Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2012/May

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← April 2012 · May 2012 · June 2012 → · (current)

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puta

For the Romance word (deprecated template usage) puta (in French puta, Italian puttana) there seems to be two rival etymologies. Is there one that is more credible than the other? Some say that it derived from Latin puella (“girl”), some say that it comes from Latin pūtidus (“rotten, decaying, stinking, putrid”). Mglovesfun (talk) 15:52, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

From Vulgar Latin puta (“prostitute”), probably from Latin puteo (“stink”). Theories that relate it to Italian putto (“child”), from Latin boy, are without merit because they confuse it with the Classical Latin puta (“pruning”), which has a very different etymology. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

These theories relate it to Italian putto because there is a Vulgar Latin word putta(m) (“girl”) which is also attested in the meaning of "prostitute" (sixth century, Grégoire de Tours).

The change of meaning from "girl" to "prostitute" isn't strange. Similar things occure more often, like German Dirne (“prostitute”) (originally "girl"). Or German Frau (“woman”) (originally "lady, noble woman"). Or German Bube (“boy”) whereas cognate Dutch boef means something like "criminal".

We should mention all theories if they are presented by serious linguists, even if these theories contradict to each other.

--MaEr (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

sanskrit etymology

Is a more convincing etymology not from Sanskrit - the word "Pūtanā", broken as "Pūt" (virtue) and "nā" (no) means "devoid of virtue" ? See this entry on the female demon Putana

No, English borrowed it directly from Spanish. —Stephen ^(Talk) 17:57, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

mut'ah

The practice, the closeness to each other's meaning and the act itself doesn't remove itself from the word. Plus the Spanish were influenced by the Arabs for a very long time. So what's the problen?

Montchevalier(Talk) 17:57, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

To start with, the word fornication is a very archaic word that reeks of moralistic self-righteousness. A neutral point of view is one of the pillars of all the Wikimedia projects, so such implied opinions should be avoided. What's more, mut'ah seems to be practiced only by Shi'ites (and not by all of them), so I have my doubts that anyone in Spain during the period in question would have even heard of it. The superficial similarity of two words and the vague association in your mind of the two concepts just isn't enough to justify adding it to an etymology. Do have any references showing any serious scholar entertaining the idea, or is it something you came up with on your own? At any rate, please don't try to restore this again without some solid references to back it up. You are, of course, free to discuss this at the Etymology scriptorium, but don't be surprised if nobody buys this there, either. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:41, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

These two texts from respected authors back it.

• "A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic" by F. Corriente. Page 514.

• "A Description and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic" by M. Fierro. Page 51.

I may sound moralistic and self-righteous, but I'm a moralistic self-righteous person with evidence. And I do have proof to back up that they had mutah's in Al-Andalus. If you can't approach evidence with an open mind, then you have no place trying to control information. Are you going to continue being this obstinate? Or is the case settled?

Would you prefer copulation? Or is the word fuck better? It doesn't change the act. They're still doing something which merits the term. You are free to dispute the evidence, but the evidence speaks for itself. Unless you have evidence that says otherwise. We'll go with what we have. Would you like to make the change or shall I?

Montchevalier (talk) 21:21, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• I note that all Romance languages have this term. Arabic-influenced Andalusian Spanish cannot explain the widespread presence of this term.

@Surjection evaluated the sources above, and apparently neither reference the term puta. Copied from [[User_talk:Surjection#Puta_evidence_in_discussion]]:

I took a look at the first reference you gave, and it doesn't mention puta anywhere on that page, so not exactly supporting your theory. If you're trying to misrepresent or falsify sources, that is not going to work. And again, you should be discussing this at WT:ES, not here, and certainly not edit warring over it in the entry. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 08:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

The second source does not mention puta either. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 13:30, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I have neither resource, but out of curiosity, I poked around in Google Books.

