The Russians have a wonderful verb, syozhitsya (съёжиться), meaning to shrink down and curl up to make oneself inconspicuous. It’s derived from the noun yozhe (ёж), meaning “hedgehog.”
As an aside, the Romans themselves liked to study etymology, but their methods were "less than scientific. " Some of their (supposed ) etymologies are:
Britannia - From “Brutus” - stupid , because of a supposed characteristic of the natives.
Gallia - Gaul is so called from the pale complexion of it’s inhabitants (“gala” meaning “milk” in Greek ). The Franci were later notorious for breaking (frango, frangere, fregi, fractus) their oaths.
Germania - the Germans had huge (immanis, -e) bodies and were thus thought to breed (germinare ) prolifically.
Source “Classical Latin: An Introductory Course” JC McKeown.
The book actually has a ton of interesting ones like that. Yes, the author acknowledges that they are wrong.
Tempura, a popular Japanese snack consisting of vegetables coated in crispy batter and then fried in oil, was actually introduced by Portuguese missionaries in Nagasaki over four hundred years ago. The name comes from the Latin word for time, tempora, which I’ve read was used colloquially to refer to meatless Fridays–hence the vegetables.
Cajuns and their French background come from eastern Canada by way of The Great Expulsion. That area (eastern Canada) was home to a French colony called Acadia (French: Acadie). The French settlers there were called Acadian - or in French, “Acadien.” If you pronounce “Acadienne” with a French accent/cadence, and give it a bit of time, eventually you end up with “Cajun.”
Both words derive from “pet,” meaning “fart.”
Interesting. The Russian word is perdet’ (пердеть), which is quite rude; a milder variant is pukat’ (пукать).
The derivatives perdun and pukalka (пердун and пукалка) mean exactly the same things they do in English: old fart (geezer) and little fart (toddler).
Marzipan is derived from the Arabic for ‘the king who sits still’, a mocking reference to images of a seated Christ on European coins that made their way to the middle east. The term was first applied to the coins, then the boxes they were stored in and finally the contents of the boxes later on.
Tawdry is a contraction of St Audrey’s lace, St Audrey having died from throat cancer believing it to be God’s punishment for her one vanity - wearing expensive scarves. Lace scarves were sold at an annual fair in her honour but gradually declined in quality, altering the original meaning of tawdry from ‘refined’ to ‘crappy.’
Avocado is from the Nahuatl word for testicle.
For anyone unfortunate enough to NOT subscribe to AWAD:
Gossamer: From goose + summer. The term is believed to have originated as a name for late autumn when geese are in season and then transferred to cobwebs seen around that time of the year. Earliest documented use: 1325.
Orchid is from the Greek word for the same thing.
I’m guessing that “bao” – Cantonese for a bun (filled with, say, sweet minced pork) – comes from the Portuguese word for bread. Am I right?
(I do know that the Vietnamese dish “pho” comes from French “feu,” fire, as in “pot au feu.”)
According to one etymology, infantry is derived from the Latin word infantem for youth. It referred to newly recruited soldiers who were not yet experienced enough to serve in the cavalry.
And, in turn, “infant” means “doesn’t (yet) talk.” In-fans = not talking (“fari” is one of those Latin verbs with the weird infinitives and only a few forms.)
I was under the impression that it mainly referred to comets, which were considered omens of extremely ill aspect.
My current favorite etymology is one I stumbled onto while chasing the Elephant’s Child through Wikipedia. Most everyone knows the tip of the penis is called the glans. Did you know that’s from the Latin glans which means “acorn”? Which, when you think about the approximate shape makes sense. Glans or the plural, glandes, was also used to describe the ammunition used when using a sling.
LSD is the abbreviation for “lysergic acid diethylamide.” But it’s LSD instead of LAD because the former comes from the German name for it, Lyserg Säure Diäthylamid. So, although they don’t look like it at first, the English words “acid” and “sour” are linguistic cognates.
I don’t think “cognate” is the word you mean, but you make a good point.
“Sour” in Greek is “oxy-.” Hence, “oxygen” in German is a word that looks and sounds just like the English “sour stuff.” And there’s a common northern-climes weed/small flower with a tart-tasting stem – its botanical name is “Oxalis.”
This reference to “sourstuff” reminds me of Poul Anderson’s “Uncleftish Beholding” - a description of atomic (“Uncleftish”) theory (“Beholding”) with all those naughty Greek and Latin derived words replaced with their Germanic equivalents. Text is here: Redirecting to Google Groups
I wouldn’t call it a town, though. In the same vein the element holmium, that was found in the same quarry, is named after Stockholm.
“flu” is short for “influenza”, which is Italian for “influence”, because the illness was due to the influence of the stars (astrology).
I also like the “recombobulation area” just past security in the Milwaukee airport: discombobulated is a word made up out of whole cloth some two centuries ago.
And the medical term “orchidectomy” is the surgical removal of the testicles.
Whereas “malaria” was thought to be caused by bad air.