Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2018/February

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← January 2018 · February 2018 · March 2018 → · (current)

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tuscus

How reliable is the theory that this is connected to Turk? Etruscus has other ideas. - -sche (discuss) 06:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I've centralized the various theories at [[Etruscus]]. - -sche (discuss) 19:10, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Baldi points out real problems but the same lines of reasoning can be applied to all the other theories, too. However that he couldn't reconcile the problems doesn't mean that it's completely out of the question, does it? I'll refrain from posting my own theories about aur-ochsen on Crimea. Rhyminreason (talk) 05:50, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, that's the point: in spite of centuries of comparison with every language family imaginable, no one has ever provided convincing evidence that Etruscan and its close relatives are related to anything. The theory of Turkish origins is quite popular recently among certain groups for strictly ideological reasons, but it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. These are mostly based on superficial similarities of isolated words and agglutinative morphology. Language change tends to hide real similarities over time, so superficial similarities are unreliable: the first part of English Tuesday is related to Latin deus and Latin Juppiter, but Ancient Greek θεός (theós) is related to English do, German Ort and Latin festus instead. As for agglutinative morphology, it's quite common worldwide in a wide range of obviously unrelated languages such as w:Alutiiq language, w:Car language, w:Jarawa language (Andaman Islands), w:Lotuko language, w:Matsés language, w:Nuxalk language, w:Ticuna language, w:Umpila language, to name a few. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I thought it unfair to describe one suggestion as more "implausible" than the other.

If there are multiple incomplete theories, even isolation isn't proved. The null hypothesis however is just "uncertain". Rhyminreason (talk) 15:18, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

doodad

I'm sitting here playing a video game with my son. He's constantly asking me "what does this do Dad?" I've got nothing to back this as the source of the word other than it makes too much sense. — This unsigned comment was added by FiredawgJB (talk • contribs) at 21:34, 2018 February 2.

What about doohickey? DCDuring (talk) 00:00, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

In the words of Eeyore, this etymological suggestion is "amusing in a quiet way, but not really helpful". —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 08:00, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

haveno

Is there any good reason to suppose this word is from Dutch haven, rather than from (a combination of) Russian га́вань (gávanʹ), Yiddish האַוון (havn) and/or German Hafen? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:21, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

because the Dutch are famous for their shipbuilding and seamanship...? Leasnam (talk) 22:53, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

And more to the point, Zamenhof consciously avoided Yiddish and was much more orthographic with most languages. I'd expect something like *gavano if Russian were used as a source here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge I didn't suggest they came from any single one (the spelling could have been inspired by all three for all I know), but I'm sceptical about the idea that this would have been from a foreign language likely unknown to Zamenhof rather than from two native languages and a foreign language he knew well. It looks like the source language was changed from German to Dutch in 2012 without a source. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

to be sure

I moved the question to Tea Room, to discuss it. 89.204.138.151 01:57, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Rastorgueva

Hey, I'm trying to convert Rastorgueva's transcription to IPA. Any idea if these are correct?

ESIJa	IPA
ä	æ
å	ɑ
ö	ø
ü	y
ů	ʊ
ъ	ʉ
ы	ɨ
ь	ɪ

--Victar (talk) 07:31, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Victar: I have no idea, sorry. --Vahag (talk) 10:04, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Not problem. Any idea who might? @ZxxZxxZ, JohnC5, Rua?

Rastorgueva does provide a vowel diagram, but it's not quite to standard: https://ibb.co/jP0O8x. --Victar (talk) 20:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps ɘ and ɵ would be a better match for ъ and ь, I think they're supposed to be not far off from schwa.

