text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2017/March

Proto-Germanic frawjô and Russian правый from PIE *prōw- 'right judge, master'?
Proto-Germanic 'lord' (and hence German Frau), Russian правый 'right-hand' (the  entry actually mentioned only the secondary meaning 'rightist') and Latin provincia are all claimed in their respective entries to derive from a PIE *prōw-  'right judge, master'. I don't find this assertion elsewhere. On, Kroonen's dictionary of PG only says that the PIE etymology is unclear and that the assumed connection to 'front', 'first' is problematic. Orel's dictionary of PG only ventures to claim some kind of connection with *pro 'forward' (he does mention that other authors have claimed a connection to provincia and право, but not a common meaning of 'lord' or 'judge'). The Indo-European Lexicon at Austin links the root in to PIE *per- 'to pass over, beyond'. On правый, Vasmer's etymological dictionary of Russian assumes a connection to the PIE root for 'forward' and some parallel with Latin probus 'good, upright' and Old Norse framr 'forward, prominent, superior'. On 'province', the Online Etymology Dictionary considers the etymology uncertain; Vasmer does note the opinion of Pisani 1941 assuming a derivation of provincia from a root *prōv- 'having authority/right' connected to Slavic прав 'right(-hand)'. Even this conjecture of one author doesn't amount to a reconstruction of a PIE etymon meaning 'just master', from which Proto-Germanic would be derived.--90.154.137.50 05:53, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
 * is from Pokorny, and indeed appears to be outdated. --Tropylium (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I see, that would be Pokorny's entry prō̆-u̯o, listed as a derivative of pro, prō 'forward' (in turn from per-, 'to go over'), which I paste below. Even if one sets aside the fact that some parts apparently haven't been accepted by newer authors, the original Pokorny entry still looks far more plausible than its reflection in the Wiktionary entries: he doesn't actually assert unequivocally that the meaning 'master' was present already in PIE, he doesn't suggest that the concrete physical meaning in Slavic is derived from the social/political meaning 'master', and he most certainly doesn't imply that this alleged PIE etymon also meant 'judge' and was derived from a notion of 'justice'. All he says is that there was a derivation from the root for 'forward' and that its reflexes meant 'inclined forward' in some languages, 'direct', hence 'right', in Slavic, and 'lord' in Germanic (and possibly, but not certainly, Italic, which would have been the only justification for dating the meaning 'lord' to PIE times at all). If I had to imagine, based just on the above, a semantic development getting us from '(inclined) forward' to 'lord', my first guess would be something like front > prominent/leading > chief/lord, not front (> direct > right? > just?) > judge, just lord > lord (and again > right in Slavic). There seems to be very little in the facts from which the whole 'justice' element would follow. The Slavic development would have been quite separate 'front > inclined forward > direct > right' and there is no reason to ascribe the Slavic secondary abstract meaning of 'justice' all the way back to PIE - nor does Pokorny do that, since he derives the Slavic meaning of 'right' from '(inclined) forward' via 'gradaus', i.e.

'direct(ly)'.
 * g. pro, prō `vorwärts, vorn, voran' ... prō̆-u̯o-: in ai. pravaṇā- `(vorwärts) geneigt, abschüssig', n. `Abhang, Halde'; über lat. prōnus s. oben; gr. πρᾱνής, hom. πρηνής `vorwärts geneigt' nach Leumann Homer. Wörter 77 f. aus *προ-ᾱνης `Gesicht voraus'; mit anderer Bedeutung ahd. frō, as. frao, ags. frēa `Herr' (*frawan-), got. frauja `Herr' (aisl. Freyr GN zum o-St. geworden), as. frōio ds., aisl. freyja `Herrin; Name der Göttin', ahd. frouwa `Frau'; daneben as. frūa, mnd. frūwe `Frau' aus *frōwōn, idg *prō-u̯o-, das auch in att. πρῷρα (lat. Lw. prōra) `Schiffsvorderteil' (πρωϝαιρα-, -αρι̯α idg. *prōu̯-r̥i̯ā); vielleicht lat. prōvincia, wenn auf einem *prōu̯iōn `Herr, Herrschaft' beruhend; abg. pravъ `recht, richtig' (`*gradaus');
 * --90.154.137.50 12:29, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * prince Lysdexia (talk) 03:50, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Koxinga
RFV of the etymology. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 00:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Albanian etymologies
We seem to have another editor of Albanian who is removing a lot of evidence of Latin or Slavic borrowing. I'm not certain whether the user is correct, but I would like someone to check as this is a fairly frequent occurrence for Albanian. — JohnC5 15:39, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Correcting few (6-7?) etymologies doesn't look like "Removing a lot of evidence" to me. Relax, I'm not vandalazing.Herakliu (talk) 16:50, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, if what you're doing is motivated by nationalist sentiment, then yes, it is vandalism. ? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:28, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * He is replacing one unsourced etymology with another. I would revert him, but I would also delete the rest of unsourced Albanian material. --Vahag (talk) 11:19, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Do we need a source to state that 2+2=4? Notice how I corrected only very few and manifestly false etymologies. Perhaps, instead than blindly reverting, we could debate the lemmas that are controverse. Herakliu (talk) 15:37, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Bring up the debates at WT:ES, we'll see if it's indeed 2+2=4. --Vahag (talk) 04:46, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

peritus
It says peritus comes from periri whereas experior says its pp. is expertus and pereo says its pp. is peritus. Lysdexia (talk) 03:50, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

 * From pereō peritus, from *perior perītus (notice the difference). Why not *pertus and expertus or perītus and *experītus may be from diverse corruptions or formations as elsewhere we see verbs in -īre produce perfect passive participles in -tus or -ītus (e.g. from ambiō ambītus and ambītor, but ambitus (subst.) and ambitiō, pariō parere, but reperiō reperīre, both -tus). Also of note is the voice of both participles, as perītus seems derived from some intransitive verb and, as experior is transitive, corresponds to experiēns (not quite expertus, which thus passively used contradicts its active use in this deponent verb). And I would want to know certainly what caused this... -GuitarDudeness (talk) 14:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

兩
RFV of the glyph origin. Added by an anon back in 2011. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 05:48, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

：Sorry for reviving old posts, but just saying, http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?submitButton1=Etymology&characterInput=%E5%85%A9 says that it is a pictograph. Johnny Shiz (talk) 03:12, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

フェネック狐
I want to challenge the claim that it is a "calque of English fennec fox". —suzukaze (t・c) 18:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

 * Another of Fumiko's copious and generally unresearched additions.
 * Sans any findable evidence, I judge this to be a mistake. Japanese terms for animals, foreign and otherwise, often append the specific appellation with a more general term.  I see no reason to treat  as an English calque any more than .  Especially considering that  is overwhelmingly more common -- the shorter gets 794 ostensible hits at, collapsing to 49 when paging through, while the longer gets only 2 at , one of which is a manga (notable as manga are known for neologisms and odd spellings).  Searches on the wider web show similar trends ( @ 750K vs.  @ 4,930).
 * I'll clean up the entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:40, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

 * (It seems like the usual spelling for this term is the katakana form フェネックギツネ, which may be why the Google Books results for ～狐 are so meager. —suzukaze (t・c) 23:51, 9 March 2017 (UTC))

 * still gets ~4x the hits of on the broader web ( vs. ), and on Google Books, the multiple increases to some 10.5x ( vs. ).  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:34, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

hamburger
RFV of the etymology.

The Talk page has an old two-post discussion-stub about this, but the argument then boiled down to "see Wikipedia". I had a look, and Wikipedia's content seems to suggest that in reference to the food was an English innovation, as the name changed from earlier. See, for instance, [[w:Hamburg steak]], which describes the history of the food, with this appellation apparently older than. As the dish metamorphosed from a chopped-beef patty on a plate to a ground-beef patty on a bun, it seems the name shifted as well. This jives with my own understanding of the foods and the related terms, although where I came by my own recollections is since lost in time.

