πρό (pró, “before”) seem plausible (the Greek seems to fit the definition better but Latin fits the etymology of the rest of the word). I haven't been able to find evidence for any one in particular however. Donopi (talk) 02:34, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

It should be the Greek. There are a bunch of words mixing Greek and Latin roots, and I guess two pre's after another felt silly. Wakuran (talk) 11:32, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

I see. I've added the Greek link. Donopi (talk) 20:11, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

original part of speech of north in north wind

The entry used to say north in north wind was originally an adverb, but was changed here to say it was originally an adjective. Is that right? If so, it seems to me that we could drop the parenthetical entirely: if it was originally an adverb, that's arguably unintuitive enough for modern readers to be worth flagging, but if it was originally an adjective, that seems unremarkable, and unnecessary to remark on. - -sche (discuss) 16:22, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

How could it have been an adverb? They modify verbs, not nouns. ~2026-53844-63 (talk) 16:25, 6 October 2026 (UTC)

@-sche: If you look at Bosworth-Toller, it has norþ as an adverb for "in a northerly position", but there is also an adjective with the same spelling that is apparently only seen in compounds. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:20, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

👁️👄👁️

It should come from 👁️👁️, in turn from 👁️, no? ~2026-52969-60 (talk) 07:42, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't think emoticons should be interpreted like that. It's just an approximation of a face doing a grimace. Wakuran (talk) 11:46, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't think so. Looks like a Mediterranean–Pontic substratum. Vahag (talk) 12:04, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

kúga

Any guesses as to the origins of this Old Norse term? Does (or did) English have any cognates with it via Proto-Germanic? ～ bytekast ^{[talk • work • logs]} 15:04, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

Íslensk orðsifjabók has this to say:

> kúga s. ‘undiroka, bæla niður, þvinga; totta’; sbr. fær. kúga, nno. kûa, kuva, sæ. kuva, d. kue (to. í e. cow). Tæpast < *kúfga, af kúfur og upphafl. merk. ‘að stýfa kúfinn af, gera kollótt’ e.þ.h. Fno. kúfan, ung víxlmynd við kúgan, er ónóg stoð slíkri skýringu. Fremur sk. nno. kugul, kugl ‘smáklumpur, hnykill,…’ og kjøgle kv., kjugl h. (s.m.), sk. mhþ. kugele (nhþ. kugel), holl. kogel ‘kúla’; sbr. fe. Cūga, fhþ. Cūgo karlmannsnafn. Af kúga er leitt no. kúgan, kúgun kv. ‘undirokun’, sbr. fær. kúgan (s.m.), kúgi k. ‘þjökun, þvingun; viðurnefni, pn.’ og kúgur k. ‘kraftlaus mergur’; sbr. og Kúgaldi k. og Kúgi k. pn. Af germ. rót *kū̆-g-, ie. *geu-g(h)- ‘beygja’, sbr. lith. gugà ‘hnakkpúta, hóll’, rússn. gúglja ‘kúla’. Sjá kuggi (1 og 2).

Ie.:

kúga verb 'repress, subjucate, suppress; suck(?)'; compare Faroese kúga, Nynorsk kûa, kuva, Swedish kuva, Danish kue (loaned to English cow). Possibly from < *kúfga, from kúfur, with original meaning of 'to remove the crown from, to make bald' or similar. Old Norse kúfan, a young variant of kúgan, is not enough support for such an etymology. More likely related to Nynorsk kugul, kugl ‘small lump, wad,…’ and kjøgle fem., kjugl neut. (same meaning), cf. Middle High German kugele (Modern kugel), Dutch kogel ‘ball’; cf. Old English Cūga, Old High German Cūgo, male names. From kúga is derived the nouns kúgan, kúgun fem. ‘subjugation’, cf. Faroese kúgan (same meaning.), kúgi masc. ‘oppression, coercion; epithet, personal name’ and kúgur masc. ‘powerless marrow’; cf. also Kúgaldi masc. and Kúgi masc., personal names. From a Germanic root *kū̆-g-, IE *geu-g(h)- ‘to bend’, cf. Lith. gugà ‘hump, hillock’, Russian. gúglja ‘sphere’. See kuggi (1 and 2).

Not sure if totta had some other use other than suck that I am unaware of, like extract. Not sure if kraftlaus mergur is some set phrase that I misunderstand, and if my translation of hnakkpúta/hóll is correct. Someone better at the language than me might be able to comment. Herthaz (talk) 12:27, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

My initial impression was that totta might be related to Proto-Germanic *tuhtiz (discipline, n.), Swedish tukta (discipline, v.), but that would basically require that the root had survived independently in North Germanic, since the *ht combination tends to produce -tt- natively and -kt- in Continental West Germanic (mostly Middle Low German) borrowings. Wakuran (talk) 00:27, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah - the language used for glosses in Íslensk orðsifjabók is generally not super archaic (it was published in 1989), but it does occasionally use some words that for me, as a second language speaker of the language (whose competence has sadly attrited quite a lot), are quite obscure. In this case, the only entries I saw for totta in Icelandic dictionaries revolves around the usage of 'to suck' (incl. the sexual variant).

As I mentioned, I was unsure if there was a previous usage I was unaware of - if so, it didn't show up in any of the common Norse dictionaries. However, I neglected to check Íslensk orðsifjabók itself! It has this to say:

> totta s. (17. öld) ‘sjúga (spena, pípu); hreyta, strepta kýr’; tott h. ‘sugur, streptur’. Sbr. nno. totta, tutta, sæ. máll. tutta ‘sjúga túttu,…’, þ. máll. zützen ‘sjúga’. So. e.t.v. nafnleidd af orði sem merkt hefur spena eða brjóstvörtu, sbr. sæ. máll. tutt ‘suga’, mhþ. zutzel (s.m.). Af sama toga og totta s. er totta kv. ‘dúsa’. Sjá tútta, tota og tútur.

totta verb. (17th c.) 'suck (teat, pipe); to milk, milk/strip a cow (dry)'; tott neut. 'sucking, stripping(?).' Compare Nynorsk totta, tutta, Swedish dialectal tutt 'suck a teat,' German dialectal zützen (suck). The verb is possibly a nominal derivation of words which means teat or nipple, compare Swedish dialectal tutt 'suck', Middle High German zutzel (same meaning). From same stock as totta the verb is totta fem. 'teat.' See tútta, tota and tútur. Herthaz (talk) 15:53, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, that "tukta" suggestion might have been a qualified guess, but it still seems to be wrong. I first though that the book was a very old standard work, but 1989 is fairly recent. The meaning "milk a cow dry" would make sense, however. (And as for archaic glosses, at least I guess they wouldn't be more archaic than Icelandic in general...) Wakuran (talk) 22:06, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Singlet: sleeveless shirt

After doublet because originally it referred to an unlined one-layered garment. JMGN (talk) 20:45, 7 October 2026 (UTC)

mainline

i just added that the religious sense might be derived from the railroad sense, which is what Wikipedia says. do we think that the currently listed first sense,

Normal, principal or standard.

might be derived from the religious sense? Thus making the railroad sense the original root of both. I didnt do any search and I dont expect other people to since it would require a lot of sorting through old documents where most hits would be for the railroad sense and perhaps the religious sense, but maybe someone has forehand knowledge of this. —Soap— 00:45, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

On why Cantonese and Xiang reflexes of 束 contain an initial affricitive consonant instead of a fricative?

