Talk:self-stimulation

mentioning the German word

Im not sure the German word really merits a mention in the etymology, since it is only related to the masturbation sense and it's not all that surprising that a word for masturbation would have the word "self" in it. The second part isnt particularly close in meaning to the English. Even so, I wont delete it yet, because its possible the German word really is the origin of the English, due to German being prominent in psychiatry especially in the 20th century. —Soap— 03:45, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

They are not cognates. Only their first syllables are cognate ("self" : "selbst"). Concerning the remaining syllables: one derived via Latin from PIE *(s)teyg; the other derived via Germanic from PIE *priHós. The fact that the two words have the same number of syllables (five) is an accidental coincidence. I removed the claim to cognacy. If the English term arose as a translation of the German term as used in psychiatry then that could be mentioned, but it does not support the claim to cognacy.   AugPi 05:27, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

this is a late reply, but ... we never said they were cognates. i believe the intention was to suggest that it might have been coined in German and then calqued into English. "Compare" is a linguist's wedge word. It's easy to dislike, but sometimes we dont have anything else to use because we just dont know. —Soap— 00:05, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

masturbation

although the cite i added to sense 2 isnt the best since it has "sexual" before it, i have seen this used without qualifiers to still mean masturbation. i just decided to post this one link quickly because i happened to find it while looking for the autism-related sense. —Soap— 18:22, 25 November 2024 (UTC)