text:
шӏухьафтын

Noun

 * 1) present, gift

title: шӏухьафтын


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/January

yiddish זיידע etymology
Etymology given currently is of russian, weinreich gives slavic etymology but russian in particular is unlikely: polish and iirc czech cognate went to an affricate (/dzed'/ or some such, also yiddish did not extend that far east until much later, given ubiquity of zeyde it must be earlier (jacobs 2005). Shall I edit the page to reflect this? I'm unfamiliar with editing policies re: etymologies (copied from tea room, I don't know how to move to section)Telmac (talk) 19:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You may be right that it's not from Russian but there are plenty of Yiddish words of Russian or Ukrainian origin. See Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/dědъ, which may give a clue to a better origin. It may be Polish or Belarusian or Russian palatalised /dʲ/ may have been perceived as "z", I don't know. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Italic/som
The reconstruction som appears dubious in view of Latin esom attested on the Garigliano Bowl, which confirms Varro's esum, and the cognates in Sabellic. See here. (Personally, I'm partial to Schrijver's suggestion that subjunctive forms have intruded into the paradigm, especially considering the Celtic parallels. In this case, esom and perhaps also sumus and sunt, if they are likewise from *esumus and *esunt, would find their natural explanations in the subjunctive with secondary endings, while the subjunctive with primary endings yielded the future.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * And yet, is attested in Old Latin. Analogy could have easily worked in the other direction, too. And I think you're confusing the subjunctive and the optative. Etymologically, the subjunctive continues the PIE optative and had secondary athematic endings only. The PIE subjunctive became the future in Latin, and had thematic primary endings. —CodeCat 23:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * is the predecessor of sum, of course, and assumed to have arisen per aphaeresis from esom. This is now essentially consensus, see the Fortson snippet I linked.
 * As for the PIE subjunctive, it is attested with both primary and secondary endings, for example in Vedic, and there is no reason why this state of affairs could not be projected back to PIE. (There may have been a semantic difference, but it is unclear from the attestations.) But this is not relevant for my point that the reconstruction som for Proto-Italic is dubious. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Your link just led to a blank page. Anyway, you can move the entry if you want. —CodeCat 00:30, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * had zero grade in the plural, though, so and  probably always had initial s-. Perhaps they are what influenced sum (*h₁esmi would normally have given *em in Latin), just as the singular apparently influenced estis. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:36, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
 * CodeCat: The Google Books link works for me. Weird. As for the subjunctive endings, see also García Ramón (sorry, German only), who suggests that primary endings are usual in the 2nd person singular (since the addressed person is present) as opposed to secondary endings in the 3rd person singular (no hic and nunc deixis, no imperative value). This article by Beekes on the same subject is unfortunately not available online. There's something strange, though: even Umbrian esu does not show rhotacism. Normally you'd expect *eru. Perhaps esu was influenced by an aphetic form *’su as in Latin.
 * Angr: Good point about *em, but: The phonologically regular reflexes would actually be (stressed vs. clitic forms) *em ~ *’m, es ~ ’s, est ~ ’st, *mos ~ *mus, *stes ~ *stis, *sent (compare Oscan sent) ~ *sent, so I don't think you can explain the attested forms this straightforwardly. The most attractive explanation of estis is that *stis was taken as an aphetic form (analogous to est ~ ’st) and a new stressed form estis was built on its basis. On the other hand, the subjunctive forms with secondary endings would yield *erum ~ ’sum, *eris ~ *’sis, *erid ~ *’sid (compare SAKROS ESED from the Forum inscription, with a secondary ending, compatible with García Ramón's suggestion!), *erumus ~ *’sumus, *eritis ~ *’sitis, *erund ~ *’sund (keep in mind that the -d vs. -t contrast in verbal endings was eventually levelled out in favour of -t, but not on a phonetic basis), and voilà, you find all the remaining forms directly: sum, sumus and sunt. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:34, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

-tas and -tus
Both of these suffixes form abstract nouns. Is there an etymological connection between them? —CodeCat 19:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been curious about that. I had wanted to create a PIE page for and was curious whether it should be connected to . —JohnC5 (Talk 19:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

teixobactin
I believe the etymology is from - can anyone find a definitive source? DTLHS (talk) 05:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

sparkle
I think this probably came from the diminutive of spark, which was then used as a verb. There is a very strong similarity with the German word Funke, which in the form of Funkel developed the verb of funkeln (there is also a Fünkel and fünkeln). I'm not sure though, and it might be something else. Is there any evidence that an -le would be added onto a verb to make an other verb in the way it appears in the etymology section for sparkle currently? Is this supposed to be a frequentative? 72.160.198.200 06:28, 9 January 2015 (UTC) Middle English, frequentative of , to spark. See spark.
 * I've got an older copy (copyright 1992) of Houghton Mifflin's American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. This lists the etym as (EN WT links added by me):
 * Does this suffice as a source? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 02:01, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I split the entry to show the etymology of the words which coalesced in Modern English as . Leasnam (talk) 17:17, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Chancery
The etymology given, "French chancellerie, from Late Latin cancellaria, from Latin cancellarius, from cancellus (“lattice”) (English chancel), from cancelli (“grating, bars”) (from which cancel (“cross out (with lines, as in a latticework)”)), from the lattice-work that separated a section of a church or court.[1][2]" makes sense, but I wonder why a chancery would be named after this. Or is it meant to mean crossed out as in the frame-ruled paper copyists may have used. Any experts in the area able to shed light on this? Muleiolenimi (talk) 02:02, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

diet
I think we have a problem here. The "food and beverage" and "council; assembly" senses have completely different etymologies according to my Oxford, but our entry as it stands does not state this. ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:36, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The Finnish -inen suffix
I've always been puzzled by the inflection of this suffix and other words declining like it, which has -nen in the nominative singular but -s(e)- in the remaining cases. I wonder how something like that could originate. Northern Sami has, which is similar to Finnish (<  + ), but it could have been loaned from Finnic rather than inherited. However, the Sami suffix has -žž- as the strong-grade consonant, which, if it's not borrowed, would have to represent something like Proto-Samic (with N being some kind of nasal). It's conceivable that this cluster is somehow also ancestral to the Finnic form, but I have no idea and I could be totally wrong. —CodeCat 21:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * To this day no one knows for sure why the nominative is suppletive. All the oblique case forms of -inen with -ise- are however thought to come from, yes, an adjectival suffix *-ńćV, which is also the source of e.g. Finnish and Northern Sami plain  (: -žža-). The longer form  is essentially a half-calque: la + inen → la + š. --Tropylium (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. Are there any uses of this suffix outside Finnic and Samic?
 * The only mention of more distant cognates I've seen in sources is that some exist, but I don't know which ones this would be exactly. I checked a couple handbooks I have around and at least Mordvinic, Permic and Hungarian do not seem to have any widespread adjectival suffixes that would seem to descend from this. (Which is not to say that cognates could not exist in fossilized form, or in other meaning.)
 * Also, what can be said about ; is it from the root of like the etymology currently says? A combination of verb + -inen is kind of unusual, it's normally attached to nouns as far as I know. —CodeCat 01:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The stem for 'woman' is naa-, cf. . Evidently the verb, then, is derived using the frequentative . --Tropylium (talk) 05:48, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

pizda,
Is there relation between the words? And what's origin of 🇨🇬 (Derksen:431)? — Игорь Телкачь 23:47, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The PIE word is more usually listed in its e-grade . I don't know if its anterior etymology is known, but it's presumably related to of the same meaning; perhaps one was originally a euphemism for the other. I don't know if or how  is related; it seems somewhat unlikely both phonologically and semantically. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 00:25, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

forecastle
RFV of the etymology.