Why do you guys think that for Cantonese and Xiang, they do not pronounce 束 with an initial fricative consonant as Middle Chinese suggests but instead they pronounce with an affricitive consonant? Why? Blahhmosh (talk) 04:08, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Latin adverbs of reaching, direction, extent

(Notifying workgroup: Fay Freak, Brutal Russian, Benwing2, Lambiam, Mnemosientje, Nicodene, Sartma, Al-Muqanna, SinaSabet28, Theknightwho, Imbricitor, Urszag, Graearms, Kaloan-koko, Andrew Sheedy, Victar):

How should one account for intrō, eō, quō, istō, citrō, etc.? ablative on the outside, but such a usage is better served by the accusative etymologically; it is not, to my knowledge, mirrored elsewhere. eō, quō and their several senses suggest a dichotomy and twofold origin (at least chronologically) which other such adverbs in -ō don't necessarily share. De Vaan under inter says intrō does reflect the ablative singular: should we consider it an extension of the locative ablative? with a translation from the static to motion? Saumache (talk) 19:13, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

I don’t know what you are talking about. The etymologies? I never thought about these words as ablatives. They are analogical formations from some point in Early Latin. Fay Freak (talk) 19:22, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

What sort of answer is analogy? analogy with what? Saumache (talk) 20:10, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

My theory is that some of these adverbs are very frequent words that hence were retained and motivated new such words. Whether or not the original group’s ending can be identified with the ablative ending I am not sure – something unexpected can be the case in the sense that they are inherited archaisms, as a lectio difficilior –, but the problem with the idea of calling them ablatives is that the ending means the oppositive of ablative, namely illative, though the ablative in Latin be used for the “mode” in which something happens.

You might reason from the parallel in citrō and citrā or ultrā that these are indeed ablatives, were you to believe that ablatives of both genders could be used and were there not the possibility that any attestations of this -ād are secondary or there was a syncretism with the ablative endings, as indeed the Latin ablative remarkably has absorbed sundry semantic functions that were not present in Indo-European. The matter is muddled. Fay Freak (talk) 22:21, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, Lewis and Short writes "cī̆trō, adv. (orig. dat. sing.)", so that seems to be an alternative hypothesis. It seems odd though because the dative is not usually used spatially in historical Latin.--Urszag (talk) 06:05, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Lewis and Short is not really an authority in everything etymology related, it makes even less sense if we consider quō/eō/istō (these could never have been dative, or are analogical to adjective-based citrō and others, but again the dative makes little sense here, the accusative would be more expected), my best bet is: pronoun/adjective-based static semi-lexicalized adverbs using the locative ablative, found alongside ibi and others -> stronger lexicalisation and specification of these as illative adverbs (the same way modern English uses there to mean "to this place") -> a new productive set of deictic adverbs. Spatial adverbs in -ā are surely more ablative in nature and less obscure regarding their adverbialisation eā viā, citrā viā, or something like that; the pair -ō/-ā makes me strongly think they all stem from that one case. This also bring us to illative -ūc (hūc, illūc) (and elative/ablative -inc/-im adverbs (illinc, istinc)). Saumache (talk) 07:34, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Black Death

< the color of the buboes? JMGN (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Black has long had negative connotations in Europe and Western languages, probably just an intensifier or similar. Or with some vague connections to the Devil and the underworld. Wakuran (talk) 00:19, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

جنارك and jering and ชะเนียง: what is going on?

See North Levantine Arabic جَنَارِك (/⁠janērik⁠/, “greengage”). The conventional Ottoman/Turkish source can erik (literally “soul plum”) is the most blatant phonosemantic matching ever and I have no way to convince myself the Ottoman is the source of all the Levantine Arabic variants: جَرَرَنك (jararank), جَنَرْلِك (janarlik), جِرَنْك (jirank), جَرِنْك (jarink), etc... at the very least it's fishy that apparently none of this variation is reflected in Turkish.

If you take the Levantine forms on their own terms, without assuming etyms, it seems they sort into three groups:

1. janāri(k~g), jarāni(k~g), jararin(k~g), jiniran(k~g), etc.
2. janarli(k~g) and vowel variants
3. jrink, jirank, jarink, etc.

You can reconstruct #1 to something like a *janāring > *jaˈnāring ~ *janāˈring, but it's hard to unify this with the other two without shooting off in wild directions. Probably a dead end. Optimistically you might consider *ŋ instead of *ng at the end of the source language's term in order to account for the variation in the ending, but that doesn't do any favors to the prospect of finding a valid donor.

Then while trying to track this down I spotted the species Archidendron jiringa (meaning djenkol). "jiringa"?! Tracking this down reveals two strange forms:

1. Malay jering (“djenkol”), redlink but easy to find online
2. Old Khmer jranyaṅ (/⁠ɟrəˈniːəŋ⁠/, “Canthium”, possibly djenkol), redlink but given at Thai ชะเนียง (chá-niiang, “djenkol”) as well as here at the(?) Old Khmer dictionary

What is going on here? Two forms that (ignoring time depth) are practically screaming for comparison to the otherwise-recalcitrant جَرِنْك (jarink) and جَنَرِنك (janaring) (note historical Arabic ج (j /⁠ɟ⁠/)), but they refer to different plants and are from across the Indian Ocean? I'm not too beat up about the different plants, but everything else... Still, when you think about it (talk · stalk) 02:07, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Note that I previously had a supposed form جَرَنيَك (jaranyak) listed on the page جَنَارِك, but this was my tentative read of a vowelless spelling جرنيك and I shouldn't have listed it. For example, it may instead refer to a pronunciation like جَرَنِيك (^?‍jaranīk). Removed and trying to go through and cite all the rest. Also even with this attempted SEA comparison I have no explanation of the Levantine forms in ـلـ (-l-). Still, when you think about it (talk · stalk) 02:12, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Vietnamese thẩm thấu