Can't remember where I saw them being used this way though, Chuvash, Evenki and Nivkh come to mind, but I can't find it listing my books. Crom daba (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking one might be ɵ as well, but seeing as this is a Russian publication, I would have thought they would have used ё for that, if you're introducing Cyrillic anyway --Victar (talk) 16:05, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

There are iotated letters in the diagram though. Crom daba (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I think they're certainly intended to represent some types of central vowels though. --Victar (talk) 08:16, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest [ɪ] [ʊ] for ь ъ, and å is usually [ɒ] I believe. For ů, the best fully general option is probably [o̝] or [u̞], but does anything prevent us from using [ʊ] here too? ъ versus ů is not contrastive anywhere, right? --Tropylium (talk) 18:37, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tropylium, I think you're spot on everything. I'm going to go with /u̞/. Thanks! --Victar (talk) 09:06, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Moldova

The reference to Thraco-Illyrian raises my suspicions, as I recall some such etymologies have been dodgy in the past; Name of Moldova mentions other theories (and not the Thraco-Illyrian one), if anyone is up to the task of sorting out what's plausible or well-referenceable. - -sche (discuss) 17:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah that's probably BS. It's getting embarrassing with some of these people. The Romanian entry for it has some other theories but I'm not confident in any particular one tbh. Word dewd544 (talk) 16:34, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I've moved all the theories to the Romanian section, so they're all in one place, but they still need trimming and/or referencing. - -sche (discuss) 18:26, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

royauté

Our etymologies of both royauté and royalty are apparently sketchy or unclear and all dictionaries seem to avoid getting into details to avoid, for example, the problem of where the y in royalty came from or at least when it changed, since it came from roialte. Did the change to y occur separately in French and English or was it borrowed from French? The French Wiktionary says royauté comes from regalitatem, but http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/royauté seems to be saying something very different. --Espoo (talk) 07:43, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/golva

I don't understand the second sense. @Useigor? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:28, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Fixed, I hope. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 13:46, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Outlier Linguistics and their Chinese character speculation

@Justinrleung After seeing this article on the etymologies of the characters 黑 and 粦／磷 (lín). Are their speculations sound? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 16:32, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hillcrest98: Yes, they are quite reliable in terms of Chinese character glyph origins. Their explanations are in line with modern paleography, not just pure speculation from Outlier. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: It's all good, thanks! mellohi! (僕の乖離) 23:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

bawcock

@DCDuring Wiktionary's bawcock gives the etymology as baud + cock. In contrast Collins and Merriam-Webster give it as beau + coq. Do we have a reference for our etymology? -Stelio (talk) 10:48, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

• See this link. If I were doing that etymology again, I'd first want to know more about early use. That might help decide whether baud or beau was a better fit. Also were baud and beau hompohones in OF or MF? DCDuring (talk) 12:08, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

barcarole

Could Italian barcarola (from which English barcarole is derived) be a blend of barca (“boat”) and carola (“carol, song”)? — SGconlaw (talk) 09:23, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

No. It is simply a diminutive. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:17, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, thanks. — SGconlaw (talk) 05:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Why couldn't it be both? Rhyminreason (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

stake

Is stake really borrowed from M. Eng? Seems unlikely as it has been in regular use in literature since about 1570. (Google ngram). Etymonline says all senses attested 1530s or earlier. – Gormflaith (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Of course, you are correct. I have fixed it. @Equinox added this, and I can't imagine why. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:16, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Sondag

Is it really From Dutch zondag or more correctly From Dutch Zondag (now spelled zondag); is the capitalisation inherited from Dutch or an Afrikaans development? -80.133.110.226 21:34, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The capitalisation varied a lot in modern Dutch: until the late seventeenth century uncapitalised spellings were by far the norm, during the eighteenth century upper-case predominated, while lower-case spelling become more common during the nineteenth century, with a lot of variation depending on the author, community or decade. You would have to look at the history of use within Afrikaans to determine when the spelling became fixed, but it is also good to ask whether the distinction would be of any use. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:45, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

The preference is anyway to link to modern lemma forms unless older forms deviate from them significantly. That isn't the case here. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:06, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

kohtalo

User:Liedes insists on mentioning the word Clotho on the Finnish entry kohtalo, which he maintained at first was descended from the Greek word (diff and User_talk:Liedes#kohtalo).