That etymology seems doubtful to me. Is this not "fore-" + "castle" as aftcastle is "aft-" + "castle"?

I don't know much of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, but did they borrow the "fore-" prefix or did they use some variant of "front" or something that looks like it? Tharthan (talk) 19:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a calque claim that was not quite written out in full detail. --Tropylium (talk) 00:06, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * But then what is it calqued from? —CodeCat 00:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * …Nevermind, at the time of that comment the etymology claimed derivation from Anglo-Norman. --Tropylium (talk) 22:05, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, "castle" certainly is a Norman word. But it's telling that Dutch has a word with the exact same components: . —CodeCat 22:09, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Castle existed in Old English as well, if I do recall correctly. I am almost certain that some form of the word was attested in it at some point or another. Tharthan (talk) 21:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I think they may have been trying to adapt etymonline, which has:
 * c.1400 (mid-14c. as Anglo-French forechasteil), "short raised deck in the fore part of the ship used in warfare," from Middle English fore- "before" + Anglo-French castel "fortified tower" (see castle (n.)).
 * This version doesn't try to say it came from Anglo-French, just that it was first attested in that language, but someone looking at the relative dates would be tempted to assume that the earlier attestation must mean it was the origin. The choice of fore rather than a French equivalent suggests to me that it probably originated as English, with technical vocabulary taken from French. I'm sure there was a lot of code switching, with the same people talking about the same things in different languages as the circumstances required, and I would guess that such people would be more likely to be writing in French than English. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

moola
Can anyone shed more light on the origin of this term? (Can anyone identify the supposed Pali etymon?) - -sche (discuss) 00:05, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Dunno about Pāli, but Sanskrit has mūla 'capital'. --Tropylium (talk) 17:11, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. I've amended the etym at  from Pali to Sanskrit accordingly.  So far, this seems like the most likely.
 * FWIW, I think I might have some Pali materials around the place somewhere. I'll poke around my bookshelves and see what I can find.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Pali has it too; see at the bottom of the page (sense 6). Nevertheless I find it kind of difficult to believe that a Sanskrit/Pali word is the source of this 1920s American slang word. I bet it's something more prosaic like mo- from  plus sense 3 of . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:08, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the Pali link. Re: source, I'll grant you that either Sanskrit or Pali seem too antique to be likely as the immediate ancestor of the English.  Ultimate ancestor, sure, but something more recent would be needed as the vector.  That said, mo- +  would be odd in that both have, while  has .  Given that this term likely arose in a purely verbalized context and not in writing, I'd expect  +  to become .   arising only makes sense to me if the term were coined in writing as ⟨mo⟩ + ⟨ola⟩.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:28, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Given what's currently listed at moola, and the known histories, it seems most likely that the English arose from the Romani, which in turn derived from the Sanskrit. Does that seem reasonable?  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

my word
In the last days of the month and with the danger of being forgotten in the next month's Tea room chat, the ety of my word says it's from an oath but not references. I would understand it's an euphemism for My Lord, but as it seems their  (of word and lord) are pronounced in a different way. Could it be? Anyway, a reference for ety?. Sobreira (talk) 11:06, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't have a source for the etymology, but I can confirm that and  are pronounced differently. The two words do not rhyme. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:40, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Chambers agrees that the older form was upon my word, and one's word can be an oath or promise (e.g. giving one's word that one will repay money). Equinox ◑ 13:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, so it's not a minced oath. It's sort of like "I say!", or "I swear..." in a sense. That's good to hear. We should probably update the etymology at my word, then. Tharthan (talk) 14:14, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * my word already says "From upon my word, an oath", and has done for years. I think it's correct to call "upon my word" an oath, even if it's not explicitly religious in nature - like "on my life" or "on my mother's grave", it's pledge of honesty that uses something dear to the speaker as a token. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks to y'all! Sobreira (talk) 10:26, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Kurdish qaz and the like
How exactly can qaz and its counterparts in other Iranian languages (Persian, Pashto, Ossetic) descend from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰans-? Especially in view of the regular, expected Avestan reflex zā (which matches Indo-Aryan perfectly), this doesn't make any sense. The explanation as a Turkic loanword is the obvious alternative. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:27, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You are right, of course. Those are Turkic borrowings. I have made Reconstruction:Proto-Turkic/Kāŕ with references. --Vahag (talk) 18:51, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

overlip
Out entry says overlip ("upper lip") derives from 🇨🇬, but that's a verb meaning "outlive". I think the old, non-specialist reference (Webster) which claims oferlibban as the etymon of overlip is simply in error. (It might even be a dord-style error, where the etymology was meant to go with the entry overlive, where it would have been correct.) The Old English words for lip were lippe/lippa, but oferlippe doesn't seem to have existed, so I'd like to just replace the etymology with something equivalent to what underlip has, mutatis mutandis. - -sche (discuss) 04:29, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:27, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I also can find no attestation for Old English /, nor for any declined forms; only Middle English, which I have added to the entry. Certainly, as an origin for this word is completely wrong. Leasnam (talk) 01:26, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/February

copypasta
The current page states "Blend of 'copy and paste' and 'pasta'" but I doubt that food has any part in this; perhaps "pasta" is a humorous corruption of "paste"? —umbreon 126 06:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes it is certainly a humorous corruption of of paste to create pasta. I personally have heard this used in the extended form of copypasta, marinade imply that one should copy, paste, and then alter slightly to make the copied material fit the goal. But you are exactly right that it was an intentional corruption towards pasta. — JohnC5 03:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The two aren't mutually exclusive: a blend can be a "humorous corruption", too. It looks to me, though, that the actual source is copypaste, not "copy and paste", so I would change it to "humorous blend of copypaste and pasta".

fíll
How is it possible for the Old Norse fíll to have been borrowed from the Turkish fil. Firstly, the geographic barrier seems rather large, and secondly the time period seems off. Are there any possible intermediaries, or perhaps is the Old Norse term from another source? DerekWinters (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The geographic barrier isn't that large when you realize that the were Norsemen who lived in Constantinople. Granted, they lived there while Constantinople was still Greek-speaking, but Turkish and Arabic speakers weren't that far away. Besides, where else would Norse get a word for 'elephant' from? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * This certainly would be in line with the w:Volga trade route theory of Norse trade with Muslim countries. Out of curiosity, what is the source and date of the word fíll? — JohnC5 23:32, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It's mentioned in the Heimskringla, apparently. I'll try and look up the quote shortly. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 23:39, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * As per usual, we are left to wonder how Snorri Sturluson knew everything that he did. — JohnC5 23:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Cleasby/Vigfusson says:
 * FÍLL, m. [early Swed. and Dan. fil], an elephant; this interesting word, which is still in exclusive use in Icel., was borrowed from the Persian fil, and came to Scandinavia in early times, probably by the eastern road of trade through Russia and Constantinople; it occurs in a verse of the 10th century (Fb. i. 209), the genuineness of which may be doubtful, but at all events the word is old; freq. in Al., Stj., Flóv., and romances. But úlfaldi, Goth. ulbandus, A. S. olfend or olvend, a corruption of the Gr. GREEK, means camel. COMPDS: fíls-bein or fíla-bein, n. ivory, Al., Edda (pref.), Str. fíls-tönn, f. ivory, Mar.
 * No mention of Turkish, but directly from Persian. Most other references I've seen say similar. The reference to Heimskringla looks to be in the Prologue, "Svá var hann fagr álitum er hann kom með ǫðrum mǫnnum sem flá er fíls bein er grafit í eik", where "fíls bein" is "elephant's bone" = "ivory". --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 01:05, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * What I would question is not so much the source, but whether the language we call "Turkish" existed that far back. —CodeCat 23:48, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It could have been Ottoman Turkish . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:13, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Except the Sturluson reference to "fíls bein" is from before the Ottoman empire existed. Seljuk is a possibility, though. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 01:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I suspect the Norse word actually comes from Arabic, without the intervention of any form of Turkish. That's what 𒄠𒋛 says, too. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:14, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

*grysti or *gryzti
How come that we have grysti instead of *gryzti ?