Could this just be a Sino-Vietnamese word from 浸透? ~2026-54453-98 (talk) 05:10, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I’d expect 浸透 (jìntòu) to give *tẩm thấu. @PhanAnh123, can you chime in? MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 07:35, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah regular reading is *tẩm thấu, non-SV then. PhanAnh123 (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Okay. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 02:23, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Could it be some folk etymological reinterpretation due to assimilation or so? Not knowing Vietnamese, but t* th* -> th* th* sounds fairly credible. Wakuran (talk) 12:13, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Mandaite

Wanna check this? What Manda would it be??? —User:Vealhurl (talk 18:24, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Seems to be Aramaic 𐡌𐡍𐡃𐡏. Wakuran (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

judgment call

What meaning of call is used in this one? JMGN (talk) 10:15, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Sense 8 of call#Noun: "A decision or judgement." —Mahāgaja · talk 11:28, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

@Mahagaja I was thinking about something on the lines of the verbal meaning To require, demand (He felt called to help the old man). JMGN (talk) 11:33, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

The Christian sense seems to be the oldest, though, and I think it fits better with Sense 3: "A beckoning or summoning." Wakuran (talk) 12:56, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there are two different meanings with different etymologies. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:28, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Might have been some biblical influence and semantic drift or something. Wakuran (talk) 12:08, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "kasim"

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay kasim ("eunuch, castrated man") an Arabic loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 10:45, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

It does seem likely to be somehow from Arabic خَصِيّ (ḵaṣiyy, “eunuch”), though I don't know where the -m might come from. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:37, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Deffo, the base-word is the inveterate anatomic term خُصْيَة (ḵuṣya, “testicle”). Fay Freak (talk) 18:49, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

merkin ety

Given as deriving from Malde, meaning saltbush in German. With a dose of imagination, the plant possibly looks kinda like pubic hair, but I'm unconvinced... Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:32, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

The older word (malkin / maukin) could apparenty also mean cat, cf. pussy and hare, cf. cony / cunny. (The meaning of "cony" is rare nowadays, though.) Wakuran (talk) 13:00, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

But basically, this is a misreading of the statement. The Malde refereced here isn't the German word for saltbush, but an older English form for Maud or Mathilda, and the name was picked up as a stereotypical name for domestic servants, and later obtained meanings for mop, cat and rabbit, all of which would be fairly credible origins for the current usage. Wakuran (talk) 16:35, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes. It is virtually impossible that the English knew this byform, which only Wiktionary (I) found because with Google Books the corpus of Early New High German is so large. WF, enable orange links in your gadgets to avoid confusing linked languages: it would have shown that the entry is missing. You could also have followed the link to malkin as this entry is explicit about it being a given name. Fay Freak (talk) 16:57, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if it's mostly due to gaps in coverage, or the way Wiktionary is fundamentally designed, but it's quite common with links leading to the wrong language, or the correct language but a wrong entry. Wakuran (talk) 17:58, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

With no entry in any language MediaWiki shows a red link. If no entry in the linked language (L2 according with the link anchor) exists, the gadget shows an orange link. It does not help confusion from partial coverage of a spelling, this reflects the fundamental incompleteness of dictionaries. Fay Freak (talk) 18:47, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

niminy-piminy

Based on namby-pamby? JMGN (talk) 14:34, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

Not directly, I think. Rhyming reduplication has long been used for mocking or derisive effect in English. Wakuran (talk) 16:27, 11 October 2026 (UTC)

If we assume the word being rhymed is prim, i would say namby-pamby is likely an influence, yes. —Soap— 16:07, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

parasynthesis

Is it really correct to say that this term comes from Ancient Greek (not in Liddell's dictionary)?
Here I find: "The term parasynthesis is mainly used in modern theoretical linguistics in the meaning introduced by Arsène Darmesteter (1874) ..." So rather calque from French parasynthèse, from para- +‎ synthèse? Exarchus (talk) 19:03, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

It's not in LSJ, but it's in both Bailly and Pape (check Logeion) and seems to have basically its modern meaning, so I'd say yes, it comes from Ancient Greek. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:18, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

do those dictionaries require attestation in classical literature? i just want to be clear because I can't understand the abbreviations. —Soap— 16:47, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Logeion is not a dictionary itself, it's a collection of several previously published dictionaries gathered in one website, allowing the user to search across all the dictionaries in its database simultaneously. Bailly's dictionary cites fr:Varinus Phavorinus's 16th-century dictionary as its source; I don't know where Phavorinus found it. Pape doesn't seem to give a specific source at all, but just labels it a grammatical term. It's also listed in the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, cited to "An Unpublished Address of Nikephoros Chrysoberges to Patriarch John X Kamateros of 1202", so I guess it's a Medieval Greek word rather than an Ancient one. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:04, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

The definition given by Bailly seems to imply that the final of the preposition has to be elided. I don't think the example πάρειμι would classify as modern parasynthesis. So maybe the the previous existence of παρασύνθεσις isn't really relevant for Darmesteter's use of the term. Exarchus (talk) 18:21, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, Bailly, Pape, and LBG don't agree on the exact details of the definition. Still, I think the Medieval Greek word existed and had a meaning pertaining to linguistic compounding in some way or other. And it seems pretty likely that Darmesteter knew of this word and borrowed it in toto, rather than deciding himself to prefix para- to synthèse, although the precise modern definition may well have been his. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:11, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

I think our convention is to trace the etymology to the attested form, rather than to a hypothetical Greek precursor. The Greek Wikipedia does list such a precursor here, and link to a dictionary here called ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ, but it's possible ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ does not require early attestation for a word to be listed and therefore I can't be sure whether we should keep the etymology we have or change it. Basically just posting to save others a few clicks. —Soap— 16:34, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

trovant

Any idea what coiner Gheorghe Munteanu-Murgoci (1907) based this word on? Is it related to e.g. trovare (though the semantics seem not close)? One of the cites says "trovant” is a boiled-down German word that means “cemented sand”, but no obvious German source is coming to my mind; trovants are the subject of some fanciful ideas, and it's possible that ety is one of them. AFAICT there are no trov- words in DEX. Pinging User:Fytcha and User:Ktom as currently the only members of the Romanian workgroup, and User:Robbie SWE as another prolific editor and admin who knows Romanian (BTW, can we add you to the Romanian workgroup who get pinged from time to time when Romanian issues need discussing?): y'all have any ideas or resources? - -sche (discuss) 17:46, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping! From what I've found, Romanian trovant seems to come from Italian trovante. Treccani traces the Italian word to Friulian trovànt, perhaps from French truand ("beggar") (older truant). Beyond that, I can't really say much about the geological side of things, so I'll leave that to users who are better versed in the subject. It might be an expressive coinage though. And sure, feel free to add me to the Romanian workgroup. I'd be happy to help out from time to time with Romanian-related issues. Robbie SWE (talk) 19:05, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Dungan вугынцыр (nightingale)

вугын (五更 (wǔgēng)) + unknown

Лэйүан Хуадян instead states both гын and цыр have meant wings. 物灵 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Possible link between a PIE word and a Proto-Turkic word?

