Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2013/June

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tafl

Is there any source confriming what Wilhelm meis averred 4 years ago, namely that Old Norse (and Icelandic) tafl and Latin tabula were cognates? There is at least one source which corroborates the opposite, the ODS, i. e. tafl is borrowed from Middle Latin, itself from Latin tabula. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 11:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine they're cognates in the usual sense, as Grimm's Law would have to have applied to the Germanic form. I think the editor simply misunderstood what "cognate" means. —Angr 17:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

バックシャン

Can we have some confirmation of the etymology second part of this compound? German schön seems unlikely since German ö usually gets katakanified as e, (e.g. Gödel is rendered ゲーデル gēderu). However, I can't think of any better etymology. —Angr 14:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

geitost

The etymology is given as: "Swedish, getost meaning goat cheese." Surely this is meant to say Norwegian and not Swedish? geit is the Norwegian spelling -- get the Swedish ditto. Diupwijk (talk) 15:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right, geit is Norwegian, not Swedish. I have corrected it. If you think it's OK now, you may remove the template. --MaEr (talk) 15:45, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done! Diupwijk (talk) 15:50, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Latin vitrum and Sanskrit वैडूर्य (vaiḍūrya)

Researching the etymology of Japanese term 瑠璃 (ruri, “lapis lazuli”), I found that this is traced back to Sanskrit वैडूर्य (vaiḍūrya), itself apparently of various meanings relating to blue gemstones and glass or ceramic glaze. The sound and meaning led me to look up vitrum, and I was surprised to see very similar meanings, but only “unknown” as the etymology of the Latin term.

FWIW, I think the Sanskrit vaiḍūrya must be the uninflected noun stem, and the short -a ending means it's either masculine or neuter. Neuter would match the Latin.

I rather suspect that these two are cousins, but I do not know how to research this any further, as this is well outside my area of expertise, and as I cannot read (or even input) Devanagari. Does anyone here know more, and / or can anyone here find out more? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:16, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's unlikely the Sanskrit and Latin words are related. The ḍ in the Sanskrit word makes it likely to be a loanword rather than a native word. (The only time you get ḍ in native words AFAIK is in *-izd-/-uzd > *-iẓḍ-/-uẓḍ- (by the ruki rule) > -īḍ-/-ūḍ-, e.g. nīḍa "nest" < *nizdos.) Yes, vaiḍūrya is the bare stem (the usual lemma form for Sanskrit nouns), and it is usually neuter. Monier-Williams connects it vaguely with vidūraja "cat's eye (jewel)". As for vitrum, the Online Etymology Dictionary says it may be related to vitrium (“woad”); it's not in the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots at all, so Calvert Watkins doesn't seem to think it's cognate with a Sanskrit word. —Angr 18:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any Indo-European root believed to be the origin of vitrum. The way to use that dictionary is to look up a modern English word in the index and see what root it refers you to; neither vitreous nor vitrify are in the index, meaning no IE root is proposed as the origin of vitrum. —Angr 19:57, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

athel

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

Aside from being in use in proper nouns and parts of proper nouns, and occasional references to a type of tree, the only English reference I can find for this term is in a Middle English work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (where it seems to function as a noun as often as an adjective, and the meaning isn't especially clear from context). I can't find any modern reference to the English adjective sense. --Dajagr 21:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is all right. Yes, it's been obsolete for a long time, but it crops up quite a lot in Gawain as you say, and also some otehr early modern stuff. You're right, it can also be a noun. I've expanded the entry a bit. Widsith 07:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Should the noun sense also be tagged archaic (or obsolete), too? --Dajagr 04:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops, yes. Done. Widsith 07:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


RFV discussion: August–September 2006

See Talk:бедбахт#RFV discussion: August–September 2006.
Simply yor're too wrong I guess. --KYPark (talk) 12:31, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The nuisance is back. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It would be back again and again until you admit it. Please admit it whatever it may be for it may be true. --KYPark (talk) 12:59, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Attila, Etzel (+ Atli) should be cognate, as Attila < 𐌰𐍄𐍄𐌰 < átta. Hyarmendacil (talk) 08:12, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Even if Attila's name is not Germanic in origin, it would still probably have been borrowed into High German early enough to shift t > z. —CodeCat 21:16, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From w: false cognate [sic]

False cognates appear to be, or are oft popularly

regarded as, cognates, while in fact they are not.

Even if false cognates lack a common start, there may still be an indirect connection between these.