Does anyone have anything more authoritative? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:24, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've updated the etymology Leasnam (talk) 22:11, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

dukkha
In Sargeant (Sargeant, Winthrop (2009), The Bhagavad Gita, SUNY Press, 2009, p. 303) and Hagen (Hagen, Steve Buddhism Plain a Simple, Charles E. Tuutle Co 1997 p.25) it says that the root meaning of dukkha is "a wheel out of kilter" or "an axle hole that is badly aligned" obviously causing discomfort to the rider of the vehicle. Do you any of the experts here know if this is correct? If so, should it be added to the definition? Thanks! Talk to SageGreenRider 14:19, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Monier-Williams's 1899 Sanskrit Dictionary says that the analysis of (the Sanskrit ancestor of 🇨🇬) as  +  is a folk etymology and it's probably actually a Prakritization of  + . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:05, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I see someone has added this to the corresponding Wikipedia page. Talk to SageGreenRider 22:06, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

liquidate

 * I'm doubtful that the sense "to kill" comes from Russian. French has the same metaphorical meaning, and I'm sure other languages too; the semantical link is pretty simple. --Barytonesis (talk) 20:35, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

 * I simply moved that text from the definition to the etymology, where it belonged. I didn't add the claim. Equinox ◑ 20:38, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, sorry about that. . --Barytonesis (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Etymonline makes the same claim. Crom daba (talk) 13:25, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, all. I think it looks good now.Ulmanor (talk) 18:44, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

etytree, a graphical and multilingual etymology dictionary based on Wiktionary: feedback and endorsement
Hi all!

I have now completed the first phase of the project and I’m asking for a renewal and for your feedback! Pls add your comment at the end of page Renewal.

A link to the demo is demo, while a link to the first release is tools.wmflabs.org/etytree.

Looking forward to your comments on the grant page! Epantaleo (talk) 14:22, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Separate PIE root for are?
Wikipedia has this:

"This has been claimed as the origin of the Old Norse and later Scandinavian languages' present stem: Old Norse em, ert, er, erum, eruð, eru; the second person forms of which were borrowed into English as art and are.[3] It has also been seen as the origin of the Latin imperfect (eram, eras, erat) and future tenses (ero, eris, erit). However, other authorities link these forms with *h1es- and assume grammatischer Wechsel (/s/→/r/), although this is not normally found in the present stem. Donald Ringe argues that the copula was sometimes unaccented in Pre-Proto-Germanic, which would have then triggered the voicing under Verner's law.[1][page needed] He explains the Germanic first person singular form *immi as such, deriving it from earlier *ezmi, since -zm-, but not -sm-, was assimilated to -mm- in Germanic (for which other evidence exists as well). Furthermore, the third person plural form *sindi (from PIE *h₁sénti) shows that this word, too, was unaccented. If the accent had been preserved, it would have become *sinþi, but that form is not found in any Germanic language. In this view, it is likely that stressed and unstressed varieties of the copula (with corresponding voiceless and voiced fricatives) existed side by side in Germanic, and the involvement of a separate root *h₁er- is unnecessary."

So is Ringe's position more solid than assuming a whole new PIE root entirely?

Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 03:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

and descendants
The descendants all seem to reflect (and not **cochlearia), and Alkire-Rosen 2010 references it, but I'm not sure if -ara  is a specific suffix or just feminine -a grafted onto a neuter. KarikaSlayer (talk) 20:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

grind to a halt
RFV of the etymology.

Both the original etymology and the more elaborate reworking refer to windmills grinding grain/corn, which seems a bit of a stretch. It seems to me to simply refer to the grinding of hard surfaces against each other when something goes wrong with machinery. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:34, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

camel through the eye of a needle
Is there any indication that this phrase has been adopted from Luke rather than Mark or Matthew, since the Greek isn't all that different? If not, it makes more sense to put the text from Mark (oldest) or Matthew (most influential) there if a full quote is necessary.

Also, it would be nice to have an indication of when the phrase began to be used as an independent idiom. The oldest hits on Google Books date to around 1800. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:29, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It's probably best to cite all three gospels; people remembering the phrase from the Bible and using it in other contexts are probably not going to be remembering it from only one of the gospels and not the other two. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:24, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Added to the Citations page. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 11:09, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

جنس
More likely from 🇨🇬 than 🇨🇬, no? Anyone have a good reference? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:58, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with "more likely", though it isn't definite. Arabic does have a fair number of old Latin loanwords. However, these themselves were often transmitted through Greek. If we can't find a reference, let's just mention both. Kolmiel (talk) 12:14, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It might also come from 🇨🇬, which also lacks a vowel corresponding to "o" or "u". In that event it would derive from the Ancient Greek. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 11:15, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's one of the commonest tracks: Latin → Greek → Syriac → Arabic. Of course, it need not start at Latin. And in this case it makes it even more likely that it doesn't, but that the origin is Greek. Kolmiel (talk) 12:31, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

 * Considering that Greek already had the word, it would not make sense for it to have borrowed Latin as well, although the meanings could have influenced each other. However, the native Greek word is enough to explain the rest of the borrowing chain, so there is no need to bring Latin into the picture. --WikiTiki89 12:40, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but we don't seem to positively know how the word actually entered Arabic. We know that it's not inherited and that there are these Greek and Latin terms that fit perfectly. So let's just say:
 * "Probably from 🇨🇬, from 🇨🇬. Less likely from 🇨🇬. In either case eventually from 🇨🇬."
 * Kolmiel (talk) 23:33, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Unless there's a chance it came directly from Latin or a Romance language, I don't think there is a reason to consider Latin as a source. --WikiTiki89 21:16, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Our etymology is not based on any actual research in this word, just on our general knowledge and experience. So yeah, maybe it was borrowed directly from Roman soldiers in the Jordanian desert in the 1st century AD. Or maybe... Or maybe... All of this is improbable, so we say "less likely", but why not even mentioning it when we can't rule it out? Kolmiel (talk) 19:24, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Source for no relation between deus and θεός
The claim that those terms aren't related is sourced, but the source (Fortson) is lacking. Is this a good place to dispute the source?

Fortson doesn't give direct evidence and thus doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards on it's own ( Exceptional claims require exceptional sources), in my opinion, because it's the only source and the claim is only mentioned in passing. The claim is surprising because of older sources and therefore frequently disputed by laymen like myself. I started a lengthy discussion that I don't expect to continue in good faith. Additional sources would be welcome.

The argument on the talk page goes, the PIE roots were completely different, because there was no way d (as in ) or dʰ (as in ) could have any relation. A negative is hard to prove. Lack of mention of a relation in e.g. (Ringe) does not directly support the claim. At the very least a common pre-PIE origin cannot be ruled out.

Although, this lack of relation supposedly is basic knowledge within the field of PIE reconstruction, simply because of sound laws. I don't believe d and dʰ are too far apart, given the mostly converging development of these phonemes. Can that be confirmed or denied here? 91.66.15.220 11:06, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, you cannot, strictly speaking, prove a negative. What's possible is to show that the resemblance that we see between and  is accidental:
 * Latin eu comes by contraction from earlier -ejwo- (actually attested in Old Latin), and Greek eó meanwhile comes by contraction from earlier *-eho- < *-eso-. While e ~ e and ~  are regular and unproblematic correspondences, -jw- versus -s- is very much not. (We do not have direct evidence for Proto-Greek *-h-, but we do have evidence against -w-. I suppose in theory a Proto-Hellenic *tʰejos cannot be ruled out without appealing to evidence outside Greek, though.)
 * The meanings of the terms diverge: the Latin word comes with regular development from a root meaning 'bright, shining' (> 'heavenly' > 'god'), while the Greek word comes from a root meaning 'to place' (> 'placed' > 'dedicated' > 'worshipped' > 'divine; god').
 * Given just the basic roots, versus  (or even the specific pre-forms:  versus, there remains no reason to suspect that they might be related, though this is of course still theoretically possible. --Tropylium (talk) 14:51, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What do you mean the source, Fortson, is lacking? It's right there at the bottom of the page: "Fortson, Benjamin W. (2010) Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, second edition, Oxford: Blackwell, page 1". And it isn't just him. All Indo-European scholars agree that and  are unrelated and their similarity is coincidental. It's true that you can't prove a negative, but in this case the positive claim (that the two are related) has no evidence whatsoever to support it, so the negative claim (that they're unrelated) is not exceptional at all; it is of necessity the default assumption in the absence of evidence to the contrary. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:55, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * "All Indo-European scholars agree" means nothing as far as they're concerned. I think the basic problem is that references like Fortson aren't going to give detailed explanations of the theory underlying their statements, because everyone who reads them is presumed to know it already. This person has never studied Indo-European historical linguistics, so you have to construct the theory for them from the ground up in order to explain anything. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:52, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right; I hadn't seen the whole thread at Talk:θεός before. It's pretty clear he's arguing along the same lines as someone who, never having taken a class in biology, believes that bats and butterflies must be birds because they have wings and can fly, and is unwilling to accept the word of a textbook that mentions in passing that they aren't. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I believe it's simply part of the scientific method to explain from the ground up. Fortson surely doesn't presume any knowledge at the beginning of an introductory book. Sure I'm not qualified in this field, so I'm not contesting the validity, but the verifiability of the source. "All Indo-European scholars agree" means, I expect multiple sources. I acknowledge that's grabbing for a straw. 91.66.15.220 23:30, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * "It's true that you can't prove a negative" - I claim nothing more, no positive claim, no evidence, with regard to edits to the article, but the default is "we don't know" (Null hypothesis).
 * I merely tried to justify the motivation of my doubt. Hence, absence of evidence is not Evidence_of_absence. With regards to Latin and Greek, substantial evidence might be obvious, though only against the naive assumption that one was directly borrowed from the other.
 * , that's very thorough. I'd like to speculate and argue, but I suppose that would distract from the dispute about the source. I just want to remind you that the claim in Fortson is not limited to classic Greek and Latin, likewise the claim in the article which doesn't even appear in the context of PIE and is thus an outright generalization including pre PIE. Apart from that, PIE itself is dated with a precision of 500 to 1000 years and I am supposed to accept arguments about precise sound changes according to a small amount of rigid rules of a language without direct record? I don't mean to belittle the scholarship, that's actually awesome, but you have to admit certain limits to the comparative method. 91.66.15.220 23:30, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If that's your entire point, then yes, it's completely possible that the two PIE roots are indeed related at some distant level many thousand years off. But then again, maybe it might be instead some other correspondence, such as ~, or ~ ? If we do not bother working with regular sound correspondences and the other constraints that have been set up in historical linguistics, then we end up with nothing more than a just-so story, and literally any arbitrary relationships can be considered. --Tropylium (talk) 00:01, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

