I’m not Ximenean but I’ll answer anyway:
Italian “miniatura” art of illuminating a manuscript, from Medieval Latin, from Latin “miniatus”, past participle of “miniare” to color with minium, from “minium” red lead
Thanks. I looked it up, but your post was clearer for me.
A Mamba is a deadly, poisonous snake, while a Mambo is a rather festive Carribean dance.
I got nothin’
The word “fiasco” (a colossal failure or general botch job) comes from the Italian term for “bottle”, and is related to “flask”. This page discusses the etymology in some detail, and concludes that the likeliest explanation is that if a glassmaker produced a flawed specimen of what was intended to be artistic, he could always salvage the creation by turning it into a common bottle.
Zaragoza, Spain (Saragossa in English) is so named b/c Caesar founded a city there called Caesaraugusta way back when, which the Moors captured and named Saraqusta, which eventually became Zaragoza.
Calcomanía, at least in Spain, although I’ve seen it with all-as before. Calcar means “to draw by transparency” (for example, by placing a piece of semitransparent paper on top of the original, or by placing both against a source of light such as a window"; a calco is the drawing such obtained.
In Spain calcomanías aren’t stickers, they’re temporary tattoos: the way they’re applied is similar to how you can obtain a calco, not from a drawing, but from a cutout.
Yup, which is the Spanish word for hat (in general, not only the type for which that word is used in English); after all, a hat is just a wearable shadow. A cap gets a different name: gorra (RAE says “etimology unknown”), which gives us gorrón, someone who borrows without intent to return (from beggars using a cap to collect money).
The reason the so-busy coat of arms of Spain includes a pomegranate in its peak is to represent Granada, that being the word for both the fruit and the weapon as well as the name of the city and of the last Taifa. Its color is called granate in Spanish: that is also the name of a gem of that color in several languages.
Bistro comes from the Russian Bystro (быстро) which means “quickly”. When Russian soldiers occupied Paris after the first defeat of Napoleon in 1814 they determined to take advantage of their holiday in Paris, because they knew they were going to have to march back to feudalistic Russia fairly soon. They would sit in the restaurants and cafes of Paris demanding to be wined and dined, shouting bystro bystro to make the wait staff rush to their every whim.
Pomegranate is also involved in the Australian term Pom for an English person. It started off as Immigrant which (as so many early inhabitants were Cockneys) became the rhyming slang Jimmy Grant, then Pomegranate, then Pommie, then Pom.
I’m learning Latin because I love words.
Javalina got named such because the Romans liked to hunt wild pigs with javelins.
Commode means comfort.
And I gather that the slang word “cockamamy” = weird, crazy; is a corruption of “decalcomania”. It would seem that a lot of people thought that stickers / decals / “transfers” were a very silly invention…
On a related note, “cello” comes from “violoncello” which literally means “little big viol” with both an augmentative and a diminutive (viol-on-cello) as it was the smallest of the bigger instruments of the family.
Not quite. Corn is a cousin of granum, not a descendant - it comes from a Germanic word that shares a theorized PIE root with granum.
See also: Jersey (Caesarea, one of the Channel Islands), and thus New Jersey. There are plenty of similar examples (for Augustus, too).
I haven’t looked it up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right! By “gathered” do you mean that you came up with this idea on your own? If so, wrong or right (but especially if you’re right), you are really good at this.
Interestingly, the Afrikaans is sambreel (that “ee” is pronounced somewhat like English “ear”) which tells me they got it from the Spanish or Portuguese.
There’s a South African delicacy of minced dried fruit, sometimes salted, a little like thicker tart fruit leather, that is called mebos. I’ve discovered it’s likely named after the Japanese pickled, salty plum relative, umeboshi (from ume, the plum variety itself). Love to know what the link is there. Probably the Portuguese again, or the Dutch in Nagasaki.
decal, too.
Yes, it’s garnet in English (see also: granite)
I believe I read about “cockamamy”, in a book (by Leo Rosten??) on American Jewish adaptations of / influence on, the English language in America. Author was certainly implying that the expression originated in the Jewish milieu in the US.
The word “petard” from the phrase “hoist by his own petard” refers to a particular type of small-charge explosive and is derived from a French phrase meaning “fart to excess.”
The modern word genteel comes from the mediaeval English/French gentil referring to members of the aristocracy, which was in turn derived from the Latin gens meaning “clan.”
Hmm. Does that have any relationship to legendary legendary French farter Le Petomane?