And in any case they can still be very helpful in learning another language comparatively curiously!

--KYPark (talk) 04:20, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From the above neutral perspective, I'd like to remark as follows:

Before anyone could remark fake cognates as false,

from the above perspective, say, Attila and athel,

Etzel and edel, such and such, should be declared correctly in advance to be in fact false cognates.

Yet unknown is whether Attila is proper or common such as Prince or King not to mention its meaning.

As such it's not really ready to be well compared, say, with athel, meaningfully; nothing's happened?

The Proto-Germanic roots explain away etymologies, by way of artificial apart from natural selection.

Very curiously, Attila v atta may be son v father, as well as abdul and ab (Arabic) or aba (Aramaic)!

Very curiously again, *ata is highly Eurasiatical;

*aba and *ata make up the two most global fathers!

--KYPark (talk) 13:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not post things like this again. It's not helpful at all. —CodeCat 13:16, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Latvian and Lithuanian e-nouns

Latvian and Lithuanian both have a class of nouns ending in -e (Nominative -ė in the latter). I haven't been able to find an equivalent class of nouns in Slavic, but it seems that even in Latvian/Lithuanian it is a relatively small group of nouns. The Slavic languages have a much stronger tendency towards eliminating small/irregular declensions so that may be why. What I wonder though is where this class of nouns came from in PIE. PIE didn't have a group of e-nouns that I am aware, so does anyone know? —CodeCat 21:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What are some examples of nouns of this class; especially, what are some examples of nouns with good Indo-European pedigrees in this class? —Angr 22:00, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So far I have found only two nouns with a clear Slavic cognate: zeme, žemė, *zemja and tele, *telę, neither of which really have a good PIE etymology that doesn't require morphological restructuring at some point. The formations also seem to differ too; the first is a ja-stem in Slavic while the second is an nt-stem. I wonder if this class of nouns is just the ja-stem class in Latvian and Lithuanian (with a change -ja > -e?) but I don't know enough about those languages and their history to know for sure. —CodeCat 22:11, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe like the Latin fifth declension, this class doesn't really have a PIE source group, but arose from several different sources in a handful of words by a kind of linguistic convergent evolution. Yeah, Baltic is conservative in many ways, but it's not PIE and does have some innovations (like losing the 3rd person plural verb forms). —Angr 12:42, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See [1]. Like Angr said, it's a convergent development of several sources (mostly ih₂-stems). In Balto-Slavic ih₂-stems where almost completely merged with jā-stems, although they've preserved -ī (*< PIE *-iH) in nominative singular. Proto-Slavic retained some nouns of this type (PSl. *aldī > CS *oldi, PSl. milnī > CS. *mъlni. PSl. *sandī > CS *sǫdii etc.) but it was an unproductive class. nt-stems are usually explained as a Proto-Slavic innovation, although some ascribe it to Balto-Slavic period because of Latvian -ēn- nouns which (just as Proto-Slavic -nt-stems) usually denote young of an animal (e.g. telēns, pīlēns), which is when you think about it too much of a correspondence to be coincidental (with the assumption of -nt- being the original form and Baltic generalizing nominoaccusative *-ēn < *-ent). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That does clear up some things, but it also leaves me with new questions. If the -ī/jā stems became Balto-Slavic ē-stems, then why are there still -ī/jā stems in Balto-Slavic as well? And what happened to the ē-stems in Slavic? —CodeCat 20:14, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I recall reading that only the vrki-type -ih₂-stems became ē-stems (such as vìlkė), while the devi-type remained as such (such as martì). Now if I only remembered where that was ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:31, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

step

Why are the verb and noun entries under different etymologies? I know nothing about Old English but steppan sounds to me like it is just the verb form of stepe. Also the definitions to move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession (verb) and an advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace (noun) seem to make it the same word. SpinningSpark 18:45, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also: why do the etymologies at step and steppan disagree on the Proto-Germanic root for the verb? Chuck Entz (talk) 18:54, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There should just be one etymology at step, and the Proto-Germanic form at steppan is wrong; I'm correcting it right now. —Angr 21:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I beg to differ--there should be two etymologies at step: one for the verb and one for the noun. The forms of each were distinct only until Modern English (verb < ME steppen < OE steppan < PGmc *stapjaną; noun < ME steppe, steape, stape < OE stæpe, stepe < PGmc *stapiz) Leasnam (talk) 20:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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