While perusing Beekes' Comparatice Indo-European Linguistics, I noticed that he explicitly states on page 14 that and  are unrelated. Just thought I'd mention here. — JohnC5 04:33, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Not in the edition I'm looking at (2010).
 * Second edition. — JohnC5 05:21, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I was looking at the etymological dictionary that you pointed me at, not the 2011 text book on the comparative method. So, he doesn't explicitly say the words are not related and from a first reading I get the impression after trying really hard to, that he only claims that theos wasn't borrowed from deus. 91.66.15.220 05:47, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

 * I recommend everybody stop responding; you're just feeding the troll. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:22, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The anonymous IP reminds me of Voltaire's definition of etymology as a field in which "the vowels count for nothing, and the consonants for very little"... [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

 * Anatoly Liberman, the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them and An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, responding to someone who similarly argued that the unrelatedness of good and god was "counterintuitive and undemonstrable", has this to say:
 * "Etymology is a study of word history and presupposes a professional look at the development of sounds, grammatical forms, and meaning in many languages. “Intuitively,” deus and theos are two variants of the same word, but they are not. The term folk etymology covers suggestions of the theos-deus and god-good type: the temptation to connect look-alikes is irrepressible, but, unless we choose to remain in pre-scientific etymology, it should be resisted. Although 'scientific etymology' stumbles at every step, there is no need to make it limp even more by burdening it with naïve medieval hypotheses."
 * - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

homunculus
I did this a month ago, but I wonder if it was a good idea. It looks like a word suffixed in -unculus, but it's not; it really is the -culus suffix attached to a third declension -n- stem (-unculus comes from there by metanalysis). A true occurrence of the -unculus suffix would be. --Barytonesis (talk) 17:26, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that is should be homō + -culus or maybe -ulus. homunculus would be the natural outcome of *homon-k-elos (See here for more on the vowels). — JohnC5 18:35, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * : but don't you think that synchronically speaking, it makes sense to see it as homo + -unculus? --Barytonesis (talk) 17:45, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * An interesting question. — JohnC5 18:10, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that is a neat table. Perhaps it should be moved to an appendix, and your analysis of the derivation be given at, with a link to the table. — Eru·tuon 05:46, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I had intended on making it an appendix but never finished the examples list. Please make it into an appendix if you'd like. The data is primarily culled from Sihler. — JohnC5 17:59, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

In what sense is "parallel" being used here? A calque? DTLHS (talk) 01:30, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

jora
This word evidently comes from India, but which language and what etymon? (I'm really not sure who's best to ping for Indian etymologies, hope one of you guys knows.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:07, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I've checked all the resources I have. Swahili Indic loanwords chiefly come from Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi. Probably Kutchi too but I have no data on that. I don't have a big Marathi dictionary, but with what I have I've found nothing. DerekWinters (talk) 05:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

 * John M. Mugane's 2015 Story of Swahili (2015, ISBN 0896804895, page 51, says jora and tola are both Hindi, although he also says rangi is from Hindi, whereas we say it's from Persian; that's a lead to take with grains of salt. An article in [//books.google.com/books?id=e4hkAAAAMAAJ this Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika] (1988, page 118), mentioning Malagasy and Swahili borrowings, compares gora (using an older / alternate orthography / spelling) to Hindi jorā. None of our definitions of जोड़ा leap out as obvious sources, though The Kilindi, by Abdallah Bin Hemedi 'lAjjemy, points out that sometimes a Hindi "word tends in Swahili to be rather a measure of length than a description of material" or whatever else it originally denoted. Sharifa Zawawi, [//books.google.com/books?id=hBonAQAAIAAJ Kanga: The Cloth that Speaks] (2005), page 10, says self-inconsistently that "Johnson derives the word jora from Hindi juwr [sic], "a length of calico in the piece of about 30 yards. The change of Arabic [sic] sound /uw/ to /o/ in Swahili is a phonological change seen in other cognates such as suwq > soko "market" [...]. In this example, jurra becomes jora or gora." [//books.google.com/books?id=OfsKAAAAIAAJ A Uganda Journal article] also lists it as a borrowing from Arabic. Perhaps someone with better Hindi and Arabic dictionaries can check these leads. - -sche (discuss) 06:47, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm reading Mugane's book; he's an engaging writer, but unfortunately a truly awful source for reliable etymologies! Zawawi can be frustrating, but she's usually better than that... I consulted Hans Wehr, but jurra revealed nothing relevant and I think juwr is what he would spell as jur, but I coudn't find that either. (That said, I have never studied Arabic, so I may be going at it wrong.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:15, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Does the alternation of g- ~ j- (gora ~ jora ~ jura) point to an Arabic origin? Malagasy gora, which is from Swahili gora, means "bundles or bales of cotton goods; a bolt of cloth". I think this may be derived from 🇨🇬, plural of . Wyang (talk) 07:52, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , can you assess whether this seems right? Swahili does sometimes borrow from the Arabic plural directly, although it is relatively uncommon. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:51, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, the word exists, the plural is correct, and so is the sense "bundle of hay". It is also correct that an alternation between g and j can easily explained on the basis of dialectal variation within Arabic. I'm wondering why a word apparently meaning "thirty yards of cloth" should be from one meaning "bundle of hay". As to, it means a) a kind of arrow, and b) a kind of sieve used in sowing wheat according to this. And  means "hole", but I think it's chiefly dialectal. I would have to check the old dictionaries. Maybe I can do that tomorrow. Kolmiel (talk) 01:18, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , that would be much appreciated. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:36, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I checked Lane's lexicon for the roots j-w-r and j-r-r, and the only thing I found that was remotely plausible was that means a piece of wood about a cubit long that was used to catch gazelles. But I have a hard time seeing that being the source of jora. Maybe Kolmiel will have more luck. --WikiTiki89 02:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What about j-r-w and j-r-y? Lane's isn't online, is it? — Your gazelle sense is the same as what I mistakenly glossed as "a kind of arrow" above. More precisely, Al-Ma‘ānī says in the linked entry that it's "a piece of wood with a snare [or net] on the top, with which gazelles are hunted." I'm checking the old Arabic dictionaries right now. Kolmiel (talk) 12:26, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Of course it's online. Looks like you need to be made aware of this site which lets you search and browse 20 dictionaries at once, most notably including Hans Wehr, Lane's Lexicon, and Lisaan al-Arab. --WikiTiki89 12:52, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I work chiefly with modern texts and I have my Wehr at home. On the rare occasion that I'd need Lane I'd make a detour to the university. But all right, that won't be necessary anymore. Kolmiel (talk) 13:13, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh I totally forgot about those "modern text" things. --WikiTiki89 14:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Neat site. I wasn't aware of it either. — Eru·tuon 20:52, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * → (jura,) jora, gora "bundle/bale of cotton/cloth" (a sense still present in Malagasy) → "length of cloth (as would be transported/sold in a bale)" seems not-implausible. The Kanga book linked-to above quotes another work (I can't see enough to find out which one) as saying " jora one very long piece [of cloth] that comes in [a] bale," and The Kilindi notes that some words for types of material and other non-length things have shifted semantically to denoting lengths in Swahili, like, which is apparently cognate to . It's curious to me that so many books — even ones that literally spell out the Arabic etymon they say jora has — say it's from Hindi, though. - -sche (discuss) 04:01, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Wait, the "j" in represents /j/? --WikiTiki89 14:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I think it represents /ɟ/ or something like that. Kolmiel (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently it's an implosive /ɟ/, that is /ʄ/. --- At any rate, I haven't found anything interesting in Tāj al-‘Arūs and Lisān al-‘Arab. Of course, the entries are exceedingly long and one could search on for a day. But I've found the most relevant forms and that hasn't yielded anything new. So what we have is jurra meaning "a stick with a snare at the top" and jurza meaning "a bundle of hay". Both seem far off as such. However, if the sense "bale of cloth" is attested in Malagasy, then maybe jurza is somewhat less far off. Kolmiel (talk) 14:09, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