• "A Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic" by F. Corriente: I can't view page 514, as Google has omitted that from my preview. That said, the only mention of puta is here, as the Sanskrit etymon पुट (puṭa) for Andalusian Arabic term futah (“wrapping”). Purported term mut'ah does not appear in a search of the text.
• "A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic" by M. Fierro: no instance of puta at all. Furthermore, page 51 also doesn't appear to have any instances of purported term mut'ah.

This sounds like another case where this Zompist post may have some relevance: How likely are chance resemblances between languages? The author's conclusion: very. He provides mathematical models and a logical walkthrough, all quite compelling. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:06, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

RFV discussion: February–May 2021

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

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Latin puta "girl"

@Fay Freak, Brutal Russian, JohnC5, Lambiam, Mnemosientje This is the supposed etymon of Spanish puta, French putain, etc. These clearly derive from a Vulgar Latin *pūtta, which can be an expressive derivation of Latin pūta ... except that there is no pūta in Gaffiot (hence it's not a Classical or Late Latin term) and none in DMLBS (hence probably not in Medieval Latin); see [1]. Du Cange has puta "meretrix, scortum" (i.e. prostitute) but I'm not sure how trustworthy this is; the only reference is to a glossary that defines it as "putain", and all the given quotes are in French. Gaffiot does have pūsa "petite fille" as well as pūsus "petit garçon" and pŭtus "petit garçon". (On a different note, see also my entry just above for poēmārium, for which I didn't ping anyone.) Benwing2 (talk) 21:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Also not in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, the P section is only a quarter of a century old, from a sex-positive age, in which they did not forget to mention even corrupt unlikely attestations, so we can affirm this word is completely unseen in the texts from antiquity. Thereon, it is quite a superfluous word to be borrowed from Romance into Neo-Latin, as scortum and meretrīx totally suffice, additionally this word would be too homonymic with puta (“for instance”) and forms of putāre (“to reckon”) so there is little chance for it to have been adopted in any later states of the Latin language, barring perhaps maccaronic, bad Latin. Fay Freak (talk) 22:04, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Basically there's a whole range of words, some but not all of which are listed under *pittus, that look too obviously similar for it to be a coincidence, but that are either rare or attested as (quasi)-hapaxes or in glosses. The pŭtus of L&S and hence Gaffiot is merely a conjecture in Virgil Catalepton 7.2 where the PHI edition reads differently (a Greek name for "desire", certainly the preferrable reading considering the epigram's ending). Nevertheless it's found its way into De Vaan as a headword because it perfectly matches the reconstructed base root of some certain Latin cognates mentioned under pusillus. I also remember reading, here or elsewhere, attempts at connecting puer with pūrus instead of paucus, which would mirror the relationship between putus "purified" and *putus "child". puta would then appear to simply be the feminine version of the latter, and under this assumption it's even given unasterisked in a few Google results. — FEW (pute 3., p. 634) derives putain, pute from pūtidus and not from putus (“small/clean”), something that I was inclining to already on my own.

All in all put- "child" is not an attested word in both genders, but there's a plethora of derivations from some such root *put- *pit- *pitz- *pūtt all tending to the meaning "small" that can't be reduced to any single etymon. It seems they were all used in Late Latin similar to the many and various names for "boy" in Italian dialects (and further in Romance), but rarely if at all made it into written documents. Without reading any dedicated articles it would seem a good idea to altogether remove the nouns putus and puta, as well as the "vulgar latin" thing over there conflating everything that can be conflated, and to limit ourselves with crosslinking the different words in the etymology section. Maybe I'll have different thoughts if I decide to milk google for some dedicated articles. Neither of the three DÉRom issues released so far contains the word. Brutal Russian (talk) 22:38, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok, there's even a worse case of ineptitude in Niermeyer's Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon - puta, pota is given as putain citing a passage from Krusch's edition of Gregory of Tours that reads "Mulier quaedam filiam suam exhibuit vulneribus plenam, ut quidam vocant, potae haec causa genuerat." Then the mother proceeds to cure the "potae". Now one only needs a bit of common sense to see that what the "lesions were producing" was pūs (“pus”). Common sense didn't stop this poor soul from parrotting the inept editor and translating the passage as "this was the reason behind her becoming a prostitute (pota)'" - wtf lol? Not to mention that a word with an /u~ọ=ŭ/ couldn't have been the origin of numerous Romance forms in /u=ū/. Ah, Latin philology, where the one-eyed rule among the blind! Brutal Russian (talk) 23:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

