Are pets “pets” because we pet them or do we “pet” pets because they are pets?
This is my cute way of asking which came first, the verb or the noun and is the first word related to the second?
Rob Watts and Jess Zafarris tackle stuff like this all the time, and just covered exactly this question this week. (Words Unravelled YouTube channel.)
Moderator Note
While the video is interesting, it’s not really reasonable to expect everyone to watch a 44 minute video just to get a factual answer to the OP. Please post a summary or at least answer the OP next time.
For those who don’t want to watch the entire video just to answer the question, the word “pet” (according to the video) comes from the Scottish Gaelic (or maybe Irish) word “peata”, which just means a “domesticated animal”, and originally referred specifically to lambs.
Pet as a verb came later.
The in-depth discussion starts at about the 1 minute mark in the video.
That’s funny. I wonder if I saw this in my YouTube recommendations without remembering and subconsciously internalized it because the sentence in my OP popped into my head and I thought it was an interesting question.