If this is assmilated then shoud all words suffixed with *orz-, *jьz-, *vъz- be assimilated as well ?

As a mather of fact should all words lacking ь or ъ be completely assimilated ? 78.1.247.2 23:54, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

аз
User:Kreuzkümmel and I have been having a merry little edit war over his changing the Bulgarian etymology from: to:
 * From 🇨🇬, from 🇨🇬, from 🇨🇬.
 * From ancient Thracian "asn" - 'I, me', from 🇨🇬,. See also Lithuanian aš - 'I, me'.

With the claim that his is the only sourced etymology, and that any attempt to remove it is vandalism. To save you the trouble, the link (which I've nowikied so there won't be a ref-noref problem) goes to a page that is no longer there. I checked at the Wayback Machine, and it's simply a Thracian dictionary which has an entry for: "asn - 'I, me', [IE *eg'hom, Lit. aš 'I, me']. "

Given that that the first has a rather plausible nearly-unbroken chain from a source that had a great deal of well-known inflence on Bulgarian, even if it's not, as many claim, a direct ancestor, through Proto-Slavic to Proto-Indo-European, and the second has a thousand-year-plus gap, has some unexplained differences, and is second-hand from an Ancient Greek word list for an extremely poorly-documented language, I'm tempted to block him for repeatedly adding nonsense and trying to intimidate others by accusing them of vandalism, but I thought I would get an opinion from people with more knowledge and better sources than I have, just to be on the safe side. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Mate Kapović's Reconstruction of Balto-Slavic Personal Pronouns (2006) lists Bulgarian and Slovene as among the languages which have retained z in their descendants of Proto-Slavic *(j)azъ (Polish is among those which dropped the z). In other words, one could cite it as a <ref> for the fact that Bulgarian аз descended from Proto-Slavic *(j)azъ. Ivan and Vahag probably have access to even more informative references, but there's a start. - -sche (discuss) 05:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Given diff: can either of you elaborate on the etymology of this Bulgarian word? I trust you have access to better Slavic resources than I do. Is there in fact, as Kreuzkümmel asserts, a Thracian connection, or is the word simply (as seems more plausible) inherited from Proto-Slavic? - -sche (discuss) 15:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

 * It is inherited from Proto-Slavic. I have added the standard sources. --Vahag (talk) 15:59, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Arawak reconstructions
Hi, I'm working on adding reconstructions of Proto-Arawak and in the main body of work I'm citing, the phonemes [ts], [tʃ] and [ʃ] are represented by /c̷/ (note the combining short solidus overlay), /č/ and /š/, which is what I'm using in the entries I've created thus far, ex. . I'm wondering though if I should use /ts/, /ch/ and /sh/ instead, which is easier to understand and more in-line with their descendants. --Victar (talk) 04:05, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's anything wrong with using the symbols the sources use, especially if those are what readers familiar with Arawak historical linguistics will be expecting. I would use /¢/ instead of /c̷/ (which has display issues), though. You could also use plain, unadorned /c/ if that symbol doesn't already mean something else. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:18, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I think most linguists dealing with Proto-Arawak are more familiar with standard IPA, as that's what's used in all other papers on the subject, i.e. Aikhenvald, at least as far as I can tell. So Payne's work is something of an anomaly using /c̷/, /č/ and /š/. --Victar (talk) 18:25, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * If most scholars use /ts tʃ ʃ/ rather than /¢ č š/, then I'd we should too. Ideally we shouldn't be using just one source anyway. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:30, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I just found ȼ, which (if you do use those symbols) is a better choice than either ¢ or c̷. I just moved the entries for "tooth" and "horn" to and . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:19, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, that character is much better. I'm going to look more through the sources to get a good consensus. Thanks. --Victar (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

nectarine
I'm surprised we lack the etymology for this common word. Can anyone help? ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:13, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Online Etymology says: type of peach with smooth skin, 1660s, noun use of adjective meaning "of or like nectar" (1610s; see nectar + -ine (1)). Probably inspired by German Nektarpfirsich "nectar-peach." Earlier in English as nectrine. —Stephen (Talk) 21:06, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

 * American Heritage (dead tree) and Merriam Webster (entry here) both list the noun as deriving from the adjective, which both dictionaries also describe as obsolete. MW lists a first use of 1611.
 * Would anyone object to the addition of to the adjective sense?  Or does anyone have a citation of recent usage?  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:10, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

orisha: Chinese????
The etymology of orisha is given as
 * From 🇨🇬, literally ‘owner of chis’.

The wikilink on "chis" is to English etymology 2:
 * From former romanizations of 🇨🇬 🇨🇬, from 🇨🇬, from 🇨🇬

This seems extremely unlikely, to say the least. I don't believe it for a minute. To discuss, please ping me. --Thnidu (talk) 07:03, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The etymology isn't saying the term came from Chinese, it's using a Chinese-derived English term to try to explain an African concept. Still, linking to "Etymology 2" is a really bad idea, and using a single word to describe something that has no real parallels in western culture is even worse. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:44, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a sense of in Igbo religion that we are lacking, and perhaps this is what it is referring to. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:47, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Except that this is Yoruba, not Igbo, and the term in question seems to be Ase (Yoruba). Besides, the etymology links specifically to "Etymology 2", which is the same sense of chi as it was at the time the link was added. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Origin of half
has added information to and its Germanic cognates claiming that Proto-Germanic  is a loanword from Proto-Finnic, sourced to this Finnish-language web page. I can't read Finnish; so my questions are (1) does that web page really say the Germanic word comes from Finnic, and (2) if so, is that web page likely to be reflecting scholarly consensus? Pinging User:Hekaheka in particular, but also anyone who can read Finnish and knows something about historical linguistics. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:51, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's what it says. The article is published in the Finnish monthly magazine "Tiede" (Science), the writers to which are researchers and scientists. I would consider it a reliable source. The article is based on a doctor's thesis recently approved in the University of Copenhagen. The writer of the thesis is Adam Hyllested, and the title of his book is "Word Exchange at the Gates of Europe – Five Millennia of Language Contact". It's too new to appear in BGC. According to the article Hyllested claims that the relationship between Uralic languages and Indo-European languages is not as unidirectional as has been believed. He basically says that as the vast majority of linguistic research in Europe is carried out by researchers who speak Indo-European languages (which outnumber Finnic-background researches by about 100 to 1), they have the tendency to explain any common vocabulary in Uralic languages as Indo-European loans. Hyllested (who is a Dane, not Finn) says he has good reasons to believe that words have been transferred to both directions, from Uralic especially to Slavic and Germanic languages. "Half", according to him, is but one of the many Uralic words that have been assimilated into Germanic vocabulary. His theory is a new one and does thus obviously not represent scholarly consensus. --Hekaheka (talk) 23:45, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The abstract of the thesis is in the web, and I copy it here. What I wrote above is based on the article in "Tiede". The writers of that article have most likely read the entire thesis, which explains any differences:
 * Abstract
 * The Indo-European and Uralic (Fenno-Ugric) languages dominate present-day Europe, but both families are newcomers which replaced most of the indigenous languages step by step from the Bronze Age onwards. The encounter between indigenous and intrusive cultures, however, was most certainly not the only interaction that took place. By the time of arrival in Europe, the Indo-European and Uralic populations had already broken up and constituted a patchwork of languages and cultures that continued the process of convergence and interchange. Whether contacts were connected to trade, war, social interaction, or exchange of inventions is revealed by the character of the loanwords in each individual case – while the shape of the loanwords expose the time depth and the direction of borrowing.
 * Traditionally, scholars have thought that basically all loanwords between Indo-European and Uralic languages went in one direction – from the former to the latter. Such an asymmetry is supposed to reflect a past relationship between two peoples where one had the upper hand, technically and politically, at the time of borrowing.
 * In this dissertation it is shown that cultures of the Northeast played a surprisingly important role in the shaping of our continent from prehistoric to medieval times; and it is shown how these circumstances are reflected even in the vocabularies of modern European languages.
 * The Indo-European tribes, shortly after their migrations into Europe, came to form part of new cultural communities, influenced by Uralic populations from the North. This had a significant impact on specific parts of the vocabulary, notably terms for religion and warfare. Many trade terms (such as Danish pung ‘purse’), and words for tools (e.g. hammer) and religious concepts (e.g. hell) originate from Fenno-Ugric and other languages spoken in North-eastern Europe at the time. Even our word half can be shown to derive from an old Fennic trading term meaning ‘reduced, cheap (of prices)’.
 * Some terms denote animals hunted for their pelt (e.g. mink) and were exchanged in connection to centuries of fur trade along the Baltic coasts from the Roman Ages to the Hanseatic period. Other words for animals, among them quite a few used for pigs and boars, are, quite astonishingly, much older loans going back the pitted-ware culture around 3000 BC. Some loanwords show, for the first time, that (Proto-)Celts and Fennic peoples must have been in direct contact with each other.