pukka
Please help to add the Punjabi script in the etymology section of. Thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:08, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Added. Wyang (talk) 12:35, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Any idea what the Punjabi and Urdu words mean? We could add those to the entry as well. — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:55, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The Punjabi and Urdu meanings can be found here and here. Wyang (talk) 21:56, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kalw-
There is a lot wrong with this entry. Firstly, the initial k- matches none of the languages, not even Germanic (Grimm's law). Then there's the -a- which is also suspicious. Finally, roots can't end in two sonorants, -lw- in this case. —CodeCat 17:48, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Well then... What consonant would match all the languages? And what would match the -lw-/-lv-/-lu in nearly all the languages? --WikiTiki89 18:06, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * According to Philippa there is no way to unite all of the Slavic, Germanic and Italic forms. Slavic and Germanic could be from *gol(H)-uo-; then Italic is out. Germanic could be borrowed from Italic; then Slavic is out. She argues in favour of a substrate word, but doesn't mention the Indo-Aryan forms. Kolmiel (talk) 20:24, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Derksen reconstructs *golH-o, and says "In spite of the incompatibility of the initial consonants, it is tempting to connect the (Balto-)Slavic and the Germanic forms with Lat. calvus "bald" and Sanskrit kulva- "bald, thin-haired". Benwing2 (talk) 06:53, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The most effective solution would seem to be Derksen's suggestion that Balto-Slavic 'head' is from a different root than 'bald'; the former would have originally had *g-, which secondarily influenced also the latter.
 * Medials-wise, de Vaan notes that *lw > ll in Latin, so would have to be from pseudo-PIE  (or perhaps rather, an inter-Latin derivative from ). --Tropylium (talk) 14:53, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * When you say the Slavic root for 'head' had PIE *g-, I understand that you suggest the one for 'bald' did have *k-. But that doesn't work with Germanic. Kolmiel (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note also that the Slavic descendant has been connected with Armenian and derived from quasi-Indo-European or "European" substrate . See Martirosyan 2010, page 220. --Vahag (talk) 13:52, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Germanic would need to be considered a loan from Latin under that approach, also due to *-l̥H- > *-al-. (A lost Celtic or substratal reflex would probably also work.) --Tropylium (talk) 16:24, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

 * So what about that entry now? Should be deleted, right? Although it seemingly could be a lot of things, it can't be *kalw-. Kolmiel (talk) 13:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd rather if we could keep it. Perhaps we could use a magical laryngeal (or two)? It could also serve to explain Vedic . Crom daba (talk) 14:52, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Trudeau
It's a popular joke in Canada, but seems highly unlikely that Trudeau comes from "trou d'eau", as someone edited in. Can we get an actual, serious etymology for this surname? I've heard that it may have a Germanic origin, possibly related to Thor (specifically, "Thorvald"), but it's not from the best source, either. -- Cirxe (talk) 22:54, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The Dictionary of American Family Names says that it's "from a pet form of the personal name Thouroude or perhaps Gertrude". — justin(r)leung { (t...) 16:24, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

🇨🇬
What's the Etymology of this? behindthename.com claims that it means "baby bustard", does anyone have a good source on this? Crom daba (talk) 14:43, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's the entry in Lane's Lexicon (exact quote, brackets are original):
 * The young one of the [species of bustard called] . (Ṣ, Ḳ.) — And The young one of the [serpent called] . (AA, Ḳ.) And, (Ḳ,) some say, (TA,) The serpent, (AA, Ḳ,) of whatever species it be : (AA :) or the young one thereof. (AA, Mgh, Ḳ.) And is a surname of The serpent ; (Ḳ, TA ;) mentioned by ’Alee Ibn-Ḥamzeh. (TA.)
 * --WikiTiki89 14:13, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That sounds awfully specific, like something copied from a medieval glossary or a dis legomenon. In any case I wouldn't be comfortable editing the entry based on it. Crom daba (talk) 14:42, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not copied from a medieval glossary. You can read about how Lane compiled his Lexicon. All of those parenthesized abbreviations are Arabic-language sources. --WikiTiki89 14:51, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It does say it's based primarily on Arabic medieval dictionaries. Indeed it appears to be a great source, but it's too raw and needs to be encapsulated into a Wiktionary etymology or entry and I wouldn't trust myself to do it. Crom daba (talk) 20:56, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/binati
To me, this is very simply explained as a nasal-infix present,, of the root. User:Victar has provided a cite by Kroonen giving instead, with a -néh₂- suffix. But this derivation doesn't give the right result, as i + laryngeal results in a long vowel in Celtic and none is attested. —CodeCat 21:58, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not disputing it and updated the root to reflect this. I'm not sure why Kroonen cited an néh₂-present, but a source shouldn't be deleted simply because you disagree with it. --Victar (talk) 22:06, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * But then, if you're sourcing the etymology from that source, and the etymology is changed so that it no longer matches, should the source still be there? —CodeCat 22:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. Alternative etymologies should always be cited if a proper source exists, even when they are incorrect. Regardless, the source cites the correct PIE root for the Celtic derivative and is valuable on that merit alone. --Victar (talk) 22:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not disputing the use of the reference for the Celtic term itself. —CodeCat 22:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Than what is it you are recommending? --Victar (talk) 23:05, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * How about this? Crom daba (talk) 00:09, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No wait, that doesn't make sense. Never mind. Crom daba (talk) 10:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

desert
RFV of the etymology, or, more specifically, the part that says "possibly influenced in meaning by ancient 🇨🇬".

The original version, added in this, suggested that The Latin might have come directly from Ancient Egyptian, but an IP softened this, and for good reason: 🇨🇬 + seems to explain the Latin verb just fine without bringing in other languages. Likewise, normal Latin morphology and a quite unremarkable progression of the semantics is enough to explain 🇨🇬.

Of course, not needing the Ancient Egyptian to explain the origin doesn't mean that it can't be involved anyway. The resemblance is indeed striking and there was contact with Egypt. My question: is that enough reason to include this speculation in the etymology? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Utter fluff. I've removed it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

harambee
Wikipedia gives the following account: "A popular etymology deriving the term from the name of a Hind goddess, Amba Mata (a form of riding a Tiger) has been proposed, supposedly via Hindu railway linesmen carrying loads of iron rails and sleeper blocks who would chant "har, har Ambe!" ("praise Amba") when working." I have seen this etymology elsewhere, but not in any particularly authoritative sources. What I would like to know is if the supposed Hindi (well, it may be Gujarati or something else) even makes sense in the first place. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 08:19, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

English root (etymology 2)
Can 🇨🇬 be from the PIE root *red-? Dictionaries I've seen have *werd- < *wer-. Kolmiel (talk) 22:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * No it can't, it would leave the w unexplained. And also the long ō, which generally implies a laryngeal. —CodeCat 22:10, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

 * On another note, is 🇨🇬 related to ? (i.e. do the two etymologies in the English section come from the same root?) Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 14:23, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure. Semantically it could make sense, but the verb is strong, which means it's not derived from anything at least in Germanic times. —CodeCat 14:31, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

κιθάρα vs. κῐθάρα
Why does Greek κιθάρα come from Italian chitarra instead of Ancient Greek κῐθάρα? Lysdexia (talk) 06:24, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