It's tempting to explain the "t" by some kind of relationship with Sanskrit पुत्र (putra), but there's not much in between. I wonder if that was an influence in some of the bad early guesses. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Sanskrit पुत्र (putra) is securely connected to pullus and pusillus. Brutal Russian (talk) 23:55, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

• RFV-deleted. Sense already removed by @Brutal Russian, but I note that the corresponding sense at putus remains, and should probably be dealt with. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:18, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Etyl of 母艦#Japanese

Was this term actually coined in Japan, or was it borrowed from Chinese? I'm not having much luck with online resources, and my dead-tree library doesn't include etyls for many terms. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

It is perhaps most likely a Chinese and then Japanese calque for the English mother ship or the like. --KYPark (talk) 04:32, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, almost certainly a calque of English mothership. But which came first, the Chinese, or the Japanese? I know some common two-character terms were coined in Japan and later borrowed into Chinese (和製漢語), such as (deprecated template usage) 経済 or (deprecated template usage) 哲学, but I'm not sure if 母艦 is another such example. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

From the probabilistic perspective, I just assumed (1) "Chinese and then Japanese," (2) "calque," so that I do not deny the likelihood vice versa, 和製漢語. --KYPark (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

From what I could find out, to me, this term seems to be first coined in Japanese. I looked it up in 『日本国語大辞典 精選版』（小学館, 2006）, which claims to provide the oldest quotation for each entry. The dictionary attributed 母艦 to "九隻の母艦に搭載されている飛行機は" in Hiroyuki Agawa's『春の城』(1952). Another term 母国, with the same prefixing of 母, was attributed to "現代の英国「植民地と母国との関係」" in Bin Ueda's『思想問題』(1913). For the record, the dictionary often provides Chinese quotations when they preceded Japanese ones. (although, the Japanese editors might have missed to find precedences in Chinese literature.) Another indirect evidence is that, as noted, in the modern period there seems to be a good percentage of similar loan words from Japanese into Chinese. (see [2].)--Whym (talk) 15:29, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting, thank you Whym! I'll add this as the etymology then, qualifying with the word "probably". -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:55, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Actually, I just stumbled across some interesting and informative search results. I went over to Google Books to see about finding citation information for Agawa's book, and accidentally found some hits that are older still. Learning more about how Google's book search features work, I noticed they have an option to search for books by century, and clicking 19th century shows five hits at present here from the 1800s. This hit is from the book 聯合艦隊出征報告, which is a Japanese title from 1894. The two earlier Chinese hits from 1866 and 1871 are actually scannos, which is apparent if you click through to view the actual source text scans.

There's another Japanese hit from 1897 in a book by Makino Mamoru, but there's no scan, so I can't check. And the hit from 1895 in what appears to be a work translated into Japanese is actually another scanno, where the actual string is 英國艦隊, and Google's OCR algorithms misread the 國 character as 母.

So I'll use the 1894 work as the citation. Please update or change it as appropriate. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm happy to be corrected on the oldest use of the term. It's a pity that I cannot check it by myself because of what seems to be a regional lockout in Google Books. :( --Whym (talk) 21:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Cheers! Though I am saddened and distressed by Google's apparent regional lockout. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:03, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Origin and history of 'of course'

Hello. I looked at the pages for 'of course' and 'course' but couldn't get what I came for:

(1) What was the origin and literal meaning of 'of course', considering there are so many senses to course itself? Which of these senses begat the adverb? That is, how was the expression literally intended or understood when it came to be?