The entire thesis may be downloaded here --Hekaheka (talk) 00:23, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There are a few problems with the suggestion. First there's the meaning. Finnish means "cheap", while its Estonian cognate  means "bad", which corresponds reasonably enough (cheap = bad quality). It's not clear how that meaning corresponds to the Germanic meaning, which is unambiguously "half" in all attested languages right back to Gothic, which split off from Proto-Germanic first. This last point shows that it's clearly of Proto-Germanic date, which means that if it was borrowed, it could have been borrowed no later than about the last few centuries BCE, which is the time that the Goths split off from the larger Germanic continuum.
 * This presents a possible second problem. The Finnic phoneme *h originates from an earlier sibilant *š, and the change *š > *h is known to have occurred relatively late in the Proto-Finnic period, perhaps only by the time it started to break up into dialects (although it spread to all of them). This implies that if was borrowed, it must have been borrowed in the dialectal Proto-Finnic stage at the earliest, so there is both a lower bound and an upper bound in time. I'm not sure if the split of Finnic happened before that of Germanic, though. If Germanic split up first, then the dating can never be made to add up.
 * Most Germanic loans into Finnic are borrowed with Finnic *h in place of Germanic *h, and *s in place of *z, meaning that the *š > *h change had already taken place, and the borrowing thus took place in the later part of Proto-Finnic. But there is one case I found on Wiktionary where a Finnic *h possibly derives from Germanic *z: . If that's true, then that word must have been borrowed before the *š > *h change (*z was borrowed as *š, which shifted to *h only later). But the word was also borrowed with aa replacing a Germanic ē, which is not easily explained; ää or ee would be much more likely. However, Old Norse and West Germanic both underwent a change of ē > ā, so it's very likely that was borrowed after this change and thus after Proto-Germanic broke up. Yet it also shows that at this same time, Finnic still had an *š phoneme that was similar enough to the early Norse *z to replace it (that is, it was still a sibilant). So we now have a contradiction:  must have been borrowed after Proto-Germanic broke up but before Proto-Finnic broke up, but  must have been borrowed after Proto-Finnic broke up but before Proto-Germanic broke up!
 * It's also interesting that Finnish itself borrowed from Slavic at a relatively late date (after about 600 is my estimate, as it shows the a > o change of Slavic). Cognates of this form are found throughout Finnic as well. I don't know what word, if any, Finnic used for "half" before this borrowing.
 * Can you add anything to this? —CodeCat 00:33, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There's by now a fair-sized body of Finnic words known where Germanic *s or *z was first substituted as *š, which then developed to *h. Some other examples include ← *sākja- >,  ← ,  ← . However  is not one of these: it comes from Proto-Finnic  and not **vaateh < **vaateš, and its ending must have been added on the Finnic side. So it tells us nothing about the dating of *š > *h.
 * A couple other words exist though that suggest the same chronology: *ē > *ā in Northwest Germanic (and hence the splitting of Germanic) being earlier than the splitting of Proto-Finnic. So yes, the etymology requires that would have to have been transmitted to early Gothic and West Germanic from Proto-Scandinavian. This is certainly possible in principle: whenever a new loanword happens that has a suitable shape, it can end up adopted in all languages of a group so that it looks like an inherited word. Nominally it's possible to reconstruct e.g. Proto-Finnic, even though Christianity reached Northern Europe something like 500 years after the initial splitting of Proto-Finnic into dialects.
 * (As for puoli though, per the most recent research isn't from Slavic; it regularly continues Proto-Uralic . If anything, the Slavic word, which last I checked lacks a credible IE origin, looks like a loan from earlier Finnic *palə.)
 * I would hold the idea that Finnic is in turn from Germanic  more probable than Uralic inheritance, but that does not directly affect the explanation. --Tropylium (talk) 02:07, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * So what shall we do with the recent edits? We certainly shouldn't just baldly state that *halbaz is a Finnic loanword without some sort of disclaimer that that's just one person's suggestion, but should we mention it at all? The diss is new enough that it hasn't really had time for other linguists to respond to it yet, but if the association between *halbaz and halpa has both semantic and chronological difficulties that even we amateurs notice, it seems unlikely ever to become consensus. (Which is not to say that other Uralic-to-Germanic loanwords proposed in the diss won't be accepted, just not this one.) So should we annotate the recent edits to indicate that this is a minority view, or should we just remove them? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:10, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hyllested explains his reasoning for the connection between halpa and "half" in pp. 103 to 105 of his dissertation. He discusses the problems he finds in the assumption that halpa would come from Germanic and goes as far as to state that "Balto-Fennic *halba- cannot be a loan from Germanic as it is cognate with Mari (Cheremis) Nw W šul-δ􏰌, E Ki U šul-δo ‘cheap’ (cf. UEW 782)10 and thus come from a Fenno-Volgaic *šal". Anyone interested may check his reasoning by following the link above. As we most likely cannot learn the truth by arguing between ourselves, I suggest we mention the Finnic-Germanic route, not as the final truth but as one reasonably justified possibility. --Hekaheka (talk) 09:39, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added the Finnic theory to Appendix:Proto-Germanic/halbaz, but I've removed it from the etymologies of the modern languages' words. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:36, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's reasonable. - -sche (discuss) 00:03, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Only indicating etymologies in mainspace as far as they are not especially disputed sounds like a good idea. This could make a decent policy, even. --Tropylium (talk) 21:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Boycott (and "boycott")
I've seen a claim that this placename comes from Old English *Bōiacot (Bōia's Cottage). Is this true? Tharthan (talk) 01:05, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * BUMP. Tharthan (talk) 03:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Domesday has it as "Boicote". The standard etymology copypasta'ed all over the internet says 'either "boy's cottage" or "Boia's cottage".' I think the latter is more likely. Old English bōia is a hypothetical step in the etymology of boy, linking the Germanic root with the attested Middle English, but it's not attested in the Old English corpus as far as I know, and it's not in Bosworth-Toller. The given name Boia, however, is far better attested.
 * TL;DR: I can't be certain, but Boycott < Middle English Boicote < Old English *Boiacot ("Boia's cottage") looks plausible.
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 03:55, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Not to discredit the form *Bōiacot, as this very likely may have existed in late Old English, especially as a colloquial variant, but I believe a formal rendering would be along the lines of *Bōiancot ("Boia's cottage") since the name would decline in a similar way with other n-stem nouns Leasnam (talk) 05:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Rock
In the sense of "to be cool", does it come from the music genre, or is it a modification of "to rule", which has the same sense as a meaning? Tharthan (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * BUMP. Tharthan (talk) 17:19, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