While he has withdrawn his claim, I fail to see why Clotho should be mentioned at all on the kohtalo page, even in a "See also" section. We're not supposed to be a repository of all the impressionistic associations that might strike someone's fancy. @Hekaheka, Tropylium? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I have no source at hand (I'm traveling in China), but I'd think kohtalo (“fate”) is related to kohdata (“to encounter”) which has a "t-stem" e.g. in kohtaaminen (“an encounter”). Thus kohtalo/fate would be something one must encounter, want it or not. I agree with you on unnecessity to mention Clotho on "kohtalo" page. Hekaheka (I cannot sign this properly, because my browser does not show the tools bar.)

Seems like an issue with a crackpot growing stubborn rather than an etymology problem. Crom daba (talk) 23:58, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

• I have blocked Liedes for a week, partly for the comment they left as an edit summary. I looked at a few edits and they seemed to be made up of whole Clotho, if you'll forgive the expression. I would appreciate if our Finnish editors could review them, including all the recent ones I reverted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:58, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

This user has been doing some filling-up of Finnish and general Finnic etymological and derivational information, much of it legit, but unfortunately with also much outright crackpottery mixed in as in here, none of this substantially sourced, and not a lot of productive engagement with other editors. I hope they'll learn a bit more about collaborative work; if not, we may have to continue on a review-revert-editwar-tempban cycle for a while. --Tropylium (talk) 15:34, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge, Tropylium FYI: The style of the anon user 109.240.57.18 looks all too familiar. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:30, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I expect you're right, although the anon started editing after the block on the Liedes account expired, so it isn't technically block evasion. Despite that, I've given the anon a 2-week block for continuing to add made-up nonsense. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:48, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Most of this new stock looks at least good-faith to me, despite formatting issues (e.g. mentioning the Greek cognate for tiima hardly adds anything). Blanket-reverting (including even the non-etymology edits) seems rather harsh. --Tropylium (talk) 14:30, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tropylium: Thank you for going through them. Liedes is unfortunately totally untrustworthy, hence my mass reversion. Do you think I should just let his edits sit until you can fix them? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:24, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

In case it's helpful, Finnish Wikipedia gives the Finnish for Clotho as Klotho. -Stelio (talk) 16:42, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge, Hekaheka - In case we need a Liedes-esque editors watchlist: I've been recently seeing several new editors and anons adding "see also" points or other relatively distant, though mostly not outright wrong, comparisons to Finnish/Finnic etymologies, including users 2001:14BB:440:633D:9D83:F061:26D8:4374, 2001:14BB:440:633D:2938:CA78:6D34:F202 and IPs 109.240.18.231, 109.240.27.216. We've had a few editors along these lines before too, I'm not sure how many people are involved here (I would not rule out e.g. a group of university students on an unannounced Wiktionary-editing assignment). --Tropylium (talk) 15:14, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

What about starting a policy discussion on an appropriate page (Greasepit?) about banning anon users altogether from Reconstruction -pages? This policy might be justified by the fact that these pages are especially prone to speculation and thus to misuse. As a matter of fact, I would not mind banning the anons summarily. Their contributions are often questionable. Also, we might start to demand a source for non-obvious "borrowing" statements, see e.g. this: [1]. There's a clear phonetic similarity, and tykky is indeed thick - but still, if Finnish borrowed the word from photo-Germanic equivalent of "thick", why did Swedes not do the same? "Tykky" is "upplega" in Swedish. --Hekaheka (talk) 05:01, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I would be in favor of restricting anons from the Reconstruction namespace. This is a policy issue though, so Beer Parlour would be probably the place to go.