 * The lute took on various forms in Greece and they needed to use specific words for the different forms, such as λαούτο, ούτι, μπουζούκι, and πανδοῦρα. So the word  began to fall out of use. Centuries later, Italians introduced the guitar to Greece, so they transliterated the Italian name for it. Since the Italian word came from, transliterating it happily revived , but with a different meaning. —Stephen (Talk) 06:49, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I would have expected the Italian to yield the Greek transliteration  or, since the Italian word does not contain a dental fricative. It would probably be more accurate to say that the Ancient Greek word was repurposed to signify the meaning of its Italian descendant: a semantic calque. — Eru·tuon 20:10, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It may well have been transliterated κιταρρα by the original Greek recipients of the first guitar, but soon after, educated Greeks, being knowledgeable of the Ancient, would have corrected it to . Probably under the influence of the government-supported Katharevousa movement that tried to make Modern Greek as much like Ancient Greek as possible. —Stephen (Talk) 03:10, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The same thing happened to 🇨🇬, which was repurposed to mean the modern instrument. --Vahag (talk) 06:31, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Tornio
An IP changed the etymology to something else. Is there any merit to it? —CodeCat 17:08, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's the canonical etymology. The pre-1809 Finnish/Swedish-speaking boundary was further to the west on the coast, around Luleå, so derivation from Swedish is clearly anachronistic. --Tropylium (talk) 18:13, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

cheerlead
Is this a back-formation from cheerleader? --Barytonesis (talk) 15:03, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:57, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

 * I wonder how common "cheerled" really is? Most often, a verb derived from a noun derived from an irregular verb will have regular inflection (as is well-known to linguists), e.g. "broadcasted" etc. AnonMoos (talk) 13:30, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Broadcast as a participle seems to be more common than broadcasted, though. Particularly on google books "was/were broadcast" are more than ten times as common as "was/were broadcasted". Maybe a couple of the former aren't participles, but the margin will still be considerable. It's less in a general google search. Kolmiel (talk) 14:41, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * BGC ngrams can't even find enough instances of cheerleaded to plot, but cheerled is common enough:, , (though the last is split across a line, so it might have been intended as cheer-led). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:50, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


text:
Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2017/April

Hungarian "bátya"
Could it be that Hungarian "bácsi" (uncle) comes from "bátya" (uncle; brother), and that the latter is a Slavic loanword. At the first glance, Proto-Slavic reconstruction would be *batę because it's "батѧ" in OES (Old East Slavic), and since "ę" gave "ja" in Russian (compare врѣмѧ and время), it seems to make sense, however, then the rest of the descendants of this Proto-Slavic word would look differently, unless they were all loaned from another Slavic language. Actually, reconstruction *batja makes the most sense, since all of the descendants in Modern Slavic languages seem to correspond. And the OES "батѧ" could be explained by the fact that in OES it was already pronounced as "ja" - and "ꙗ" and "ѧ" were used interchangeably. CHr0mChIk (talk) 01:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Proto-Slavic: *batę, *batja (uncle/brother/father). Serbo-Croatian: baća/баћа (brother; father; ancestor); Bulgarian: баща (father; ancestor); Czech: báťa (brother; cousin; friend); Russian: батя/батько (father; elderly man); Ukrainian: батьо/батько (father); Belarusian: баця/бацька (father); Old East Slavic: батѧ... etc.
 * Yep. These etymologies for both bácsi and bátya are indeed already recognized by . --Tropylium (talk) 01:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

allectivus and -ivus
User:I'm so meta even this acronym claims that is formed directly by attaching  to. But this doesn't make any sense; where did the t come from? I fixed the etymology to point to the past participle instead, but this got reverted. As it stands now, the etymology is not complete, because the t remains unexplained. Is the suffix actually ? —CodeCat 13:11, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It's common, or at least not uncommon, to give the lemma form of the term (here allego) and not another form, see e.g. nominativus and relativus. And besides grammars which could explain the t, there is -ivus which explains it: "Added to the perfect passive participial stem of verbs". That is, allectivus is allect- (cp. the inflection:

) + -ivus, where the former belongs allego. -84.161.17.166 00:47, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the etymology should be explicit and say something like "From, the perfect passive participial stem of , + ." I recall trying to do this before and having someone revert me. — Eru·tuon 00:59, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I think I added all the words ending in -īvus that I found in L&S early on in my time on Wiktionary. I'm not sure why I chose the verbal lemma as opposed to perfect participle except that the adjectives tend to pertain more to the verbs than their perfect participles. I dunno. — JohnC5 01:14, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Some people could simply do it the way it's done in dictionaries. E.g. in Gaffiot it is: "nōmĭnātīvus, a, um (nomino)". As printed dictionaries often do not cover participles separately, it makes more sense for them to point to allego, nomino and the like.
 * As the English wiktionary covers inflected forms and particples, one could link to them and mention allego, nomino etc. too like suggested above. -84.161.17.166 04:33, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

 * As I said, “I don’t really mind it if you prefer the derivation from, but let’s at least have a consistent message at , OK?”. All I want is consistency instead of contradiction. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 23:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

 * I mean, if you want to get technical, the suffix likely originally was -tivus, probably derived from attaching *-wos to the stem of *-tiH-on-. At some point Latin speakers started to see -tiō and -tivus as if derived from the perfect passive participle, sometimes even detaching the -t- to give -iō and -ivus but these were never productive. Forms like vacivus and nocivus are misleading because they are by all likelihood secondary. Anglom (talk) 08:18, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Although I can't say with certainty that the *-t- in *-tiH- did not come from the past participle originally; it just seems less than ideal to me because -tiō has almost wholly replaced inherited *-tis in its role. Anglom (talk) 08:30, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

metamour
This appears to be based on a reanalysis of as composed of  +. (In fact, I was surprised to learn that that is not the correct etymology.) Do you agree? What's the technical term for a formation like metamour or cheeseburger? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * ? That's apparently the explanation for the second element of each of your examples, but doesn't address the role of the first elements Chuck Entz (talk) 05:23, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Compare . If the first element is indeed intended to be meta-, then I would say it's a blend of meta- and paramour or meta- and amour, based on a playful or serious(ly mistaken) reanalysis of paramour as para- + amour. - -sche (discuss) 00:18, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

*skrinkwaną, *(s)ker-
isn't sourced. The etymology has a link to, but that article doesn't exist. The editor used ine-pro as template parameter for the mention template, so I suppose it wasn't a seasoned editor.

An article for does exist, but its article gives "to cut". Other articles linking there give different meanings (e.g. crux, but that's a different discussion), so maybe this is the page *skriwana should link to, too.

matches the meaning much better and is close enough to suspect that this is a relevant root. I suspect this is a derivative from *(s)ker-. A change from r to h₁ is not much of a stretch, is it? An l suffix (or infix in a compound word) that moved around or something else would have to be explained, though, I guess. Withering leather on wooden frame is a logical connection.

Slightly related, but more of a stretch: Other articles give "to bend, turn" for *(s)ker-, with source. I still suppose a cross as a scratch mark would somehow inform that formation. To bend on the other hand would be homonym, but not really related, as far as I can see. Can someone chime in on this, what do cutting and bending have in common? 91.66.42.138 19:55, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

 * The etymology doesn't make much sense. would lead to, which is another verb.  requires . —CodeCat 20:12, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

 * I fixed the links as promised and then some. tanner being a low ranking profession, probably even back then could explain curious colloquial sound changes. Add nasal speech impediment to that to diffuse a clear r to muffled sound becoming a laryngeal. I'm going out on a limp, again. Anyway, led to many words. If its related to cutting with stone tools, the root might go a long way back. Assuming  for the sake of the argument might still derive from, no? 91.66.42.138 21:15, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It's theoretically possible, but very much ad-hoc. You'd have to explain the identity of the -engʷ- which derives one root from the other. Given the lack of parallel examples that I'm aware of, that's going to be hard. Thus, it's better to treat the two roots as unrelated. Whatever relationship there is between them is beyond current linguistics to retrieve. —CodeCat 22:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * wrong mentions, and  (whence wring). Is that a parallel?
 * ring mentions which mentions  and describes it as extended nasalized form derived from, but again no sources. 91.66.42.138 10:07, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The thing with these "extended" roots is that they are only found in Germanic, so they can't really be reconstructed for PIE. That in turn makes finding a PIE solution difficult. Also, -engʰ- and -engʷ- are different things. —CodeCat 12:28, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

settle
Older dictionaries and works on etymology, including the 1914 Century Dictionary, consider two verbs to have been conflated in settle to such an extent as to now be inseparable: (The Middle English Dictionary has both Middle English words and notes that they may have influenced each other.) Newer dictionaries of modern English that I looked at, however, derive all verb senses from setlan and do not mention (or disclaim) sahtlian. Should our etymology mention sahtlian? - -sche (discuss) 00:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * from 🇨🇬 from 🇨🇬 from (cognate to Dutch zetelen)
 * from 🇨🇬 from 🇨🇬 (from ), which also lived on in dialects as
 * Loos good. Leasnam (talk) 17:47, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