 * It appears to come from jazz in the 30's (e.g. "The rest of the band was, as they say, really rockin'."). Though when someone (or something) rocks, that sense may have only appeared in the late 60s, and would likely be influenced by rock and roll, which took the term from jazz. Pengo (talk) 07:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

mfalme
I reckon I should know this one, but I don't... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin "barra"
Do we have any reason to believe that this is not ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰAr-? Tharthan (talk) 19:13, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic *krabъ?
I can't find source that can prove existence of this word in Proto-Slavic. Vasmer says Russian is borrowing Dutch or German, in addition Černyx says  is known since the end of the 18th century. — Игорь Телкачь 09:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

grouse: back formation?
The several dictionaries I've consulted give "origin uncertain" as the etymology for grouse (the bird). However, I remember a linguistics professor explaining that it was a back formation. He said it came into English as "grice", a singular noun, meaning a gray bird, from French gris (gray). Then it was presumed to be plural, on the analogy of mice/mouse and lice/louse, and the false singular "grouse" was formed. Comments? Jane Elderfield (talk) 22:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)Jane Elderfield
 * That certainly seems plausible. Are there any sources you can find to back that up? Leasnam (talk) 03:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

pan
Is pan in the sense of "face" from the same etymology as the normal word "pan". If so, is the evolution similar to that of mug? Tharthan (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe that it is the selfsame word, yes. But I am more familiar with its use meaning "skull" (cf. ). In Danish, the cognate also means "forehead" in addition to "pan". Leasnam (talk) 02:36, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. Thank you for the confirmation. I was unaware that it there were parallel semantic evolutions in other Germanic languages. Very interesting. Tharthan (talk) 04:35, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Finnic/jää and Appendix:Proto-Finnic/jäädäk
The first means "ice" while the second means "to stay, to remain". It's conceivable that these two meanings are related, via the meaning "to be frozen in place". Is there any merit to this, or is it just a coincidence? —CodeCat 15:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It's conceivable of course, but the morphology doesn't really match up, we'd expect a zero-derivation to simply mean something like "to be icy". Contrast.
 * I've seen two proposed etymologies for the verb: loaning from Indo-Iranian (the 'go' root, Sanskrit ); or affiliation with an Ugric root for "to come" (Hungarian ). --Tropylium (talk) 21:14, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Polish istnieć "to exist"
What is origin of this word? I can't find etymology. It resembles Latin existo, Slavic (there is dial. Polish ). — Игорь Телкачь 23:30, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

 * The term is archaic (see scan).
 * From (see scan at PWN "istnie przestarz, przysłów od istny").
 * from (see scan at Google Books "istny jest pochodnikiem z isty"),
 * Looking at usage of isty in Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku v.9 pp. 11–13, I would guess that isty comes from a germanic ist or from Polish jest / być, but I will not research that. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 19:08, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

-aula epithets
So on the word amydraula is on the topic of WT:WE, and I have been trying figure out its etymology. The term comes from Meyrick (1916b) Exotic Microlepidoptera II, which pertains to moths. I can figure out the first element of the word, but the second element is mysterious to me. It does appear in these other taxa from Meyrick: Could it be from, and if so, why and can we find a corroborating source? If not, where did Meyrick get it? —JohnC5 06:38, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Metharmostis asaphaula
 * Asyndetaula
 * Empedaula
 * Homadaula (? or ?)
 * Gelechia horiaula
 * Hyladaula (?)
 * Scythris pelinaula
 * Thiotricha polyaula
 * Erechthias psammaula
 * Zaphanaula hemileuca (?)

 * There's also the very real possibility that it doesn't have a direct classical origin at all. Microlepidoptera are a rather specialized niche of entomology, so there are a small number of truly prolific contributors with their own idiosyncratic naming conventions that others borrow. Here is a list of all the lepidopteran names that contain "aula". Ignoring the other Greek-based morphemes such as aulax/aulac-, this seems to be always an ending. Meyrick seems to be the first to use the suffix, and is the source of the vast majority of the names in the list. My hunch is that it's a variant of the feminine of the diminutive suffix -ulus, with the initial a perhaps being the first-declension ending -a. That is, of course, only a hunch, and I haven't found anything to support it yet. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:38, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

 * Perhaps these moths are named for their haunts. There's a Latin, which derives from the Ancient Greek . LSJ states that αὐλή has the sense "any dwelling, abode, [or] chamber", whereas L&S records used to refer to "the cell of the queen-bee" and the OLD’s entry for the word has, for sense 3.c, "poet., of the abodes of animals". So, does that seem plausible? Are the moths that bear the epithet often found in faint or dim environments? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:07, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

 * This seems like enough information, at the very least for a "probably from" etymology. Someone going to make an entry? Pengo (talk) 07:06, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

 * Pinging JohnC5 and Chuck Entz… — I.S.M.E.T.A. 10:21, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

 * How about ? Are the caterpillars tent-dwelling? DCDuring TALK 13:41, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

 * That was a joke, right? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 16:01, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

 * See tent caterpillar. It was just a shot in the dark, building on . DCDuring TALK 16:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

 * I'm glad I asked; I had no idea. Those are beautiful. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/March

singleton
This has "Sense 1 is from Old French (see ciclatoun)." Fair enough, but I'd like to know what the Old French derivation actually is, and I can't see how ciclatoun is at all linked (we have it as coming direct from Persian, not Old French). This, that and the other (talk) 08:25, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

 * The semantics certainly don't fit very well. User:Dbfirs added the mention of Old French in .   can you shed any light on this?  How does an Old French term for expensive cloth wind up meaning “the only card of its suit in a hand”?  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

 * I have to apologise for messing this up. I was thinking of adding the obsolete sense of a coverlet of cloth, but that would have been a separate etymology, and very rare anyway.  Something must have distracted me and I never got back to tidy up the entry.  The word has indeed been used for a person on their own since 1937, but the usage for a person without a romantic partner is more recent (since Bridget Jones?).  We probably can't separate out the gradual change of meaning.  Sorry for leaving my error in the entry.    D b f  i  r  s   19:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

 * No worries. Thank you for the explanation, and thank you for fixing the entry.  :)  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:01, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

get the message
When was the expression "gets the message" first used?--Christie the puppy lover (talk) 12:37, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

 * To get the message (meaning "understand") is from 1960. —Stephen (Talk) 13:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Is this an equivalent etymology?
Is this public domain etymology (found here):
 * [= F. théosophe = Sp. teósofo, < ML. theosophus, a theologian, < LGr. (eccl.) θεόσοφος, wise in things concerning God, < θεός, god, + σοφός, wise. Cf. theosophy.]

correctly written by me as:
 * From ML. ,
 * from gkm ,
 * from grc.