I am not a linguist so pardon if the question is stupid, but is it possible for the PIE *dʰer- to have influenced or been influenced by the Proto-Turkic *tīrä-, since both the phonetics and meanings appear similar? Kaloan-koko (talk) 06:36, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, you can't prove a negative, but I think most linguists would want something more substantial than a matching meaning paired with vaguely similar phonology, especially since PIE and Proto-Turkic weren't spoken near each other, so a loan from one to the other is unlikely. The two proto-languages could conceivably have both borrowed a word from some third language, but there too, we'd want pretty strong evidence. At the moment, given just these two roots, coincidence is the most likely explanation. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:57, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Zulu kade

Does anyone have any idea as to the etymology of Zulu kade (“long ago”)? It looks like it could be cognate with Swahili kale (“the past, ancient”) (from Proto-Sabaki *kale (“the past”)), but it seems it’s complicated. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 07:48, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Dutch stoven

Our entry for the Dutch noun stoof gives the verb stoven as a descendant. Combining this with the etymology given for this noun results in the chain

stoven < stoof < Proto-West Germanic *stubu (“heated room, bath-room, stove, oven”).

But the etymology section for the verb has

stoven < Proto-West Germanic *staubijan (“make steam”).

These are not compatible. Can they be reconciled?  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:37, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

They're not compatible, but unless someone just so happens to have a paper offering a convincing argument as to what origin for both words is preferred, it's unlikely to be a topic Wiktionary editors can settle, given even recent sources treat the etymology of stoof as uncertain.

Het etymologisch woodernboek van het Nederlands' earliest attestations for both are close in date - stoof in 1295, stoven in 1280-1290, and analyses stoven as a derivative of stoof, so I think this is likely the uncited source for that idea in the entry.

But, there's multiple sources out there that either directly argue or imply the other case is the more likely one, including most of the older comparative Germanic dictionaries.

Some more recent treatments I found only talk about the two independently, seeming to assume a PGmc origin for both without assuming one is 'directly' derived from the other, but never really offering a clear argument for why this should be a preferred analysis.

The most extensive account for the topic I could find is here: https://ewa.saw-leipzig.de/articles/139800/de

A TLDR from that is that multiple early West Germanic languages have nouns corresponding to stoof, which, unless the term is a borrowing, can be broadly assumed to come from \*stubō- (equivalent to \*stubu- here on Wiktionary). In this case, of course, both the roots (here I mean roots in the general sense, not in the PIE studies sense) you mention are related to the words, and our noun here would be considered in a zero-grade nominal derivation as the source there mentions from the verb (cf. German Staub as from the o-grade). The alternative case is that this word is a loanword - an early one from early Romance. The entry there gives an account of how that could be considered plausible on phonological grounds, and seems to broadly be of the opinion that both explanations work phonologically - the main reason one might consider the loanword possibility likely being that early Germanic cultures generally did not prominently feature bath-houses like other groups from the nearer Eurasian area. Herthaz (talk) 01:11, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Didn't they have saunas, though? But maybe another word was used for them... Wakuran (talk) 12:15, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Since stoven is attested in Middle Dutch, one would assume that the Dutch verb is inherited from Middle Dutch. If the verb is indeed derived from a noun, it is perhaps by way of the Middle Dutch verb that was derived from the Middle Dutch noun stove. But it is IMO at least as plausible that the verb+noun combination was inherited or borrowed from an analogous set in an ancestor or donor language.  ​‑‑Lambiam 18:15, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

The modern Dutch verb is inherited from Middle Dutch and likely goes back even further. However, it is definitely denominal and has nothing to do with *staubijan. All Dutch sources (Philippa, De Vries, WNT etc.) agree on this. And there is also phonetic proof from those dialects in which both vowels couldn't have merged (as they would have in standard Dutch). Limburgish stove, Ripuarian stuvve require WG *-u-, Westphalian Low German stoawen ~ stuowen requires WG *-o-. In all cases, the underlying vowel is short and identical to that of the noun (stoof, Stuvv, Stoawe/Stuowe, respectively). ~2026-54467-59 (talk) 20:55, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

I find this all agreeable. I think I may have confused myself due to the EWN giving Low German stoven as related to *staubijan and Kroonen's brief comment that relates Dutch stoven to *staubjan; I'm not sure if there's a separate justification possible for the Low German word, but I would think not?

I used to have a better mental model of how different derivations relate to each other, but it's been ~10 years since I was quite actively reading materials about Proto-Germanic or p-West-Gmc and I've since spent much more time engaging with material about Japonic and Austronesian (and even then I am far more familiar with north Germanic than west Germanic, with most of my exposure with the latter being work on OE syntax, and not reconstruction or work on the other languages. Someone who actively publishes on this stuff has told me the field suffers from a lot of people not being very familiar with early Dutch specifically...) Herthaz (talk) 23:12, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, there is a Middle Low German descendant of *staubijan, which is also stoven when written without diacritics. When you add the diacritics, however, the verb "to stove, heat, desiccate" is stōven (with secondary length and no umlaut), whereas the other is stö̂ven (with original length and umlaut) and it has roughly the same senses as German stauben, stäuben. In modern standard Dutch, both verbs would have merged phonetically. So one could theoretically assume a merger. However, as I mentioned, the dialect forms all show that the verb for "to stove" has nothing to do with *staubijan, and the Dutch verb shows none of the senses normally associated with it; so there's no reason to assume such a merger. *Staubijan simply doesn't appear to have been continued in Middle Dutch. (Conversely, most of High German doesn't have the denominal verb; meaning that only Low German and Ripuarian have both alongside.) ~2026-54467-59 (talk) 23:34, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