隹 vs. 唯
It is asserted at 維 that once bore the reading *ɢʷi. Is there (primary) evidence for this? I had thought that *ɢʷi was proper to (and that its construction was to be taken as "the sound that a bird 隹 says 口"). 4pq1injbok (talk) 17:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * : . Wyang (talk) 08:06, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Ukrainian чорнобиль
The page for Russian чернобыль 'mugwort' says this is derived from a Proto-Slavic, which in turn derives it from " (“black”) + (<  (“to be”) + )", but the page for Ukrainian Чорнобиль, 'Chernobyl' which in turn comes from Ukrainian чорнoбиль 'mugwort' gives a different etymology, treating it as a later Ukrainian formation "from чoрнe (čórne, “black”, neuter of чoрний (čórnyj)) + билля́ (bylljá, “grass blades or stalks”). I see it as unlikely that two similar words could have different etymologies; is it possible that the Ukrainian etymology is a folk etymology? There is also a similar Czech term: černobýl, which gives a third etymology based on "černý + -o- + bylina", which also seems related to *čьrnobylь. --Hazarasp (talk) 05:07, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Isn't černý ("black") + -o- ("about/for") + bylina ("herb") the same as the second one? Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 10:27, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The second is Ukrainian, while the third is Czech; in the etymology given for the second, the second component mentioned is билля́ (bylljá, “grass blades or stalks”), while in the third the second component mentioned is bylina "herb". These could be cognate, but that is irrelevant as both чорно́биль and černobýl are presented as, respectively, original Ukrainian and Czech formations. However, it seems to me that both of these, as well as чернобыль, must come from a common source due to their extreme similarity and showing all the expected changes for these languages, namely, Proto-Slavic *čьrnobylь -Hazarasp (talk) 12:36, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In a sense all three etymologies could be equivalent. The second element is surely equivalent to 🇨🇬,, it seems like it might be associated with mugwort specifically in North Slavic, see 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬. However, the herb etymon is apparently derived from *byti or at least its PIE ancestor *bʰuH "to become, to grow" + -*lь.
 * I'd advise against reconstructing the word to Proto-Slavic, just list the formations in each other's etymologies. Crom daba (talk) 18:05, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've made some changes, is this acceptable? Crom daba (talk) 19:12, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems fine to me. I made a few more minor changes. --WikiTiki89 19:26, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Just to clarify, the 🇨🇬 is an interfix (like 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬), and is not the preposition meaning "about/for". There is no question that the first part of 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, and 🇨🇬 comes from 🇨🇬. The only confusion is about where the last part comes from. And all three of these languages should have the same etymology. --WikiTiki89 14:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

zocken
I don't know of a Yiddish word that would fit this claimed etymon... Anyone have insight or a better etymological dictionary of German? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:29, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Pfeiffer says: "aus jidd. zschocken, zachkenen ‘spielen’, hebr. śᵉḥōq ‘lachen, scherzen, spielen’". Kolmiel (talk) 07:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe the second spelling is more correct. He also mentions zachkan, zachkener for "gambler". Of course, this would be tsakhkan or so in an English-based transcription. Kolmiel (talk) 07:50, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

 * I've noticed that with many of these Dutch and German words that derive from colloquial Yiddish, the Yiddish term is nowadays obscure and not found in any dictionary. That's to be expected I guess since today's Yiddish dictionaries are based mainly on the Eastern Yiddish of the late 19th century on. By this time many older colloquial expressions may have fallen out of use. Furthermore, Dutch and German mainly had contact with Western Yiddish. Anyway, as far as the Hebrew etymon, I think the root צ־ח־ק makes more phonological sense than שׂ־ח־ק, although the latter is not out of the question; their meanings are very similar anyway (and they probably started off as dialectal forms of each other). --WikiTiki89 15:12, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Oh yeah. I didn't even realize that śᵉḥōq would be with ש rather than צ. Yours is indeed more likely. Or else they might have been merged in the Yiddish word. (I'd thought that zschocken was a misprint for zchocken, but maybe the -s- is intended.) Kolmiel (talk) 17:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Something came to my mind right now. In pubs around here, they play a kind of game of dice, which is called Schocken with . That would be very likely to be the same word. Kolmiel (talk) 17:14, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Well actually both and  exist with similar meanings, but generally ś is used to transcribe שׂ. There is also the word  (from Slavic, cf. 🇨🇬), which means "to clink glasses together", not sure if it's relevant. --WikiTiki89 18:36, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Well, de:zocken has a great deal to say on the subject. I suppose I'll just copy over what they say, unless anyone sees a problem with that. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * One problem might be lack of attribution violating the Creative Commons license, which can be easily solved by mentioning in either the edit summary or on the talk page where the material came from. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:09, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Found it: --WikiTiki89 20:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Beinfeld/Bochner:
 *  [TSAKhKN – TSAKhKONIM] slang gambler   [TSAKhKE/TSKhOKE] slang gamble
 * Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary:
 *  צַחקן s. (fl.) gambler  צַחְקען v. n. (fl.) to play  to jest, joke

gecko
Can we verify the existence of 🇨🇬? On this page one dictionary says that the Malay word is totek. And another says "gecko" might be derived from Achehnese gèh-gòh ("busy"). This says that it's unsure if it's Malay and the form they mention is gekop, not gekok. With all of this, I just want to rule out that we're dealing with some made-up dictionary word. Kolmiel (talk) 08:00, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've edited the etymology, pointing out that the existence of the Malay word is, as yet, not quite sure. Kolmiel (talk) 15:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

pusus
Why in etymology "See putus"? Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 10:23, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

 * It's "From puer. See also putus" and in putus ("Etymology 2") it is: "Another form of pūsus, from puer." If that's correct, then the entries should somehow point to each other. -84.161.17.166 04:43, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

cencerro, cincerro
Our Spanish entry claims that it comes from Basque, the RAE dictionary claims it is onomatopoeic, and the Portuguese entry is silent on the matter. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:25, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Is that a variant of 🇨🇬 ? Leasnam (talk) 00:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Albanian rânë
Can someone verify this etymology for in light of the most recent edit? I get the feeling some Albanian users are trying to avoid having words descended from Latin and look for native roots to them. In some cases, they may be right, but I feel like it's stretching it in this case. Similarly,, , , , have also been changed. The edits themselves also look less than neat. Word dewd544 (talk) 00:58, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I reverted 's edits and added sources. --Vahag (talk) 08:19, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

頬白鮫
RFV of the etymology. ばかFumiko￥talk 04:38, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

speel
I reverted an edit by User:Mountebank1 that made a mess of the entry, but it wasn't entirely their fault: this is obviously a convergence of a number of different etymologies under one spelling. I split it into 5 etymologies based on my best guesses, but I would appreciate it if someone could put everything on a more solid footing and provide etymological details. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 15:06, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

拍拖
RFV of the etymology: park + talk? . — justin(r)leung { (t...) 22:08, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Interesting but definitely sounds like folk etymology - may be keepable if explained as such. Wyang (talk) 10:14, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

globin
Is this a backformation from hemoglobin? DTLHS (talk) 21:23, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * According to the OED, no. I'll fix the entry. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

bird
“penis” (in “Asian slang”): Entry explains it as a calque of 🇨🇬. Is there a source for this? Association between “bird” and “penis” is common in East and Southeast Asia; cf. 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬. Wyang (talk) 11:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

 * Looking back in history, the evolution of the section was:

 * {| class=wikitable

! Edit !! By !! Etymology !! What kind of slang
 * (March 2006) || anon || lua || Filipino slang
 * (March 2006) || User:Davilla || Possible literal translation of Chinese slang or other Asian origin || Filipino slang
 * (May 2012) || User:Amir Hamzah 2008 || From 🇨🇬. || Asian slang
 * }
 * (May 2012) || User:Amir Hamzah 2008 || From 🇨🇬. || Asian slang
 * }
 * }