I've added details for the etymology of tykky. It's not an obvious case, but well established anyway: the modern Fi. meaning is a development within Finnish, and dialects preserve several intermediate senses (mostly under the variant forms though, for which I do not feel like creating entries just now). --Tropylium (talk) 21:15, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

@Tropylium, Metaknowledge, Per utramque cavernam I opened a discussion in Beer Parlour about restricting anons' rights. Please contribute. --Hekaheka (talk) 12:34, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

wiki / wiktionary-like site, blog or lists

So, does anyone know of a site that has wiki / wiktionary-like capabilities aka blog / list? For example, in a swadesh list. I would like to organize some of my etymology work in a single place where I can visualize and reference later when done.

This may be slightly off-topic but this has been on my mind for a while. Thanks for whatever.

Sounds like a technical question for WT:Grease pit, or a question for WT:Information desk? -80.133.110.226 02:31, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

expediate

The etymology is weird. Isn't it less likely "freeing the feet" and more likely "removing [part of] the feet", with ex- functioning like in excoriate? - -sche (discuss) 18:18, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Spanish guanajo

Nonsense. The word comes from the Greek "wanax", meaning a nominal or powerless figure-head king. Applied to turkeys (called guanajos in Cuba} because of their feathered "display" making them look much larger and more threatening than they really are to would-be attackers as well as potential mates. Remember that in Spanish an "X" was and is pronounced like a hard "H" (so Yanks, no, it's not Meksico it's Mehico). Thus "wanax" --> "guanah" --> "guanajo" (in Spanish a "J" is pronounced like a hard "H"). — This unsigned comment was added by 173.72.122.80 (talk) at 15:45, 2018 February 19 (UTC-8).

Feel free to argue with the Real Academia Española. Their entry quite clearly attributes the term to Arawak, which (to me, at least) makes more sense geographically and historically than any metaphorical Greek derivation, considering that the Arawak were the locals at the time of Spanish contact. Also consider that the form of Spanish spoken in the late 1400s had many more kinds of sibilants: see w:Old Spanish language#Sibilants. I can't find any information about historical spellings of Spanish guanajo, but with the merger of various sounds in the Spanish language, it's entirely possible that this term was formerly spelled guanaxo -- which would have been pronounced as something close to /gwanaʃo/, quite similar to the stated Arawak etymon of wanašu. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:06, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

mật

This Vietnamese word claims to be cognate to "Bende kơmăt/kơmơ̆t (“gall bladder”)". That seems unlikely; what language code was meant? Bende is a Niger-Congo language in which the word for "gallblader; bile" is kantuliíla, tuntuliíla according to Yuko Abe's Bende Vocabulary. - -sche (discuss) 06:05, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@PhanAnh123: did you by chance mistype the language code or mismatch whatever language SEALang refers to to the wrong code? - -sche (discuss) 06:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I typed the wrong code, sorry.PhanAnh123 (talk)

Saint Pantaleon

If "Pantaleon" comes indeed from Παντελεήμων (Panteleḗmōn), this is an odd phonetic evolution. Or has it been folk-etymologised? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 17:15, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Probably. His new name means "all-lion", I guess. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 21:02, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Bill

Could the onset have gone through fortition via Irish rebracketing?