I've corrected the etymology. PS: The Ripuarian vowel can also be long, i.e. stuve, but this still rules out *staubijan as the etymon. The length is probably due to a merger with *steuban (cf. Dutch "stuiven" with WG *û). PPS: Limburgish also has a variant staove with underlying WG *o like the Westphalian form; again the etymon *staubijan is ruled out in both cases. ~2026-54467-59 (talk) 21:09, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

Italian -accio, Galician-Portuguese -aço

Surely we are missing a (non-productive) definition here, used in Italian pagliaccio, Old Galician-Portuguese palhaço, Italian farinaccio, Portuguese melaço, etc. Denotes relationship or resemblance, like Latin -āceus. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 13:53, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Zulu úbukháli and related

(@Rua, as the apparent creator of those entries.) Is there any good reason why Zulu úbukháli cannot be descended from Proto-Bantu *bʊ̀kádɪ̀ (Entry 1670 at Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3)? The word ísikháli could be derived from úbukháli rather than the other way around. MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 06:37, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Icelandic hvatberi

I couldnt find Icelandic hvatberi (“mitochondrion”) in an etymological dictionary. is it safe to assume it's hvati +‎ beri or are there other details to consider? thanks, —Soap— 00:09, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

whinge missing from Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/hwīnan#Descendants

Title. The etymology sections of both whine and whinge list _hwīnan_, but only the former is backlinked. Can someone with the appropriate privileges update Module:etymology/templates/descendant accordingly? AbyxDev (talk) 07:01, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

Indo-Iranian dāna and Chinese dàn: connection and directionality?

Persian dāneh, “seed, grain; individual item,” belongs to the Proto-Indo-Iranian *dʰaHnáH family. Tocharian B tāno, “grain,” is explained as either inherited from Indo-European or borrowed from Khotanese. Chinese 蛋 dàn, “egg,” is linked to 彈 dàn, “pellet.” Japanese tane, “seed,” may also be relevant.

Has connection and directionality between Persian and Chinese families been investigated? Pazimzadeh (talk) 21:02, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Likely just a coincidence. English much and Spanish mucho are very similar, although they have very different origins. Wakuran (talk) 22:20, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

I’m not convinced by that comparison.

The existence of unrelated words with similar sounds and meanings doesn’t establish that these particular words are unrelated.

Is there specific historical or phonological evidence supporting coincidence in this case? Pazimzadeh (talk) 02:43, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, is there?

• 蛋, "egg", is not exactly "seed, grain".
• 彈, "pellet", appears to have an Old Chinese etymology and a Proto-Tibeto-Burman cognate.

First, the argument would require special pleading. Second, it is complicated by onomatopoeic qualities of どん (don). Sux. 𒉭 nunuz shows sound symbolic and graphic reduplication, too, for example. ~2026-56816-82 (talk) 11:06, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Egg and seed are conceptually related. They are small things from which life can grow.

In fact, in Farsi there is another word (tokhm) which can mean both egg and seed depending on context. That seems to be the case in many other languages.

I'm not claiming to have proved the link, but why would it require special pleading?

I'm not following your argument. What is the relevance of onomatopoeia and reduplication here? Pazimzadeh (talk) 08:36, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

In historical linguistics, the burden of proof is always on the person claiming that two words are related. Coincidence is the default assumption in the absence of convincing evidence of relatedness. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:20, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

I didn't claim they are connected. @Wakuran above claimed it's 'likely' a coincidence.

I would rather people said they don't know or didn't comment at all rather than reply with 0 additional information.

Similar words can occur by chance, but words that share ancestry can also diverge in sound and still retain that ancestry.

I don't see why historical linguistics would be different from any other science. Pazimzadeh (talk) 08:48, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Russian vodka unit

I wonder if стопка is from Proto-Germanic *staupą rather than from a Slavic root meaning foot? Staup is still a common Norwegian word for this vessel, and surely was popular among the Vikings, from whom Russian has many words. Tollef Salemann (talk) 13:55, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Also Swedish stop. Wakuran (talk) 16:56, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

It's not from the term meaning "foot", it's from the term meaning "goblet". We don't say anything about the etymology of the latter yet, however. Ru.wikt suggests a connection to the root related to степень (stepenʹ). Thadh (talk) 19:33, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

That is why I am asking. Also, Swedish "stop" is somewhat different in shape. Norwegian "staup" is basycally the same kind of vessel as a Russian "stopka". Tollef Salemann (talk) 16:01, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Speaking of this etymon, I see a note in {{R:fi:SSA}} that Swedish stop, I believe usually a relatively large tankard-like vessel (like its Finnic equivalents), would come from Low German rather than inherited from Old Norse. This would allow specialization to 'small cup, shot-glass' to be already fairly old in Norse and would be helpful for deriving the Russian from that direction. --Tropylium (talk) 18:12, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

But the Norwegian word keeps the sense "small cup", identical to Russian. The only difference is that the traditional Norwegian staup is usually made of wood. Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:48, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was suggesting: if specifically Swedish 'tankard' is non-native, then Norwegian 'small cup' might have been already an Old Norse-era semantic development. Finding the same sense in Icelandic is also suggestive. --Tropylium (talk) 13:20, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

@Tropylium: I think that would actually be more of a problem then - the Russian term is a clear diminutive of a term that is not necessarily restricted to small vessels (in fact, there are examples of contrastive uses with рюмка, suggesting "стопа" is a quite large goblet). Thadh (talk) 05:18, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Right, so it is maybe not through Old Norse after all. Tollef Salemann (talk) 08:22, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

There is no line between tankards and cups from a German point of view. All is Becher or Stauf when that word was used. It ends to the upside when it begins being a bottle, as in a thermos, with no downside, as even a sippy cup or shotglass (Pinnchen) has the same term. Fay Freak (talk) 21:16, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Are comprehend and comprehension from Old French?