particularly, is "< LGr. (eccl.)" the same as "from Byzantine Greek" and how do I, or should I, integrate "[= F. théosophe = Sp. teósofo, < " into an etymology? —BoBoMisiu (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would say you have got it right. And yes Byzantine Greek=Mediaeval Greek=Late Greek=Ecclesiastical Greek. You could add that the French and Spanish forms are comparative forms (e.g. "Compare French, Spanish ), or cite them alternatively as cognate terms...Leasnam (talk) 04:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * ,, is more appropriate for Ecclesiastical Greek.  is attested in , 3rd century AD, not yet Byzantine Greek. --Vahag (talk) 08:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 13:18, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Folk etymology
Anyone not yet excessively jaded by the topic might like to check on Talk:tinker's_damn JonRichfield (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten the etymology based on the references I could find. - -sche (discuss) 19:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

kayak
This paper can be used to improve the etymology. In particular, the Proto-Eskimo reconstruction *qyaq is wrong. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:01, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

fosfor
I find the given etymology rather suspect, as the earliest publications on the topic were in Latin. see e.g.. Please don't tell me that the Dutch republic did not have enough scientists able to read Latin in the later 17th century.... Jcwf 23:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Those publication use "phosphorus". According to http://etymologie.nl/ (subscription site; probably also in ISBN 978 90 5356 746 3 Dutch "phosphor-" is only attested in 1814, "fosfor" in 1846, to quote "De vernederlandste vorm zonder -us is pas jong, en wellicht ontstaan onder invloed van Duits Phosphor.". 19th century Dutch scientists could read German. --Erik Warmelink 00:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

attaboy/attagirl
Am I right in my suspicion that the expression attaboy/attagirl is (proto-/stereo-)typically used to praise and encourage young children, and only secondary older people? In that case, an origin in baby talk suggests itself. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:26, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I can see that. It does have a patronising tone to it, for instance I would not use it with one of my parents; certainly not with a grandparent; only in an encouraging way to a ..."subordinate", if you will, for lack of a better term Leasnam (talk) 06:22, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's interesting. Apparently it is also used by bosses to their employees, which agrees with your assessment. Isn't it also said to dogs by their owners? This would fit very well with a baby-talk origin.
 * Curiously, attagirl seems to have acquired a "girl power!" connotation. I recently saw it used in an interview with Canadian opera singer Barbara Hannigan. The interviewer, hornist Sarah Willis, born in America but sounding very British, certainly did not intend to come across as anything but respectful, nor did she want to sound patronising, I am sure. She treated Hannigan as an equal, not as superior, but certainly never as inferior. Both have Wikipedia articles so are clearly notable in their own right, which probably explains why she was comfortable enough around her for such an informal approach. A less known musician, or a musician outside the classical scene, might have felt it to be inappropriate in the same situation. So adult women using it among themselves must have a different "feel" compared to adult men (although among equals it may well sound humorous, playful but not patronising); still slang but not too impolite to say even to a celebrated opera singer in a relaxed but public situation. I was already familiar with the expression Attagirl! before (probably more than Attaboy!) but this example piqued my interest. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:46, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, when/if not patronising, it is very informal, like sister to sister, or brother to brother Leasnam (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Germanic/þankijaną
The page, and respective entries, says that the Scandinavian forms of /tɛnk-/ come from Middle Low German /dɛnkən/. As initial obstruent devoicing isn't a feature of Old Norse and the Low German word had a fully voiced consonant from the 13th century onward, this seems off. Has anyone enough knowledge in that field to confirm this etymology? It seems more like an Old East Norse relic to me, cf. sjunka/synke. Korn (talk) 13:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

 * According to Alf Torp, Nynorsk Etymologisk Ordbok (1919), Norwegian tenkja and late Old Norwegian þenkja are in form and meaning influenced by Low German.
 * So one could place them under Norse and add a note like "under influence of Low German denken". --MaEr (talk) 15:23, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Hinkypunk
Where does this come from? Tharthan (talk) 22:04, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Slavic če/czy/чи
Anyone happen to know more about the etymology of če, and ? Urotnik (talk) 20:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
 * From Proto-Slavic *či, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷī, initially instrumental singular of pronoun *kʷo-/*kʷe-; compare Latin qui, Avestan čī, Old Saxon hwi. See .--Cinemantique (talk) 16:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

immanant
Anyone know what the etymology of this word is? - -sche (discuss) 18:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Coined by Prof. A. R. Forsyth, F.R.S.: seems to be +  +  (as in ). Wyang (talk) 02:20, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice work finding that information! Thank you! - -sche (discuss) 05:08, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * But how does it connect to the meaning? DCDuring TALK 12:02, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

snazzy
Some questionable material in the etymology there. Should we just remove it? This, that and the other (talk) 00:38, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The early use as a nickname is interesting, though a link to the New Zealand paper is possible and desirable. It is a little hard to believe that the US usage (c. 1932) was influenced by the NZ usage (c. 1901), but it is conceivable. If removed from the ety section, it should go on the talk page. DCDuring TALK  11:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This search shows that there was a person known in NZ as "Snazzy", but that there is a long hiatus (30 years) between the last use of Snazzy and the first use of snazzy in New Zealand in its modern sense. DCDuring TALK 12:01, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

rada (Polish and Czech)
Our entry suggests that Polish  is from Germanic. It seems cognate to Czech. George Thomas' Linguistic purism says "Jan Hus, saddened by the Germanised Czech of his parishioners, attempted to coin easily decipherable native words [such as] radnice ‘town-hall’ from rada ‘council, counsel’ — [itself] ironically considered by some a German loanword" (as if to suggest it actually isn't a Germanic loanword). So, what is the origin of these words? - -sche (discuss) 01:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Somebody already asked about this word a few months ago. My own speculation was the only answer we got. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:45, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * And here I was eying the thread hoping someone with Slavic knowledge would answer. Here's my two cents instead then: Loans from Germanic into Slavic appear very early and are not too rare. (chleb, ratusz) If this is a Germanic loan, it's post PGM as it has /aː/. My partially educated guess, lacking any knowledge of Proto-Slavic roots, is that if this is a Germanic word, it was borrowed into Polish from this form and then spread south. According to Wenker, Bohemia and the greater part of Poland were settled with High Germans who probably pronounced the word something like /rɒːt-/. Mainly the coastal Polish areas were settled by Low Germans, with a High German enclave in eastern Poland. So Low German isn't as spread. There are records of this word having a final vowel in nominative singular in Low German: /rɒːdə/. This form was also the one preferred in compounds and the dative case and hence probably the ones Poles encountered more than the standard LG form /rɒːt/. The Czechs, who knew the Germanic word as /rɒːt(ə)/, and had not even a border on Low German settlement, would not have interpreted it as a Germanic borrowing but rather as a West Slavic word since "it also exists in Polish". Korn (talk) 17:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Many towns in the were granted charters based on the  within the, which was based on Flemish law. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 02:03, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

㐬
RFV of the etymology.


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/April

balconing
I'd say this has been borrowed from Spanish, which was borrowed from English. Is there a category for terms borrowed from their own language via another language? --Recónditos (talk) 10:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe it would be Category:English twice-borrowed terms, which is what you get from . Many of the things that end up there are bogus, caused by people misusing  for internal borrowings- but there are rare genuine cases such as this. The name seems odd, but I suppose it refers to terms being borrowed by other languages and then borrowed back into English. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:40, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

chagrin
RFV of the etymology.

This has been a bit of a word salad since an IP edited it back in 2009. It derives dialectical French, from + 🇨🇬, which it says is a loan translation from 🇨🇬, though one has to make allowances for bad sentence construction to get that far. Even though it's part of only one of several alternative etymologies that are all labeled as speculation, this seems particularly far-fetched. To start with, it compounds modern French with Old French, then says it's a loan translation of a modern German term that doesn't match quite match semantically (though it's close). I would have removed it, but it's been there for nearly seven years, and a few presumably-competent editors have worked on it. Could someone make some sense out of this? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's the editors being aimless. Perhaps veiled vandalism. Century Dictionary indicates a figurative use of a different French word. Dictionary.com also gives an alternate etymology as well as the OED et al. one. Hillcrest98 (talk) 14:59, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Cleaned up etymology myself, inserted source, removed rfv-e template. 15:19, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

オーケストラ
There is an RFE template on that page asking for verification of if it comes from transliterating  or not. Probably some sources needed to settle. Hillcrest98 (talk) 20:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's pretty uncontroversial that it is from English . If it were from any other European language, it would almost certainly be instead of . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:40, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Tharthan (talk) 14:42, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Etymology clean-up on aisle twelve...
For mummer.

