Talk:Etymology

etymon
[etymon] redirects here but this page nowhere gives the meaning of the word etymon. Should this redirect be removed, or something added here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.172.19.20 (talk) 15:00, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * See section: Etymology_of_etymology. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 19:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The history of a word is one thing and the etymology of a word is another thing. The etymology of a word, unlike the history of it, breaks the word down into syllables and the syllables into elements and tries by this method to bring into light the true meaning of the word. (true meaning = etymon in Greek).--Nestanaios 11:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid you're mistaken. Yes, etymon means something like "true sense" in Greek, but here we come upon an important point about etymology:  meanings change, and the origin of a word may be only very indirectly related to how it's used now.  Etymology is not, in spite of its etymology, about finding the true meanings of words (whatever that would even be); it's about tracing the history of words.  garik (talk) 12:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

names(nouns) are made out of syllables and syllables are made out of elements(letters). This is what I am saying. The process is called etymology. History is another thing. Historical names(nouns,words) if they are examined etymologicly, could be well synthesised (composed) or could not be well synthesised. Those that are well synthesised live longer than those that are not well synthesised. All theese things are well known for thousands of years in the Greek grammar. It is true that the true meaning of a word is related indirectly or partially directly with what it means now. When the word stops having some relation with the true meaning, then it dies.--Nestanaios 04:04, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Etumon actually means "ready", as in a ready-meal. The point is metaphorical, in that you find all ready all the components in order to construct the complete meaning. If anyone else agrees I'd like to change this, as it is clearly a word that means precisely the same thing both in classical (OK, not ready-meals as such but you get the point) and modern GreekEugene-elgato (talk) 11:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you have a reliable source for that? You may be thinking of etoimon, which I believe means "ready" in both modern and ancient Greek.  Every source I've seen gives "true" as a translation of Classical Greek etymos.  Take, for example, the OED.  I think you'll need a good source to contradict that.  garik (talk) 13:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent; you're actually right. Pardon me. Eugene-elgato (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

commas
I know this is really minor but the commas were a little messed up in this article and I just wanted to make sure this was right before I changed it and possibly got accused of vandalism. Am I correct in saying that no matter what, the comma comes before the close quotes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Band geek13 (talk • contribs) 02:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Nazi???
"the Nazi word bitte (please) the Nazi word beten (to pray) and the Dutch word bidden (to pray) are related through sound and meaning to the English word bead." That doesn't quite seem neutral... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.123.68.154 (talk) 17:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Kamasutra?
Why is this in the "See Also" section? I see no reference to etymology in that article, nor any reference to it in this one. Vandalism at some point in the distant past? — Hiddekel (talk) 17:24, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good call, Hiddekel! It's been there for 5 years or more, but there's surely no way it's relevant here! Bjenks (talk) 15:51, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

PRONOUNCIATION OF THE WORD "ETYMOLOGY"
I WENT ON HERE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PRONOUNCE IT SINCE I READ IT BUT NEVER HEARD THAT WORD IN REAL LIFE ADD IT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.100.173 (talk) 02:35, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you continue to post requests in this manner, you will be blocked. But it's reasonable to include a pronunciation guide, so I've added one. garik (talk) 09:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * So, "Don't let the door hit you in the Butt as you leave, but hurry back!" Is that what you are saying?
 * I came here to learn how to spell 'Etymology'. And I'll look in the article herein to see if the etymology of 'Etymology' is given, (or not). :-)  ;-) ... And thanks for the good work in the article herein. -- AstroU (talk) 18:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

socio-cultural analysis as a methodology
this seems to be missing entirely from the article!--Meieimatai?  02:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

History of English ("English language" subsection) Out of Place here
The subsection "English language" is totally out of place in a general article dealing with etymology AS SUCH, NOT a history of English (which this subsection represents). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.245.71.241 (talk) 15:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree. This should be moved to a new article detailing Etymology in English. Leasnam (talk) 18:18, 14 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Almost 12 years later, section removed. — kashmīrī  TALK  07:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Sofa
This article states that the etymology of sofa is arabic. In chinese comfortable is Shu Fu and may represent an earlier source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.103.184.76 (talk) 17:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And in Old Norse, sofa means "to sleep". (Which actually resembles the English word a real lot more.) Seriously: The word you mention is apparently (Standard) Mandarin Chinese. Are you aware how drastically Mandarin Chinese has changed in the last millennium in pronunciation alone? Even in the last several centuries, it hasn't been static. Classical Chinese may use the same writing system, but the differences between Classical Chinese and Modern Chinese (Standard Mandarin Chinese) are easily as big as those between Classical Latin and Modern French; it's just that the writing system hides the radical differences in pronunciation at least.
 * The mere fact that Chinese has been written since antiquity doesn't mean that Modern Chinese in any of its forms is particularly archaic; especially Standard Chinese is everything but conservative. Old Chinese is completely different from any modern Chinese dialect. The idea that Old, Classical and Modern (Standard) Chinese are all the same thing because they are all called "Chinese", prestige dialects, and written with the same writing system is a fallacy.
 * So that's the first, a priori reason why your etymological proposal is unlikely, or at least not as attractive as it may appear at first. There are more reasons, though. I just wanted the common "Chinese (= the kind of Chinese they speak in Beijing) is an ancient language" fallacy get of the way. A Modern Standard Chinese derivation is no "deeper" than a derivation from Modern French, Danish, German or English would be. (The same kind of fallacy is also common with Modern Irish Gaelic, which many people treat as essentially identical to Ancient Celtic, even though Ancient Celtic resembled Latin and Greek a lot more, while Modern Irish is very far removed from Ancient Celtic and quite unlike any other modern European language except other modern Celtic languages. Same with Persian, where the difference between Old and Modern Persian is huge and the fact that the name is the same is totally misleading: Modern Persian is no closer to Old Persian than Hindi is to Sanskrit. This also means that Persian isn't a particularly "old" language for any practical purposes.) Therefore, the Chinese derivation is no more likely than the one from Old Norse, let alone the mainstream etymology, which traces the word back to Semitic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