(2) What is the history of this adverb? In which century did it appear? Oldest written usage? When did it become a household expression?

I needed it to try and answer my ESL nephew, but I don't have access to an OED; thanks if you can shed some light... 62.147.27.131 11:58, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

• I believe that originally it meant "in the ordinary course of events". In the 19th century (I believe) it came to mean "naturally", "as expected", "obviously", and was sometimes used just for emphasis. SemperBlotto (talk) 12:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Meanwhile, I also found this page that confirms your etymo and provides earlier history. I have added the data to of course (merged with your answer, because "of the ordinary course of events" provides a better literal explanation than theirs), please check my formatting if you can. 62.147.25.98 18:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

tug

How close is German Zug to English tug? --KYPark (talk) 14:12, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The two words are distantly related. I see that (deprecated template usage) tug is missing an Etymology, so I will add it. I will try and work in some information about (deprecated template usage) Zug if I can. Leasnam (talk) 15:21, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks in advance, whatever your edit may be. --KYPark (talk) 15:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Note that today I edited zogo, herizogo, and The Hague. --KYPark (talk) 16:25, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I can't find anything about its origin beyond that it comes from a base Germanic stem *tug- and is related to Old English teon, both from the IE root *dewk-. —CodeCat 16:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Dutch teug is related, too. It's from Middle Dutch toghe, tueghe, from the same Proto-Germanic *tugi-. --MaEr (talk) 17:10, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes and that also gave Old English tyge. —CodeCat 17:28, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a large family of words: others include (deprecated template usage) team, (deprecated template usage) tie, (deprecated template usage) tow, and even (deprecated template usage) educate! Leasnam (talk) 17:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I've added an etymology, but I've restricted it to only those words which are immediately related. Otherwise, it could go on for days. Leasnam (talk) 17:51, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I've created *dewk- now, feel free to add descendants to it! —CodeCat 17:52, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

This is partly due to w:Verner's Law. Is there an appropriate way to work this into the etymologies somewhere? Chuck Entz (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that would really be useful unless we also want a set a precedent to add similar phonological notes to most of our etymologies. And I think that goes outside the scope of Wiktionary. —CodeCat 18:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we could set up appendices for sound changes, since they're as much a part of etymologies as reconstructed roots. Of course, there would have to be allowance for showing that much is still a matter of debate, including alternate versions. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Our etymology for (deprecated template usage) doceo refers to a different root, but do you think that perhaps those roots are related? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:01, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there is that much information on whether different roots are related. Usually roots are the elemental building blocks for words so there is no real relationship. Sometimes there are different forms of a root (like *h₂weg- and *h₂ewg-) but that is sporadic and not a regular change. —CodeCat 22:47, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

May I feel free here to confess my view or prejudice? To me, words are far more related than the orthodox or positivist etymology formally acknowledges. The implicit, hidden aspect of everything exposes the positivist weakest link. I clearly asked if Zug is akin to tug, while unclearly or implicitly if either is akin to duge or the like. Undoubted is the sure relatedness anyway. What remains is historicity, how they came to be related. We all appear shipwrecked here. My breakthrough here is to make and take the best, Achilles guess, maybe a sort of interpretivism. --KYPark (talk) 13:29, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I think you mean duke, in English, meaning "a rank of nobility". (deprecated template usage) duge is apparently a form of the Danish word dug, meaning "dew". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:22, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh i'm so sorry to mistake Danish duge carelessly for Italian duce or Venetian doge, cognate to English duke, which evolved from the informal title of an army or war leader to the formal of a prince. Similar appears the case with German Kriegsherr translated into English warlord, etc. One implication may be that German Herzog is synonymous partly to Latin dux "war leader" cf. w:dux bellorum in the archaic sense and partly to English duke "prince" in the later. --KYPark (talk) 02:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

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