Talk:Doublet (linguistics)

old talk
Would be great to have some references here. I'm also guilty of not including references/links, but in trying to build it found a great site - http://www.etymonline.com/abbr.php

Yes, a great resource etymonline is. I'm about to propose a merge w/ etymological twins. What do you think? Adam Mathias 01:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Mister (...) Alteration of master—. Are they considered doublets in such case? If decision is that they are, just add them to the list of English examples on my behalf, whoever you are.

—6birc, 12:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The foreign word "hospes," mentioned in the article, has a slew of doublets: hospice, hospitable, hospital, hospitality, host, hostess, hostage, hostel, hostler, hotel, and spital. They all come from the Latin hospes, and all these words generally mean to provide accommodations for people. This may not seem to make sense for the word "hostage," but it really does mean "to provide accommodations for someone (until certain demands are met)."

Another interesting set of doublets is: "apothecary," "boutique" and "bodega." They also show how languages can modify consonants and vowels but keep the same general pronunciation. The word "apothecary" (a pharmacy or drugstore) comes from the Greek apotheke which means "storehouse." The English words "boutique" and "bodega" also come from "apotheca." Ignore the vowels, and look at the consonants of these cognates. In the order of their pronunciation, they are: p or b, then th or t or d, then c or q or g. All three cognates have kept the same general pronunciation of consonants: the two lips (p,or b), then the tip of the tongue (th, t or d), and then the back of the tongue (c, q or g).

The following doublets are also of interest because they are borrowed into English from the Old French (pre-1500s) (with 's' before the particular vowel) and again from French (post 1500s) (with the 's' removed and the affected vowel with a circumflex): beast-bête, boscage-bouquet, castle-chateau, crust-crouton, feast-fete, hostel-hotel, master-maitre, paste-pâté, rasp-rappee, reconnaissance-reconnoiter, roast-rotisserie, vassal-valet. The change of removing the 's' and adding the circumflex occurred when Old French became French in the 1500s. The circumflex disappears from the words fully asimilated into English.

Yeah, you're right about the references; guilty as charged. Although, all of this can probably be found in http://www.etymonline.com/abbr.php and other standard etymological sources. -- DFurlani 19:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Triplet example queried
Your example implies that Cordial, Heart and Sincere all have the same root- Cordial and Heart might, but Sincere comes from the latin meaning 'without a crack' or something like that, I'm sure, so if I'm right this doesn't make sense?! IceDragon64 (talk) 00:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Cow/Beef
This is listed as a couplet although I don't think they have the same root. Am I misunderstanding something? Quantumelfmage (talk) 05:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * They're generally traced back to a common Indo-European stem pronounced something like gwow... AnonMoos (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Cow/Beef revisited
The statements about cow and boef are unsettling. Germanic speaking lower classes were ruled over by French aristocrats. Cow was of Germanic origin and boef was the translation into French. Nearly every word in English has two origins; Germanic and French. The laws were written in both. ie Break and Entre, Assault and Battre, Will and Testament, Chicken and Poulet (poultry), Swine and Pork.

This is not "borrowing" it is massive importing. These words did not grow up together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.52.159 (talk) 20:06, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Loot/Leaf
I've read somewhere that the native English cognate of the word "loot" (a relatively recent loan from Hindi) is "leaf". The meanings are, of course, incredibly off; EtymOnline follows "loot" to Sanskrit lota-m "stolen property", and "leaf" to PIE *leup "to break off" (bridging most of the meaning gap). Is it true? It might well be; if so should it get included in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.179.218.11 (talk) 12:09, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * According to American Heritage Dictionary, that's more the Hindi form, while the Sanskrit form is "loptra"... AnonMoos (talk) 11:10, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Over/Upper/Hyper/Super
I *think* these are all related, but I would need someone smarter than me to check. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.79.57 (talk) 01:19, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

doublet paragraphs

 * Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language. In English this is usually Latin and some other Romance language, particularly French ....


 * Less directly, a term may be borrowed both directly from a source language and indirectly via an intermediate language. In English this is most common in borrowings from Latin, and borrowings from French that are themselves from Latin ....

Are these two paragraphs intended to be distinct? If so, I'm having a hard time with even the possibility of the latter, let alone an example. We'd need a word that was borrowed (rather than inherited with the usual changes) by French from Latin, and then borrowed into English from the French borrowing; a way to distinguish that from a direct Latin→English borrowing; and a separate direct Latin→English borrowing of the same word, resulting in a distinct form. —Tamfang (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Polish
What's with the superscript z in two of the Polish examples? —Tamfang (talk) 07:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Redirect for "Dialect borrowing"
Why is "Dialect borrowing" redirected to this article? The only use I can find for "Dialect borrowing" is from Bloomfield's Language (1933), which doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with doublets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshisanonymous (talk • contribs) 17:21, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * (New matter at the bottom, please, using the new section button.) Dialect borrowing can create doublets; but that's not a good enough reason to redirect here rather than to Loanword. —Tamfang (talk) 17:30, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Spanish section
Firstly, there's no evidence that Spanish 'dinero' came through an Arabic intermediate, so I'm going to change that. It's simply derived from Latin denarius, with the initial -i- perhaps due to influence from a Greek form, which affected most of the Romance descendants. Every etymological source I consulted seems to list it as just a descendant of the Latin (http://dle.rae.es/?id=Doas5g0, https://www.scribd.com/doc/157209215/Diccionario-Critico-Etimologico-castellano-C-F-Corominas-Joan-pdf, etc.) It's true that some Arabic languages use a form 'dinar' but that was probably separate from the Spanish, which evolved the normal ending from '-arius' to '-ero' (same with Portuguese 'dinheiro', Catalan 'diner', French 'denier', etc.)

Also, all of the Romance languages have copious amounts of doublets, not just Spanish. Should sections be included for them too? Wiktionary is working on compiling an extensive list of doublets as well. Word dewd544 (talk) 04:12, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

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Welsh
The Wikipedia article lists “lau” as a cognate for “day” words in Welsh. The day part in Difiau is the beginning, not the end.80.187.81.23 (talk) 11:31, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Vague definition
The definition "different phonological forms but the same etymological root" can be misconstrued as (and this has happened on Bengali wiktionary): 'anything coming from (e.g.) the Arabic root 'k-t-b' is a doublet'. The point is that derivations are not the same word and don't suddenly become doublets when both of them are borrowed by another language. This also implies that some terms from a list like "right, rich, raj, rex, regalia, regal, reign, royal, and real" are not really doublets. Exarchus (talk) 11:01, 13 July 2023 (UTC)