The page on comprehend says no, and the page on comprehension says yes. If the etymologies are actually different, it seems like we should note that on both pages. McYeee (talk) 20:39, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

The -he- in the root was dropped early in Vulgar Latin, and French compréhension was reborrowed from Latin, so only the latter is from Old (or Middle) French. Wakuran (talk) 21:00, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

It is quite possible that comprehension (more pedantically, Middle English comprehensioun) was borrowed directly from Latin comprehēnsiō. The converse possibility of English comprehend/Middle English comprehenden being mediated through Gallo-Romance is unlikely, as while Old/Middle French comprehender exists as a learnedism, it is not particularly common. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 21:13, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

According to the Trésor, (Old) French comprendre (ca. 1200) is a learned word to begin with ("empr[unté] au lat[in] class[ique] compre(he)ndere") and does not become common before the 15th century. The fact that the form without -h- established itself in French is because it was adapted to the inherited verb prendre, which is a normal process in French (cf. satisfaire and suchlike). So what seems to be at hand is a learned borrowing partially mediated through Old French. That's also what the Middle English Dictionary suggests with its "L, & OF comprendre". Note, moreover, that the from comprenden, while comparatively rare, is attested several times in Middle English. For the etymology I would therefore suggest something like: "From ME comprehenden (14th c.), borrowed (in part through OF compre(he)ndre) from L comprehendo." ~2026-54467-59 (talk) 22:44, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

My analysis accounted for the fact that unlike e.g. the MED, Wiktionary currently treats modern English comprend / Middle English comprenden as a distinct words from comprehend and comprehenden respectively: there is no formal reason to posit Romanic mediation as long as that practice is maintained. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 23:53, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, if you're going for plausible deniability, then there's no "formal reason to posit Romanic mediation" in any case, because comprendo is a variant in Latin itself. However, I think we should look for what's likely. And unless you are suggesting that the English borrowed comprehenden from Latin in the 14th century and by chance borrowed comprenden simultaneously from Old French without there being any relation between both events, the whole group was still partially mediated through Old French - that language which was the primary contact language of English at the time, and in which said group had been borrowed a bit earlier and was now entering general usage. ~2026-54467-59 (talk) 01:50, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

I agreee that borrowing from Latin comprendō would be unlikely as it is much less common than comprehendō; for instance, the dMGH has 2368 results for comprehend*, but 98 results for comprend*. Another possibility would be loss of ⟨h⟩ within Middle English, as in kyndede, variant of kyndehede, but that also seems relatively improbable since ⟨h⟩ would be expected to be treated much more carefully in high-prestige Latinate vocabulary (cf. the lack of forms such as *apprenden and *reprenden for apprehenden and reprehenden, though these verbs are much less common than comprehenden).

Regardless, forms with ⟨h⟩ being much rarer in Old French (see the AND and DEAF) than those without, but comprehenden being conversely much more common than comprenden in ME from the get-go is evidence that seemingly militates toward comprehenden being loaned without Romance mediation. Aside from the possibility you mention of comprenden and comprehenden being independent borrowings, it is also conceivable that comprenden is a secondary alteration of comprehenden after the French. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 23:03, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Lombard acqua

(Notifying workgroup: Brutal Russian, Koavf, Nicodene, Benwing2): Our entry for the Lombard word acqua says that it is inherited from Latin aqua. However, our entries for Latin aqua and Italian acqua seem to not agree; our entry for Latin aqua shows only ègua, eigua, aigua as the Lombard words inherited from Latin aqua, and our entry for Italian acqua lists Lombard acqua as one of its descendants. How should this be sorted out? Intolerable situation (talk) 00:39, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, this word is obviously borrowed from Italian. Lombard is a Gallo-Italic language and all of them have lenition of intervocalic stops. Benwing2 (talk) 01:53, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Carolina

The ety said this was from Italian. Why would it be from Italian, and not Latin? (Was the given name from Italian, in contrast to the place name, which should perhaps be different ety sections?)
And what are the places in Brazil, Suriname, El Salvador and Argentina named after? - -sche (discuss) 03:31, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

cheh

I'm looking for the arabic word from which French cheh comes from. Every source I could find only says it comes from a Maghrebi Arabic (Morrocan Arabic is sometimes specified) word with the same meaning. I've looked through some Morrocan Arabic dictionaries but couldn't find anything that would fit. I wonder if شح could be the ultimate source but I can't really be sure of it. Kxilan (talk) 15:19, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

kismet

Can we be sure that this English word was borrowed from Ottoman Turkish? While it certainly LOOKS a lot like the Turkish form, I'm mostly familiar with this word from Rudyard Kipling, whose work had a lot of influence on (especially British) English - and the other quoted examples are all after Kipling. I would have thought this word would come from Urdu/Hindi. There is nothing very surprising or odd about the vowel getting changed from a to e in such a borrowing, see jaconet, jugger, kedgeree, kubber. Arafsymudwr (talk) 10:06, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

The term may have entered the English lexicon from multiple sources. The 1933 OED has a quotation using the spelling kismat, from 1849, and next one with the spelling kismet, from the novel Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.^[2] The novel was being published in serial form when Gaskell died, in 1865, the year Kipling was born. The term is used in the novel by one Mr. Preston, a land-agent estimated by another speaker to be about twenty-seven and unlikely to have a non-English background.

There is an 1877 novel with the title Kismet by African-American explorer George Fleming, a novelized account of a real voyage up the Nile, starting in Egypt, then part of the Ottoman Empire. It is certainly possible that Kipling read this book long before he returned to India and published any of his writings.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:51, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

English sling

Shouldn’t this entry be split into two etymology sections, one for the verb and another for the noun? — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 02:18, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Possibly. They're obviously from the same root, though. Wakuran (talk) 11:38, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

meskit, mosque

I don't think meskit is, as it currently claims, "Borrowed from Arabic مَسْجِد (masjid)". I don't think you get meskit from masjid without intermediate forms, like the ones mosque posits. In fact, this makes me notice that mosque itself needs an update: it says it's "From Middle French mosquée, from Italian moschea, ultimately from Arabic مَسْجِد (masjid)", omitting the Spanish step that Italian moschea mentions, Borrowed from Spanish mezquita, from Arabic مَسْجِد (masjid) — and Spanish mezquita looks like a possible source of meskit! — but Spanish mezquita says it's possibly not from Arabic masjid at all, which seems like something our English entry should also mention.
I only noticed meskit because it's one of two entries in Category:English variant lemmas (the other was edding), which I thought we weren't using for English... - -sche (discuss) 04:33, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

What's the citations for meskit? If it's from Spanish, shouldn't that require the citations to be from Southern American English? Wakuran (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Here is a use in a book published in 1626:

Laxmannas Iauan Slaues could not by any threats be detained from ioyning with them, and ſet all on fire as they went, ſo that the whole Town, except the Queenes Court, the Meskit, and ſome few houses , were burned. ([3], lines 54 ff.)

This event is set in Patane, which, as far as I could figure out, was at the time a kingdom, independent of Siam, located on the coast of what now is called the Gulf of Thailand, south of Mottama.