I tried the best I could with it, but it is such a complicated etymology that it is hard to both present it and yet also make it at least somewhat concise (or, rather, more concise than it is presently).

If someone has the time to, it would be good if that etymology could get cleaned up at least slightly... somehow. Tharthan (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I can create which is sufficiently attested, and you could move the discussion of the etymology of momon there. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you. I appreciate your help. I will do so. Tharthan (talk) 13:58, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Created. Tell me what you think. Tharthan (talk) 14:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Wait for the other shoe to drop
"Wait for the other shoe to drop" derives from the punch line of a joke that was current in the late 1950's or early 1960's. I do not remember exactly when, but I do remember it made the rounds very quickly. It went roughly like this:

A road-weary traveling salesmen walks into a rooming house. Another man is checking in. The other man is given a room on the ground floor near the stairs. The salesman is given an upstairs room, in which he begins to disrobe. He removes and drops his left shoe, THUD. He then pauses to think. He realizes that the other man's room is directly below. Not wishing to disturb him, the salesman carefully lowers his right shoe to the floor. He goes to bed and nods off. About an hour later he is awakened by a knock at the door. It is the man from downstairs, now in crumpled pajamas, eyes red, hair disheveled, and looking terrible. The man says, "For the love of God man, drop the other shoe!"

Everyone thought it was hilarious. Jive Dadson (talk) 10:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * But where does that joke come from? I seem to think is significantly older than that. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:03, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

The joke "made the rounds," i.e. was repeated orally. That was before the internet, so there might be no surviving written records of it at all. I remember it very well. "Drop the other shoe" could not have been a well known figure of speech at the time. If it had been, the joke would not have been funny. Jive Dadson (talk) 11:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

If Wiktionary has the same rules as Wikipedia, this etymology is stranded in the talk section. I assume my recollection constitutes "original research." Wikipedia demands primary and secondary sources. My fact is valid only if someone can show that someone else says someone else said it is so. Hearsay of hearsay of hearsay. Jive Dadson (talk) 11:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * American Heritage Dictionary says 'early 1900s' Renard Migrant (talk) 11:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Oldest I can see on Google Books is 1942. But of course, not every book in the world is on Google Books. Also, the joke isn't funny. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikiquote has it used (in the form "drop the other shoe") in the short bits of narration in the animated film Fantasia (1940). From its use there it was obviously widely known, but perhaps not a cliche then. DCDuring TALK 00:58, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It appears in the form "waiting for the other shoe to fall" in a college alumni magazine in 1918 DCDuring TALK  01:04, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

So the joke was already ancient when I heard it. Hey, I was a kid. I was wrong when I speculated that the joke might not exist anymore in written form. I found it in a few places on the web, often not constructed very well, IMO. E.g. http://www.bestcleanfunnyjokes.info/index.php/site/comments/waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop/#sthash.GTokeAHh.dpbs As for the joke not being funny, yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. Jive Dadson (talk) 15:06, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I found a 1908: "Scott showered imprecations on the head of the unsuspecting offender, and lay wide awake waiting for the other boot to fall, after which he hoped to resume his broken sleep." The source is a business humor collection. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * A 1904 version. BTW my search has been for "for the other|second boot|shoe to fall|drop". There may be other alternatives that would unearth older versions. DCDuring TALK 20:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Buchstabe
RFV of the etymology. Earlier Proto-Germanic apparently comes from  +, with  deriving not from PIE  for , as currently stated at Buchstabe, but rather from PIE  for , as in the tree. Could someone confirm and clean up this and the related etymologies on other pages? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:49, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * For that matter, did books even exist during the time when PIE was spoken? Is  a cromulent reconstruction for a PIE term meaning ?  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I removed the nonsense about a PIE word for book, but an actual source for the etymology would be good anyway. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

On the origin of languages
I apologize for my poor organization and presentation. Firstly, Latin has evolved into 20+ languages, which serves as an example to show that the number of languages increases through time. This can serve as an evidence that, when traced back, there could possibly be a first language, which is termed Proto-Human. However, languages also become less complicated through time. Therefore, the first language must be very complicated. How can such a complicated language without precessor exist? --kc_kennylau (talk) 11:40, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * The answers in this Quora thread may be of interest. Key points:
 * "As a general rule, languages do not become simpler over time. For the most part, all fully developed languages (i.e. not creoles or pidgins) are equally complex. So, if a language is simple in one area (e.g., its grammar), it is generally more complex in another (e.g., in pronunciation)." (Later, as an illustration of this:) "Estonian has lost some case markers and begun using quantity alternation instead. This makes phonology more complex. For example, taevas means 'sky/heaven' but 'in the sky/heaven' when the first syllable is overlong." (Whereas, other languages have switched in the opposite direction, from tone- and length-based markers to using different, more dissimilar suffixes to mark case.)
 * "If we observe Indo-European languages, for example Latin evolving into Romance languages, the tendency seems to be simplification concerning morphology. But, this is not true for every language family. The morphology of Uralic languages has been getting more complex. The Proto-Uralic has been reconstructed to have had five or six cases. Many of its modern descendants have a lot more: Finnish has 15 and Hungarian over 30."
 * - -sche (discuss) 13:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * (edit conflict) The only certainty is that all languages change. There's a certain level of complexity in all languages, but different languages have the complexity in different areas, and the complexity may be shifted from one area to another. English has lost most of its inflectional morphology: Old English had 5 grammatical cases and a more complex set of verbal endings. We also have lost grammatical gender, except in pronouns. We now express the same information with word order and vocabulary- a highly-inflected language is usually much simpler in its rules on word order. Other languages are converting independent particles into affixes- Chinese plural pronouns are just one example of that process. In the Indo-European languages, the change from a highly mobile pitch accent to a much more fixed stress accent has meant that unaccented sounds tend to be lost. Since the accent tends to stay on the root, endings tend to disappear. Since most of the inflectional morphology in Indo-European languages is in the endings, the tendency is for that morphology to disappear. Phonological processes such as these tend to simplify morphology within words, while compounding tends to increase it. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * Also, languages do not inherently increase in number over time. Latin supplanted and put to extinction languages like Etruscan, Venetic, Gaulish, etc; supplanting them with just one language, itself. Then later, oro-Latin diverged into a myriad of regional lects, many of which are now being ousted by National Standards, like French. Leasnam (talk) 17:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * I seem to think Steven Pinker in  refers to Proto-World at one point. If you say that all human societies have language, even if not written language, then surely it comes down to whether all humans ultimately come from the same source. Unless they all came from the same source and group got isolated and some how came up with its own language unrelated to the language the rest of the humans were talking at that time. Also, I see no reason why Proto-World would necessarily have to be extremely complex. New innovations can occur without initial complexity. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:39, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * Other points to consider:
 * We know that not all of the world's languages have a single genetic parent, because we know that at least one language developed spontaneously without genetic parents: . (Similarly, not all of the world's writing systems have a single parent: writing arose spontaneously in ≥2 places: the Middle East and China, Mesoamerica, and possibly elsewhere.)
 * It is thought that language per se (a relatively complex phenomenon) developed from relatively simpler forms of vocalization and/or communication. Hence, regardless of whether the world's languages have one ancestor or many, and regardless of whether the living languages are simpler or more complex than that ancestor, that ancestor developed from ur-ancestors that were simpler than it. (That answers your final question, I think.)
 * - -sche (discuss) 18:45, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