• /w/ (voiced velarized bilabial approximate) > /b/ (voiced bilabial stop)
• We can see the opposite process in Irish lenition (/bˠ/ to /w/ or /v/).
• Behind the Name says that Bill derives from "Irish pronunciation" from earlier than the 19th century.
  • Apparently, Billy was first recorded in the 17th century as a Northern Irish/Scottish nickname of William III of England (King Billy).
• Initial /w/ does not occur in Irish radicals, except in words that start with the borrowed consonant ⟨v⟩ (e.g. vóta). [2]
  • As far as I'm aware, words that start with ⟨v⟩ do not undergo initial mutation, and are pronounced with /w/ in all declensions.
• Therefore, an Irish speaker would pronounce Will with an initial /w/ in all declensions, as there is no way to lenite or eclipse an initial /w/.
• So, if an Irish speaker heard someone talking about a guy named Will in a grammatical position in which native words would be mutated, he might assume the radical form based off initial mutation rules.
  • A common context would be in the vocative case. Addressing people is the most common use of the vocative case, therefore given names and pronouns are the most common use of vocative. In Irish, the vocative is lenited. So, an Irish-speaker might interpret "Will!" as "*Bhuil!" (pronounced approximately /wɪl/) as the vocative, therefore lenited, declension of *Buil (pronounced approximately /bɪl/).
  • It would not be interpreted as *Bhfuil (approx. /wɪl/), the eclipsed form of *Fuil (approx. /fɪl/), because given names are never in environments that would prompt eclipsis.
• Even though there is a precedent set by the borrowed terms regarding declension of words with initial /w/, I assume that most ⟨v⟩-initial words were borrowed fairly recently, which can be supported by the fact that Gaelic type, which was widely in use in Ireland until the mid 20th century, did not even include ⟨v⟩. However, "William" was introduced before the multitude of ⟨v⟩-initial borrowings, during the time of the Norman conquest. [3] I would gander that William was one of the very first /w/-initial radical forms known to Irish-speakers. By searching Wikipedia categories, I found that Williams in Ireland started popping up in the 12th century (William de Burgh), and increased from there. The popularity of the name William in the categories "#th Century Irish people" is as follows: (Note that Irish was the majority language until about 1800).
  • 12th: 1
  • 13th: 5
  • 14th: 8
  • 15th: 8
  • 16th: 36
  • 17th: 50
  • 18th: 113
  • 19th: 247

A similar process can be seen in Zulu iNgisi and other rebracketed forms.

I couldn't find any good, reliable sources regarding this question. All but one front page Google "sources" of why is bill short for william say that it's "trendy medieval rhyming slang". One source often cited in random Quora forums even said that it was because "hard consonants are easier to pronounce than soft ones."

• One insightful Quora user with an M.A. in Linguistics (and Opera!) disagrees with the rhyming slang theory for a good reason: why /b/ and not another random consonant/consonant cluster? Phonology isn't random.

Well, after I wrote this entire theory, thinking I was being incredibly clever, I found an (unreliable) source that kind of supports it. A HowStuffWords article cites Cleveland Kent Evans, a psychology professor and author of a couple baby names books:

Credit the Irish with this one. Evans says that a curiosity of Irish Gaelic will turn a W sound into more of a B depending on whether the word is the subject or object of a sentence. Either way, the first written evidence of a William being called Bill was in the late 17th century when Irishmen mocked King William III of England by calling the hated Protestant conqueror King Billy.

The claim that "King Billy" was a mocking name (which I thought was just informal) may support my argument. Perhaps interpreting "Will" as "Bill" was considered "wrong" because it followed Irish rules, not English, and the notion that "Will" was the declined form of "Bill" was considered unintelligent to some degree, similar to the situation in English in which it is considered more "proper" to decline -us in the plural as -i, the same as the original Latin, rather than the native English -es.

Sorry for such a long post. I'm procrastinating my linguistics homework. – Gormflaith (talk) 23:52, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

This strikes me as highly unlikely. Irish /w/ is the lenition of the velarized /bˠ/, which strikes the English ear as labialized, so if Irish speakers were to have back-formed a name from /wɪlʲ/ it would probably have been "Bwill", not "Bill". And there are other English nicknames starting with labial stops where this explanation won't work, such as Bob < Robert, Peg < Margaret, and Polly < Mary. I think child language is a more likely source for all of these. (Incidentally, given names can appear in eclipsis environments, especially after the preposition i (“in”): Cuirim cronú i bhFionn (“I miss Fionn.”) —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 11:58, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, it is pretty far-fetched. I didn't know that the /bˠ/ sounded like /bw/, or that names could be eclipsed (I'm no Irish grammar expert). However, maybe /w/ (voiced bilabial velarized approximate) turned into /bˠ/ (voiced bilabial velarized stop), which would follow Irish rules exactly, and then turned into /b/? I combed through English terms derived from Irish and found that the only terms that follow the /#ˠ/ to /#w/ pattern were Dwayne, Sweeney, and twig. /ɣ/ changes into /gw/ (Gweedore) and /vˠ/ to /w/ (wirra), though these are both the only instances of the pattern. The vast majority of terms just "dropped" the velarization. In any case, I think that Bob, Bill, Peg, and Polly are probably formed through some type of fortition in which a sonorant turns into a stop. But, that doesn't explain why it got devoiced in Peg and Polly, or the /b/ in Bob at all. –– Gormflaith (talk) 22:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