The alternative theory for the etymology of Spanish mezquita as a borrowing from Aramaic 𐡌𐡎𐡂𐡃𐡀 (msgdʾ /⁠masgəḏā⁠/, “place of worship”) circumvents the phonetically implausible derivation from Arabic.

For your entertainment, here is some finger pointing: Treccani writes that Italian moschea was borrowed from French mosquée,^[4] while Le Trésor has the direction of borrowing the other way around.^[5]  ​‑‑Lambiam 16:09, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

OK, I have expanded mosque and revised meskit. - -sche (discuss) 01:27, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

scantle

2 etymologies kinda look the same. Merge? Ety comes from Webster 1913 —User:Vealhurl (talk 21:10, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

• And we might need a new etymology section (+ pron?) for the verb form at scantling —User:Vealhurl (talk 21:12, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

[Senses given below between quote marks are not literal quotations but my condensations of sometimes lengthy definitions.]

The 1933 OED has two entries for scantle, one as a noun and one as a verb.^[6]. One sense for the noun is “A piece or portion of a small or prescribed size”, with a second (but historically primary?) meaning of “A gauge for a prescribed size” The noun is said to be perhaps from the verb, but note that this is a synonym of scantling.

The verb is labeled “obsolete”, with these senses: #1: “To give scant provision to, to fail to supply”; #2: “Make scant or small, to narrow the application of”; #3: “To narrow the application of”; #4: “To shorten (sail), to draw in (wings)”; #5: (for scantle out) “To parcel out”; and intransitively #6: “of wind, To become light”. The etymology of the obsolete verb is given as a diminutive of scant, except that #3 may be a backformation of scantling. The most recent quote using this verb is from 1749.

There are three entries for scantling: as a noun, as an adjective, and as a verb (not verb form). The noun’s etymology is given as [Etymologizing alteration of Scantillion, after -ling ¹. The development of some of the senses appears to have been influenced by assocoation with Scant&nbspa.]g (The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology has scantling < scantlon, not in the OED.) The adjective (meaning “very small” and verb (“rare, perhaps obsolete, To construct (a ship) of a certain scantling”) are said to be denominal.

The obsolete noun scantillon, aphetic from Old French escantillon (modern French échantillon), is defined as: #1: “A gauge”; #2: “A measured size”; #3: (uncertain) “A stick cut to record a measurement”; #4: “A strip serving as a specimen”. The latest quotation is from 1603.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:50, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

• Cooool. I merged the etymologies—User:Vealhurl (talk 12:14, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

English crucify

Most English words which end in -ify come from the Latin facio. However, "crucify" does not come from crux + facio (it comes from crux + figo). I think a note or explanation would be helpful here. (No other similar English words come to mind. But if there are others, maybe this should be added to the -ify page?) ~2026-57522-34 (talk) 13:16, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

If crucify is derived from crucifigō, the etymology-conform bracketing of crucify is cruci + fy and not crux + -ify, so a note at -ify is then less appropriate. Additionally, the same issue arises at Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish crucificar and French crucifier. But the story may be more complicated. We see the appearance in Late Latin of the synonym crucificō, first conjugation, as seen in the perfect passive participle crucificātus e.g. here:

Si non peccasset Adam, Deus fuisset incarnatus, sed non crucificatus.^[7]

The tendency exists to explain crucificō as a variant form of crucifigō. But it is IMO not implausible, what with this being first conjugation unlike figō’s third conjugation, that crucificatus here is a calque of the Koine Greek participle ἐσταυρωμένος (estaurōménos), used e.g. in 1 Cor 1:23, ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον,^[8] which drove Jerome’s bad neologism crucifigō to translate σταυρῶ (staurô) out of use in the Romance languages. If so, the English verb fits in the usual pattern of -fy verbs, although the noun crucifixion instead of *crucification remains exceptional.  ​‑‑Lambiam 16:36, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

forbade, bade

An IP edited these to say /beɪd/ is a "spelling pronunciation", but the spelling was formerly forbad, bad, matching the pronunciation /bæd/, before it changed to forbade, bade. So why did the spelling change, if not to match the pronunciation?
(The IP also demoted the most common pronunciations to last place, no good in a descriptive dictionary, which I will undo later and separate from the matter of the labels, if no-one beats me to it.)
- -sche (discuss) 01:27, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

How sure are we that the -bade spellings are later than the -bad spellings? Couldn't they have existed alongside each other before usage settled down on -bade? In particular, I'd expect the -bade forms to come from the Old English plural bǣdon as well as the past subjunctive bǣde(n). In the case of bade, avoiding homography with bad (“ungood”) may well have played a role. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:25, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Anyway, it seems as if you have entered an edit war. Wakuran (talk) 11:59, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Old English bǣdon/bǣde(n) cannot be the ancestor of bade as ǣ does not yield modern English ⟨a⟩ /eɪ/, except in the exceptional instance of lady where shortening was followed by open-syllable lengthening; it instead regularly becomes Middle English bede(n), which would become *bead /biːd/ (or *beed if from Anglian Old English bēdon/bēde(n)) if it wasn't supplanted by the reflex of the first-/third-person singular past indicative bæd. This develops without incident into ME bad /bad/, then into the modern pronunciation /bæd/.

But beginning in the late 14th century, class 4 and 5 verbs such as ME bidden develop variant first-/third-person singular past indicatives in /aː/ (compare e.g. ate, gave and obsolete sate (“sat”), spake); such a form /baːd/ is presumably the source of the spelling ⟨bade⟩ (with unetymological -e to indicate the pronunciation) which appears from the 15th century onwards. But since 18th- and 19th-century sources mostly give the pronunciation /bæd/ (but Meredith 1872 proscribes */beːd/),modern /beɪd/ might indeed be a recent spelling-pronunciation rather than a continuation of the ME /baːd/ the spelling originally represented. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 12:31, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

It's true that the pronunciation /bæd/ can't have come from bǣdon/bǣde(n), but the spelling could have. Compare busy and colonel, where the spelling and the pronunciation have different etymologies. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:00, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

That isn't possible, since modern English reflexes of Old English /æː/ are spelt ⟨e ea⟩, not ⟨a⟩ unless they were subjected to early shortening (like in wrath < OE wrǣþþu), which bǣdon/bǣde(n) wasn't subject to. And as I explained above, the spelling is perfectly in line with forms such as ate and gave so needs no special explanation. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 16:51, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