 * However, as a Chinese, I can tell you that Chinese definitely obeys the two observations stated, which is reproduction and simplification. Old Chinese has been constructed to include many consonants in one syllable. In Taiwanese Mandarin, zh/z, ch/c, sh/s are merging, whereas in Hong Kong Cantonese they have completely merged. In Hong Kong Cantonese, n/l are also merging. Please correct me if I am wrong. --kc_kennylau (talk) 14:31, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Those are some ways Chinese has become phonologically simpler, but it may have become more complex in other areas of the language. Also, according to Wikipedia, "Most scholars now believe that Old Chinese lacked the tones found in later stages of the language", which means that even within the phonology, while the language has gotten simpler in terms of consonants, it's gotten more complex in terms of tones. I think it's pretty clear that loss of complexity in one area must be compensated for with increased complexity in some other area, otherwise after 50,000 years of using language, we'd all be saying nothing but ta ta ta ta nowadays. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:46, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * But Chinese has tones as well as many diphthongs, which are more complex. While in Slavic, the complexity of syllables has increased by quite a bit through the loss of vowels, and the number of vowels has gone down by a lot. So there may be trends in a certain direction, but there is no such thing as simplification. If you look at it from an information theory point of view, language can't be simplified too much or it no longer has the capacity to clearly convey all meanings it needs to. But if there is redundancy, then that tends to be eliminated eventually. Then there is the need to not require too much effort to speak it. These three things are in a balance. If the balance shifts too far into one direction, then simplicity in one area is just traded off for complexity in another, and language change happens as a result of a constant tug of war. For example, a language that has a simple syllable structure or a small phoneme inventory will need to have long words in order to have words for all things. If the words are short too, then the syntax and idiom will be complex because many words will be needed to convey a given meaning. —CodeCat 14:51, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you're taking it a bit too far with there is no such thing as simplification. The merger of Frisian/Saxon plural endings wasn't made up for with anything, nor was the loss of the instrumental case, nor the merger of *þ and /d, t/. The languages just got a little simpler. It might be better said: There is a baseline of complexity below which a functional language cannot drop. _Korn (talk) 15:33, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The loss of distinct endings is the elimination of redundancy, which does get eliminated as I said. But the instrumental case was lost in favour of a preposition, so there was no change in total complexity. The merger of *þ is interesting; it caused a drop in phonological complexity, but it increased the number of homonyms, which can be considered a kind of complexity too. If such homonyms are bothersome, then they are often replaced by another word with a similar meaning or they are qualified. Which then increases complexity again. So there is still a balance. —CodeCat 15:39, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Quaint how different views can be. I would consider homonyms the very opposite of complexity, as it is less language, albeit that less language has to carry the same amount of meaning. Slight off topic: Wasn't the instrumental replaced with the dative, which was already used with these prepositions and hence leads to the same state of less language carrying the same information? Korn (talk) 22:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * But having homonyms that are also semantically roughly similar leads to ambiguity, with the result that the situation is unstable. People tend to avoid homonyms if they could be confusing. In places in the U.S. where pin and pen are homophones, for example, the terms sewing pin and writing pen are gaining prominence. It isn't the homonymy itself that adds to complexity, it's they way people avoid it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:21, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

хозяин, خواجه
What comes first?

The entry for says it's a possible cognate of the Russian. Yes, it is but the ultimate source is probably Turkic languages. M. Vasmer said it's from Chuvash (a Turkic language in Russia) via Old Russian (I have normalised the Chuvash spelling to modern, the source only gives a romanisation). Both Persian and Russian terms are possibly both derived from Turkic, cf. Turkish, Azeri. I doubt the Persian term has come from Russian. Russian has also a newer borrowing (=hodja) from Turkish or Persian.

.

See also English hodja derived from Turkish or Persian. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:35, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

 * According to Černyx (2, 346) fountainhead for Russian word is 🇨🇬. He compares meaning with Turkic languages and says /z/ is possible in some dialects. So i think it should be something like this: Russian < Old East Slavic < Turkic < Persian. — Игорь Тълкачь  09:40, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this notation. Do you mean that the original term is Persian? also needs attention. It mentions the Russian cognate but that's misleading. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

 * I'm pretty sure that it's of Persian origin, possibly from Avestan, related to or possibly even a variant of . --Unsigned message
 * Based on the initial /xʷa:/ (older /xʷa/ is often reflected as /xo/ in late loanwords from New Persian) I'm also pretty sure that it is a native Iranian word, and Turkic forms with o etc. are loanwords from (New) Persian. --Z 15:30, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

charity
I am a complete novice to providing input to Wikipedia, so I don't know the proper protocols. Please excuse any unintended breaches of etiquette or protocol.

The current page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/charity references the Latin origin: "caritas", but does not mention the fact that the Latin "caritas" means "dear" or "costly". There is, however, a reference to that definition in a discussion page. I think that should go to the main page.

I see a lot of confusion/debate in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_(virtue). Perhaps by starting at the beginning, with the best definition of "charity" possible, downstream confusion can be eliminated. At least we can get the (multiple) definitions of the word out of the way in wiktionary, and allow the wikipedia articles to focus each of the individual concepts themselves and leave the disambiguation discussion to it's proper place out side of the article itself. By way of explanation, and probably more than you need to know here, I got here in my analysis of the famous I Corinthians 13:13 verse: "And now there remain faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity"  (or, depending on the particular Bible translation, "but the greatest of these is love"). It wasn't until I found that the Latin "caritas" means "dear" or "costly"( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caritas) that I could understand how "charity" can mean both "giving to those less fortunate" (as the word is most commonly used today) and "love", as it is used in this context. Furthermore, the key to this was to understand the origination from the Latin "cara" or "dear.
 * I don't see where you're getting these definitions from. is a noun and its meanings are therefore noun-like, as shown in the entry. It's derived from the adjective  through the suffix, which means "-ness" and is the origin of the English suffix . —CodeCat 15:58, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The etymology doesn't determine the meaning (see nice for a textbook example). The origin of the Latin ancestor of the term has no bearing on the meaning of its descendant unless it can be shown that the association was known to speakers of the later languages when the new meaning developed. At any rate, it's not necessary to explain the origin of that sense: the use of charity to refer to giving money to aid the poor or unfortunate goes back to the idea that Christian love is unselfish (charity was often used in older bibles to refer to refer specifically to Christian love). I'm sure it was originally used to frame giving positively as an expression of Christian virtue and to underplay the financial aspects. By the way: the association of affection and expense is quite common, as can be seen in the history of dear. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:46, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Albanian urtë
This is listed under 'word' as cognate with it, verbum, and Lithuanian vardas; but under its own entry it has an apparently different etymology - at least, that mentions no connexion with the PIE word cluster. 95.131.110.109 14:32, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The part about urtë being related to word was added to both entries by a contributor who has a history of deciding that Albanian terms are cognates based on superficial resemblances. Later on, they thought better of it and changed the etymology at urtë, but not the one at word. I've now removed the reference at word, which was unnecessary for that entry, anyway. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

ნული
Is this cognate to null (and related Indo-European words)? Hillcrest98 (talk) 02:59, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Not cognate- that would mean that Georgian and Latin would be related, and they aren't. It's no doubt a borrowing in Georgian. Zero is a relatively new concept, compared to most basic numeric terms, so it goes back to a borrowing in the history of most languages (zero itself comes from Arabic). Chuck Entz (talk) 03:12, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess I messed the terminology up. I meant the terms were "related". Hillcrest98 (talk) 22:39, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

 * I'm sure Georgian and  are from a European language, probably Italian, via Russian  and . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)