The hypothesis that the phenomenon comes from child language actually explains the /b/ of Bob best of all, because child language tends to have widespread consonant harmony: pronouncing Robert as /ˈbɑbət/ or Robbie as /ˈbɑbi/ is exactly what you'd expect from a toddler, especially as /ɹ/ is a particularly difficult sound to acquire. The hypothesis fares worse with Bill, Peg, and Polly, though since those names have no /b/ or /p/ sounds to trigger consonant harmony, nor are /w/ and /m/ difficult sounds for small children to make. Perhaps this phenomenon has a variety of sources. (As for Dwayne, I think the /w/ comes from the bh of Dubhán, not from the velarization of the d.) —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 10:22, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Afrikaans

From Dutch or from Afrikaans? Ultimateria (talk) 21:14, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Seems a bit unknowable, no? I'd hazard a guess that the name of the language was borrowed before the distinction between Afrikaans and South African Dutch became clear. The easiest solution is to have the etymology say it's from both. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:55, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

The oldest hits on Google Books date to the late 19th century, so it might as well be from Afrikaans. If there are older English cites around they're probably from the area of modern South Africa or Namibia anyway. Dutch seems to have borrowed this sense from Afrikaans around the same time. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:59, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Multiple etymologies of English de-?

de- has 1 etymology for English de-, deriving it from Latin de-. The meaning reversal, undoing or removing is more suggestive of a derivation from French dé-, from Latin dis- meaning reversal, removal.Zekelayla (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

The French page itself notes a conflation. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the issue is the English de-, though. Zekelayla (talk) 06:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Dictionary.com has "in some words, < French < Latin dē- or dis-" Zekelayla (talk) 06:34, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

RFV

Any possibility of EN vagrant (PIE *walg-, *walk-) akin to LA vagus (PIE *Hwog-o-s)? Sobreira ►〓 (parlez) 12:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

If not just a coincidence, this looks more like a case of folk-etymological reshaping in Old French (valcrant > 'vacrant ~ ? vagrant) than a direct connection. --Tropylium (talk) 02:18, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Etymology of iarăși

Currently, the Etymology section of the entry for Romanian iarăși only says "see iar". Should it not have an explanation for the și part? I mean, iar does have an older form iară, but the și is still left unexplained. Is it correct to assume that iarăși = iară + și? MGorrone (talk) 22:25, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• @MGorrone moved here. PseudoSkull (talk) 22:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull -- I think I read somewhere that pings only work if you sign using the ~~~~ shortcut. It would appear that MGorrone didn't see your note here. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, I was not notified of the ping, @PseudoSkull. I reloaded to see if there was any activity, and the link was dead. So I reposted. Then @Eirikr came by and pinged me on the repost explaining the situation. MGorrone (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I apologize about this. It's really annoying when pings do not work. I talked about that in further detail at Wiktionary talk:Etymology scriptorium as to why I moved it. But anyway, back on topic, with your question about the etymology, anybody have an answer? PseudoSkull (talk) 00:10, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

If I may, @MGorrone's analysis is correct. According to DEX, the word is made up of iară (dated form of iar, "again") + și ("and"). This info should probably be added to the etymology section. --Robbie SWE (talk) 10:51, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Just added that. Though maybe there is a template with a transliteration parameter for etymological ancestors? Perhaps the { {m} } template has it and I just don't know? MGorrone (talk) 11:13, 1 March 2018 (UTC)