It seems like bad practice to list a spelling pronunciation first even if it's the most common (and especially bad practice not to label it as a spelling pronunciation), because it is an artificial construct created from reading the spelling and not a natural part of speech. Mostly because the spelling pronunciation itself was created by dictionaries (as a result of enforcing the spelling bade/forbade instead of bad/forbad), so this is equivalent to releasing a mutant gazelle into the savanna that outcompetes all of the native fauna and then saying "I'm just describing it." As for why the spelling exists, it was probably a misguided attempt to disambiguate from the adjective bad (although as other people have pointed out, it could've originally represented an obsolete pronunciation from Middle English). ~2026-54617-49 (talk) 14:33, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

It seems to be standard practice here to list the more phonetically predictable and popular pronunciations first, whether you want to call them ‘spelling pronunciations’ or not, such as in our entries for ‘ate’ and ‘year’ (though I’m a fan of saying ‘et’, ‘yur’, ‘bad’ and ‘forbad’, while spelling the last two as ‘bade’ and ‘forbade’). Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

/eɪt/ and /jɪɚ/ (side note, the vowel sounds more like an [i] to me) aren't spelling pronunciations, but /beɪd/ is. You can find old sources endorsing both of these pronunciations, but not "bayd" (that 1872 source someone else linked lists it as a pronunciation error, along with many other spelling pronunciations like "archipelago" with /t͡ʃ/). Walker (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-critical-pronouncing-d_walker-john_1791/page/n573/mode/2up) and Sheridan (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-complete-dictionary-of_sheridan-thomas_1790/page/n973/mode/2up) both list the form with the "ee vowel" as the sole pronunciation of year, while Sheridan also lists ate with the "long a" (but it seems like Walker preferred the "ett" pronunciation). ~2026-54617-49 (talk) 18:27, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

/eɪt/ for ate is absolutely a spelling pronunciation, it's just an older one. I don't know about year. We're not consistent about marking spelling pronunciations. We do indicate that /hɝb/ is one, but we don't mention that /ˈænθəni/ is one. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:34, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

I really doubt that educated people in the 1790s would use a spelling pronunciation for a basic verb form, (although the spelling possibly reinforced it in later times at the expense of ett), so it probably isn't one. ~2026-54617-49 (talk) 18:46, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

earliest attestation of 'Yankee'

The entry used to say it was "First attested in 1683" (and "in English it was a term of contempt (1750s)").
Then it was changed to say it was "First attested in 1765" citing the OED,
but the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster say it's attested in "a letter from 1758 by General James Wolfe [as] a term of contempt for the American colonial troops".
Dictionary.com says "1680–90".
Presumably, the 1758 date should be cited rather than the 1765 date(?), but does anyone know if there are earlier attestations? - -sche (discuss) 21:16, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Apparently the 1683 date is referring to the occurrence of Yankey/Yankee as a "surname or nickname" in papers from 1683, 1684, 1725 etc (connected to the theory that the word derives from Dutch Yanke). - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Adverbial Italian -oni/-one

(Notifying workgroup: Benwing2, GianWiki, Jberkel, Imetsia, Sartma, Catonif, Trimpulot, Emanuele6):

• bocconi
• ginocchioni/ginocchione, inginocchione (compare French à genouillons)
• carpone/carponi
• gattoni
• accavalcione/a cavalcioni
• tentoni/a tentoni
• tastoni (compare French à tâtons, which we say to be < tâtonner, though the Italian makes tâter > (à) tâtons > tâtonner more believable)
• ciondolone

see there for more

Compare French à reculons, à califourchon and others found above.

As evidenced by French, which has no such adverb whitout preceding à, I would guess these were all (if not sooner a productive suffix) adverbial noun phrases in a/in + noun in singular -one / plural -oni, later having undergone ellipsis. Note that Italian has profusely more adverbs ending like these than does French (at least looking at our data for Modern French).

Should I add a sense to -one? is this suffix still productive? its derivatives in general use? Saumache (talk) 16:55, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

underwrite

15th c., after Latin subscribere? JMGN (talk) 22:02, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Similar constructions in many other Germanic languages. It sounds likely. Wakuran (talk) 00:32, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

The etymology of German unterschreiben, unterschrieb, unterschrieben is given as a calque of Latin subscrībere. While the Latin verb, itself a calque of Ancient Greek ὑπογράφω (hupográphō), may well be an etymological ancestor of most (all?) senses of English underwrite, I’d hedge any direct ascription, since the verb is inherited from Old English.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:32, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Twofold etymology of her

As her in modern English arose by syncretism of genitive and dative hire in Old English, should English entry have one etymology section for determiner and pronoun form or two separate etymologies? Note that only etymology for dative is given now. Feondulf (talk) 11:45, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

We don’t give separate etymologies for the determiner and pronoun senses of Middle English hire, and the genitive/dative are unified in the sense given for Old English hire. so it would IMO be strange to separate the etymologies here.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:10, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

It has been the same form for centuries in several West Germanic languages, as far as I know; cf. Dutch haar with the same paradigm, and German ihr with similar. Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

By the way, it seems as if German ihr is a phonetic merger of two unrelated forms. Wakuran (talk) 13:52, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Numbered headers are for the purpose of separating content that is different. Would there be any content under one header that wouldn't be under the other? If they truly merged in an ancestor of the language, then there's no point. Considering that the paradigms for most Old English words merged into something far simpler in Middle and modern English, This could lead to massive duplication and opportunity for things to get out of synch. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:00, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

November 2026

Basque jo "play, hit"

We currently describe Basque joko (“game”) as coming from Latin iocus. is it possible that Basque jo is also derived from iocus? Trask's Basque dictionary lists alternate forms with /k/, though as with many other dictionaries I can't fully understand the abbreviations. I'm pasting in Trask's entry below. the formatting is a bit odd but those asterisks are correct.

jo (c.), xo (R) vt. ‘hit, strike, beat’ ******* **** joera (**), fuera (HN) n. ‘inclination’. **** joka (**), jokha (**) adv. ‘hitting’. ****  jokhatu (LN) [diathesis unrecorded] ‘copulate (with)’ (of a male) (M. 1977a: 583 says this verb is used specifically of birds). **** + -tu VFS.

Does my idea make sense? —Soap— 00:26, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

carry a torch for

Because of the torch as a symbol of unrequited love? JMGN (talk) 11:26, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Albanian zmadhoj

The etymology section says that it is from z + madh + oj. Could it be the prefix z- and the suffix -oj instead of z and oj? Intolerable situation (talk) 00:09, 2 November 2026 (UTC)