 * Wyang (talk) 12:12, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I was the one who called it a calque, just because it was clearly not a straightforward borrowing of burung. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:21, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess the question was whether the (sole) Malay origin could be verified - it is apparently a calque from some language(s). Wyang (talk) 12:24, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The comparison is not that unusual, cf. . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Or, indeed, . There is a fairly natural analogy here that does not necessarily require any calquing in any direction (but, of course, if this use is confined to "Asian slang", that's incidental evidence of a sort). --Tropylium (talk) 16:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Let us not forget ;) Leasnam (talk) 22:12, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Chaslyn
Where did the rare female given name come from? I suspect it is a feminine form of Chase...? Or am I incorrect? Could someone please elaborate? PseudoSkull (talk) 22:10, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Another possibility would be, a nickname for . Just as likely, it may be nothing but a random combination someone thought would sound nice. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Антарктика/Антарктида
What led to the Антарктика - Антарктида divergency? As far as I know, East Slavic languages are the only ones with a -tida ending at all. 78.0.218.54 23:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In German it's called, which suggests an Ancient Greek pattern of nominative / genitive  (compare , so maybe there is a byform with "-id-" running around the Middle Ages somewhere. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:27, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it must be the Orthodox Connection. Apparently Romanian also has Antarctica/Antarctida. How come I didn't think to check that earlier... (formerly 78.0) 93.139.41.69 16:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * You missed more than just that: 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, etc. --WikiTiki89 16:53, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * According to the Duden and other sources, is the region and Antarktika is the continent. Антарктида might be coined after the pattern of Atlantis (Атлантида in Russian), which was quite popular since Donnelly's book published in 1882. Шурбур (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Not really the point here, but what you describe is prescription rather than actual use. Antarktika is very rare in German. There's a searchable corpus of the newspaper Die Zeit from 1946 to 2016 at dwds.de. "Antarktis" has 1690 hits, "Antarktika" has 26 altogether. Just a single one between 1956 and 1981. And another single one between 1996 and 2010. Kolmiel (talk) 18:03, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Note that Ανταρκτίδα gets some hits in Google Books, although very few. And Ανταρκτίς gets one. --WikiTiki89 13:34, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * -ида is just from the Greek stem (ending in -id) plus a feminine ending -а. Pretty common when borrowing from the сlassical languages, hence Themis → Фемида, Nemesis → Немезида and so on. Шурбур (talk) 13:45, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the issue is the existence of the Greek source word. --WikiTiki89 14:06, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * What is the source for the German form Arktis? Greek ἀρκτίς seems to be uncommon. Шурбур (talk) 21:50, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems to be chiefly a German backformation. Pfeiffer says: "Im 19. Jh. werden dazu die Substantive Arktis f. und Antarktis f. ‘Gebiet um den Nord- bzw. Südpol’ gebildet." Kolmiel (talk) 17:44, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
The etymology has become a short essay. ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Reverted. Starting an etymology with "The general principle..." is never a good sign. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:16, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * While we're talking about this: it looks to me like the quote in the etymology has a lot more text than necessary for etymological purposes. Would anyone object to trimming it down to just the part in quotes? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

cagey
Is the etymology really unknown? This looks like a straightforward derivation from, and the semantics make more or less sense. --Barytonesis (talk) 00:41, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * OED Online also gives the etymology as "unknown", for what it's worth. BigDom 09:57, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

scuttle
The etymologies of the nouns don't look like they're properly sorted out. Etym 1 has "A hatch that provides access to the roof from the interior of a building" and etym 2 has "A small hatch or opening in a boat. Also, small opening in a boat or ship for draining water from open deck." Is that accurate, or do they belong under the same etymology header? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 07:03, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've moved the construction sense to the proper etymology Leasnam (talk) 01:40, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

femur
Can anyone get a citation? Like De Vaan? Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 16:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * De Vaan doesn't know where it comes from, but due to the r/n inflection, he concludes that it must be rather old. —CodeCat 16:56, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

bastonnade
The French and Middle French entries have conflicting etymologies. The French simply says it's from +, while the Middle French entry says it's from Italian. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:04, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * TLFi says it's from 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬 or 🇨🇬. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 02:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have edited the etymologies accordingly. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:41, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Missing gloss(es)
The etymology for confound could use a gloss or two.

hosteler, hostler, ostler
Are they simply alternative forms of one another, or are they doublets? --Barytonesis (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

A contributor has deleted a reference to Latin in the etymology section of on French Wiktionary. Indeed, it seems to be traced back only to the Portuguese. The Latin appeared later than the Portuguese word according to  on Latin Wikipedia. Can anyone explain a link between the English and the Latin ? If there is no such a link, it should be removed from our entry. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:12, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In addition, is the Portuguese really from Persian? Isn’t it unlikely for Portugal to have had a direct contact with Persians in the 15th or 16th century? I presume the word was from India, where Portugal had contacts. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:22, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Persian was the court and literary language of the Mughal Empire. Шурбур (talk) 06:57, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In addition, they certainly had direct contacts too, e.g. on Hormuz and elsewhere in the region. Шурбур (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I’ve found a source myself: According to the author, the English is from the Portuguese, which is from the Indian language (probably Hindi) Chin, which is from 秦. Persian and Latin seem to have nothing to do with it here. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * 1688, Gabriel Magalhaens, [//books.google.com/books?id=fUQI3KVX4bIC&pg=PA4&dq=China&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=China&f=false A New History of China, Containing a Description of the Most Considerable Particulars of that Vast Empire] (italics as the original):
 * The Eastern Tartars moreover in derision call’d China, Nica Corum, or the Kingdom of the Barbarians, tho’ at present, now they are setled therein, and are become Masters of it, they call it Tulimpa Corum, or the Kingdom of the Middle. The Kingdoms of the Indians, as Canara, Bengala, and others call it Chin, as I was inform’d in the Province of Sù Chuen by two Jogues, of which the one had been at Goa, and had learnt some Portugal Words; and, as I understood at Pekim, by some Merchants of the Country. This name of Chin seems to have been given to China by the Indians, because of the Family of Chin, who reign’d a Hundred sixty nine Years after Christ; though I find more probability to believe that it comes from the Family of Cin, who reign’d two Hundred forty six before Christ, the chief of which Family was Master of all China, and among the rest of the Province of Yûn nân, which is not far distant from Bengala, because the Chineses pronouncing strongly, and whistling the Word Cin through the Teeth, the Indians that cannot imitate them, pronounce it Chin, and the Portugals, who took this word from the Indians, not having any word in their Language that ends in N, have added an A at the latter End. The Italians write China like the Portugheses; but they pronounce it Kina; and so they ought to write it Cina, to give it the same sound as the Germans who write Schina.

глава
I don't like the way the Ukrainian entry is formatted. There is obviously a single etymology/word, which just happens to have different inflectional patterns according to its meaning. --Barytonesis (talk) 15:59, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The 3rd meaning may be a calque. Шурбур (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

ゴキブリ
RFV of the etymology. ばかFumiko￥talk 03:52, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems to be a translation of . —suzukaze (t・c) 07:04, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

οἴσω
Nobody has any idea where this suppleted form is from? Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 15:54, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It's said to be from 🇨🇬, which is also the source of 🇨🇬 and thus of 🇨🇬. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:49, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

liber
Vowel fails to make sense, ew/ow/u > i??? Would only work if the vowel dissimilated the exact same way as Etymology 1. Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 05:32, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree, and actually Etymology 1 is odd too: I would expect lūber. I feel like Old Latin phonology must have been odder than the restricted repertoire of five vowel letters suggests. — Eru·tuon 06:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The first etymology is considered fairly sound. De Vaan describes the progression as PIt. > Proto-Italo-Faliscan *louβeros > *loiβeros (dissimilation of *ou > *oi before a labial) > Old Latin  > Latin  and Faliscan . De Vaan also supports the second etymology, again appealing to dissimilation of *u before a labial. PIt.  > Latin  further demonstrates that this change was fairly robust in the environment *l_β. — JohnC5 06:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, okay, but does Old Latin oe typically change to ī? I recall it changing to ū in and . Or hm, actually the vowel in those words is oe, which must be different from oi. (This is an odd sound change too; I have wondered if oe was actually pronounced in some odd way, like maybe . Similarly for the other Old Latin diphthongs. Sadly, there's no actual data to base this on; one would have to theorize about what phonetic values or phonological features would be most plausible based on the spelling and the attested sound changes.) — Eru·tuon 07:42, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * But oe remained in for some reason. Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 14:06, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I forgot to mention, but y'all may find this helpful. — JohnC5 15:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

