Pasta alla Puttanesca = pasta the way a whore makes it.
The origin I heard is from Bitchin’ Kitchen; Nadia G. describes it exactly as above, and explains that whores only got one day a week to shop so they bought things that lasted longer and threw them all together in the sauce.
The other origin I heard (from a friend) is that’s a quick dish to make between clients.
The word “marlin” as in the fish comes from the “moor line,” corrupted into “marlin” by sea-going types (cf. gunwale, forecastle, boatswain, etc.). Marlins (moor lines) were worked with a spiked tool called the marlinspike (somewhat resembling the marlins bill), so the “marlinspike fish” became shortened to “marlin.”
“Electron” is the Greek word for “amber.” The word “electric” preceded it in English, meaning “like amber,” referring to amber’s “static cling” properties.
The city “Istanbul” is a Turkish corruption of a Greek phrase that just means “to the city.”
But why did *Constantinople *get the works?
Mine are on a slightly different tack
Butterfly has very different words in the romance languages, which is quite unusual:
Papillon in French
Mariposa in Spanish
Farfalla in Italian
Borboleta or panapanã in Portuguese
Also, in the germanic languages:
Schmetterling or tagfalter - German
Sommerfugl - Danish
etc.
I’ve also heard it said that in English, many of your concrete nouns (“plank,” “house,” “door,” “plate,” and so on) are Germanic while abstract nouns (“innovation,” “philosophy,” “intelligence,” “compassion,” and the like) are French/Latinate. For much the same reason: your peasants are much more concerned with daily survival, while your nobles have the time to talk about concepts and ideas.
I don’t know how true this is, but it’s fun to think about.
I hope that’s true. I’ve always wondered that.
Right you are. I’ve been propagating this mistruth for years. I wonder where I got the idea that Vinci was Italian for Venice?
Thanks for the correction!
The OED disagrees, and so does Cecil.
On the flip side, honeymoon in various languages is a direct translation of the word “honey” and “moon”
Lune de miel in French, miel luna in Spanish, etc.
However, German is flitterwochen - sparkle or tinsel (or possibly according to the German wiki, from the old high german for caress) week. Honigmond has been used in German for both honeymoon and for July.
True. That’s why the regular Spanish word for “rusty”, oxidado, sounds so silly to us – “rusty” feels earthy and strong, while “oxidated” feels scientific and weak. But native Spanish speakers don’t feel that dichotomy, because their *normal *vocabulary comes right from Latin (most of it, anyway).
(Yes, I know, there are arguably earthier terms that can be used for “rust” in Spanish, like sarro, but that really means “schmutz” or “crud” in general.)
A similar example is the road sign “Disminuya su velocidad.” Or, as we would say, SLOW DOWN! (Even Spock wouldn’t say something as professorial as “diminish your velocity”).
Nitpick - actually, a duck’s egg. And in cri8cket, when a player scores zero, it is usually shortened to just duck.
I read one last night that I thought was interesting. Parasite comes from the Greek word parasitos, which meant, long ago, “dinner guest”. In Republican and Imperial Rome the term was applied to clients, who were poor men who waited upon a wealthy one as his followers. In time, clients were thought of as spongers, or uninvited guests.
Something I heard in passing long ago and have never bothered checking up on is the origin of the hip term dig, as in “Can you dig it?” Supposedly, it’s short for digest, as in “to digest information”.
O good Lord.
I’l’ take that nitpick- I’m a little more disturbed that Cecil thinks the whole etymology I posted is bogus.
“Dolphin” originally applied only to a mammal. It came to also describe a type of fish because of a(nother) nautical corruption of one of the fish’s names “dorado.”
LSD is “lysergic acid diethylamide,” but the initials derive from the German name for it lyserg saure diethylamide
“Sour” and “acid”…makes sense. Reminds me of how “oxy-” means “sour” in Greek, and how oxygen in German is just “sour stuff”. And how there’s a common weed with the botanical name of “oxalis” that has a lemony taste to its stems.
Pumpernickel means “goblin fart.”
Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. The response was by a German native.
IIRC, “pumpernickel” was German slang for a Peasant. Pumpernickel bread was semi-black bread, peasant food. It’s not a comment on the bread’s indigestability (I think pumpernickel is pretty edible, myself, but maybe the original product wasn’t so nice as the one I buy in my local supermarket), but on its humble origins, with a classist poke at those origins.
I don’t think so. The German Scheiss is the root; the double s morphed into t in English.