English loof ("palm of the hand"), glove
The entry "loof" reconstructs an Old English etymon, but the word seems only attested in Old Norse and Gothic, not in West Germanic. It is also a chiefly northern word within English. This looks like the typical situation of a Norse loan to me. And if this is so, the derivative "glove" may also be borrowed. There seems to be an Old English attestation, but it might have been rare or late. Does anyone know more? Kolmiel (talk) 15:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * is attested at least once (and possibly glossed once as well), in the West Saxon dialect of OE (making the possibility of ot being a Norse loan unlikely). It is a strong-a stem masc, so it is a byform of the reconstructed form . I have added it to the PGmc entry. Leasnam (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay. This doesn't rule out my Norse theory, but makes it difficult to prove. Thanks. Kolmiel (talk) 19:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

User:HJJHolm and their etymologies
Now that I have been accused twice of exercising "god-like" overreach in editing etymologies, I'd like to bring the discussion here. HJJHolm has been calling our etymologies "phantasy", making debatable claims about PIE, and adding generally rude comments: Can someone sort through these? I'm getting tired of reading so many exclamation points!!!1!1! — JohnC5 15:46, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/kʷékʷlos
 * Talk:rreth
 * Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/raþą
 * Talk:ρόδα
 * Talk:bronzo
 * Talk:silver
 * Talk:silver
 * Don't feed the wheel trolling. Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 16:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * This "behaving like God"-thing is his standard phrase. He's said the same thing about Leasnam and myself. It's a bit strange. Still, I think his objections are sometimes worth considering, not totally made-up stuff. Kolmiel (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh some of them have merit, which is why I brought them here. Some of them, however, are not at all. — JohnC5 20:01, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, I went back to his page now. I'd forgotten about those strange theories of his. So these do qualify as "made-up stuff". But not everything he says is based on them. Kolmiel (talk) 21:29, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Tone questions aside, much of what's linked here seems to be basically legitimate as questions.
 * One problem may be that, >90% of the time, we only give etymologies "ex cathedra" from some source, without explaining the actual reasoning behind them. Issues like finer details of historical phonology get brushed aside in this process, and so you can very easily end up with e.g. e in looking just plain irregular. As per e.g.  though, there was a late Proto-Albanian umlaut process *a > e before a lost unstressed *i, which is probably what is at work here (esp. given the reference to this being a "plural formation of "). I cannot tell though if the trigger is supposed to have been the *i in the posited diminutive, or some later Albanian-internal derivation.
 * It's hard to say what should be done in cases like these. Urge more people to work on writing things like Albanian historical phonology (thus far unwritten)?
 * As far as sourcing goes, we maybe just need to have a citation needed for this etymology type template and slap it on things, until someone is willing to go through a specialized monograph on e.g. Romance loans in Greek to fill them in. --Tropylium (talk) 23:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Could you update ? I wonder, if we fix up these entries slightly, whether this user will calm down slightly. — JohnC5 05:52, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Simply give scientific sources and spare all this useless sentences. Thank you.HJJHolm (talk) 15:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Please don't be rude. People here put a lot of effort into typing up etymologies for Wiktionary, and just because they don't provide sources for every etymology that they type up doesn't mean that those etymologies are false. Tharthan (talk) 15:47, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I suspect I see what the problem is. Your (HJJHolm's) userpage states you're coming in from Wikipedia; you may be used to the policies that unsourced material needs to be sourced when challenged, and that original research is disallowed. We have no such policies on Wiktionary (see WT:WFW). Already all our lexicographic work is, in a sense, original research.
 * We have not strictly codified how much editor freedom we allow on etymology, but roughly the practice seem to be that
 * etymologies can be freely proposed as long as they link closely related languages, follow established sound laws and do not stray far afield with semantic changes;
 * editors may exercise their own judgement in ranking or choosing to include competing published etymologies;
 * published etymologies normally outrank any "Wiktionary-native" ones.
 * Disputes can happen of course, which is what this forum is for. You're even free to propose new policies, though you will probably need to present an actual argument to get anywhere with that. --Tropylium (talk) 16:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It's actually good that Wiktionary doesn't have the same standards as Wikipedia, because an encyclopaedia is not a dictionary; a dictionary is formed differently than an encyclopaedia is. I don't think that I would be very active at all on Wiktionary if we had to follow the same stringent policies and rules that Wikipedia has. That's the reason that I'm not very active on Wikipedia (well that and the political nonsense going on on Wikipedia). Tharthan (talk) 20:00, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Latin suffixes as intermediate steps
Should any Latin suffix for which a page exists on Wiktionary be considered a valid step in the etymology of a Latin word, or are some just presented for explanation to help people understand the root of the word? In particular, for monstriger the etymology is currently given [minus the glosses, etc.] as "monstrum + -iger". However an old Latin dictionary like Harpers Latin Dictionary or the older one by White & Riddle gives the etymology as "monstrum; gero", implying we should maybe be using "monstrum + gero". The Latin-English Dictionary For the Use of Junior Students (derived from White & Riddle) doesn't include this word, but for the similar monstrifer it gives it in the form "monstr-um; (i); fer-o", which might be displayed here as "monstrum + -i- + fero". This is the form I have used on a few etymologies because as I try to get more familiar with Latin I like to see all of the pieces forming the words. In this case I see Wiktionary has a page for -iger, but not -ger, however it has pages for both -ifer and -fer. Are these included for merely explanatory reasons or are these considered intermediate steps in their own right? Should the etymology for monstriger really be "monstrum + -iger, -i- + gero", or even "monstrum + -iger, -i- + -ger, gero"? (Not having a copy of the OLD, I don't have a clue what form they use.) -Mike (talk) 22:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Seeing these etymologies, I'd wonder why the combination "monstrum + -i- + fero" is not "monstrifero" and why it's not a verb. In truth, the -i- is superfluous, the change of the final ending to -i- is a process common to all nouns and adjectives in Latin and is simply the thematic vowel (Proto-Italic -o-) that has been weakened by Latin's regular treatment of unstressed vowels. I do think and  should have their own entries though, and  and  should not exist. —CodeCat 22:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

 * I want to point out that just because a morpheme is part of the surface analysis, doesn't mean that it is part of the actual derivation. --WikiTiki89 14:35, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

🇨🇬
I take it that the origin of this is some kind of a dimunutive of 🇨🇬. Does anyone know what form it is? scarpino or scarpina or something? And is it common in Italian and in what sense? Googling "lo scarpino" yields a lot of pictures of football shoes. Kolmiel (talk) 03:44, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I figured it out through 🇨🇬. Kolmiel (talk) 14:45, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

廟街
RFV of the etymology (taken from Chinese Wikipedia). — justin(r)leung { (t...) 05:28, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Roots such as PIE
This entry currently gives no evidence for the reconstruction of a root: the only derived term seems to be the adjective. Checking thru a number of sources (,, and the abridged free version of ) reveals no such evidence either, though at least a few indeed claim derivation from a root. This leads to two questions: --Tropylium (talk) 13:36, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) do we intend to reconstruct roots behind every PIE term, no matter if a root is required by the data or not? (Would we create a root  just to house ?)
 * 2) why would we reconstruct the root as  and not ? This smells of circular logic applied to root structure ("well roots can't end in *-Hr, so the *r must be a suffix, therefore there are no roots ending in *-Hr"), especially when we already have Category:Proto-Indo-European CeHR-shape roots.

outsmart
Was this word modelled on outwit, or was it an entirely separate coinage? Tharthan (talk) 18:29, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I imagine it's no more than definition 3 of + . Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:55, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

dragane
Does anyone here know the Mediaeval Latin etymon of the 🇨🇬? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 23:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The Online Etymology Dictionary says the ML. etymon of the English word is, which is doubtless the source of the Manx word as well. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

 * OK, I've recorded that as the etymon. Thanks. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:55, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

soffrance
Does the 🇨🇬 just derive from the Classical Latin, or would a Vulgar Latin etymon differ? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 23:04, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The only difference would be that Classical Latin /ʊ/ became Vulgar Latin /o/ as usual, but I don't see any need to posit a specific VL form between soffrance and sufferentia as the former derives quite regularly from the latter. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:07, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

 * Lovely. Is this correct? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:02, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess, but showing the VL. is really unnecessary. Also, if we're going to show VL., we should show the difference between close mid and open mid vowels somehow, so either sọffęręntia or soffɛrɛntia or something like that. But personally, I wouldn't show the VL. at all. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

 * OK. Removed. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:12, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

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