"cognates"
The use of the word "cognate" in the "English Language" section is inaccurate-- cognates are words that have the same root but are specifically NOT directly borrowed from one language into the other, as was the case with Norman French words that were borrowed into English to name foods. The more appropriate word would be "borrowings." (An example of actual cognates would be the English "cheese" and the German "Käse"--cheese is derived from the same word as Käse, but it was subjected to the sound changes that occurred in the history of English instead of those that occurred in German, rather than being directly borrowed from German into English or vice-versa.) False dichotomy (talk) 17:12, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * You're quite right, and I've just changed it. Why didn't you make the necessary changes yourself? garik (talk) 18:16, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This imprecise usage is unfortunately widespread throughout Wikipedia. I've added a remark pointing out that this use is incorrect at Cognate. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

ΕΤΥΜΟΝ = ΕΥΤΜΟΝ
ΕΤΥΜΟΝ does not mean true sense. ΕΤΥΜΟΝ means that which is well divided. We have ΕΤΥΜΟΝ = ΕΥΤΜΟΝ. The Y moves from the third place to the second and we have  ΕΥ + ΤΜ + ΟΝ. ( the ellements are the same and therefore nothing changes). The ΟΝ syllable is the neutral suffix  and  it is not participating. So, we have ΕΥ = well  and  (ΤΜ- Ω) =  I divide. Ω =verbal suffix. So, etymology is the study of dividing well the words to bring into light the true meaning. I do not know how well it can be done in english but I do know that it can be done very well in Greek.Nestanaios 13:58, 20 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nestanaios (talk • contribs)
 * Nice example of pseudo-etymology you've got here. In scientific etymology, arbitrary and completely unmotivated changes like this are not allowed, and irregular, random seeming metatheses will be postulated with great hesitation only. A hallmark of unprofessionalism is your shifting of letters without an apparent notion of phonemes, recalling all the sophistry of ancient and medieval etymology. Moreover, you do not cite any source but still speak with a presumption of authority. Why should anyone take you seriously? See Wiktionary for a more professional statement. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

For those who know greek well, etymology is not a science. Etymon means nothing. It can not be divided into syllables and if a word can not be divided into syllables, it is not greek.

In our case, metathesis is postulated with no hasitation at all because the two syllables ey +  tmon (ευ τμον)  are hard to pronounce so we have the movement of the y from the second place to the third and this is called metathesis of elements and it had been well explained by the grammatician Tryfon more than two thousand years ago.

The hard pronunciation is not the only reason for postulating metathesis. We have other reason as well. In greek language, in the begging, we have the elements. From the elements, we make the syllables. From the syllables we make names, nouns and other parts of LOGOS anf if we have a good mind, we can make up LOGOS. You see, not many people can come up with LOGOS.

Do you want sources? Here I have one. It is from the T.L.G. (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae). Work number 3136.001.

"ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡ ἀνατομὴ διαίρεσίν τινα τῶν μορίων ποιεῖται, οὕτως καὶ ἡ ἐτυμολογία τρόπον τινὰ διαίρεσιν τῶν λέξεων ἀπεργάζεται." --Nestanaios 16:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nestanaios (talk • contribs)

Are most of english words from germanic origin?
"Although many of the words in the English lexicon come from Romance languages, most of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin."

I don't believe this is accurate. This article says otherwise (read the caption of the image to the right):

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:ETY#Compound

Maybe adding a "citation needed" is enough for now; but I'd say it is not true at all.

--Vaulttech (talk) 00:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Most of the core words of the English language are from Germanic sources, primarily Old English and Old Norse. Sure, there are tomes of specialized and/or obsolete Latinates out there as well, but the key words here are "common words". &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 04:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Most English words are non-Germanic, but the most used ones are Germanic. So, if you highlighted every instance of a Germanic word in, say, Ulysses, you would be highlighting probably well more than 50% of the text, but less than 50% of the different words used. Instead of "most of the common words", it should say "the most common words". 216.8.148.170 (talk) 16:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The entire section was removed in December 2021. Nurg (talk) 03:08, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Scientific names of species named after people and/ or specific characteristics
Hi. I know what etymology is in the normal sense of the history and evolution of a word. In the case of scientific names of species named after people and/ or specific characteristics, it that really etymology, or should we be talking about "origin of the name"/ "name derived from" etc? The page Maclura has an etymology section, saying it comes from "McClure". Does this really fall under the concept of etymology? And in the case of Latin made up terms like "grandifoliae" os such to mean "big-leafed"? These are invented terms, they have no philological history as such, other than frequent application in taxonomy. Regards, Rui &#39;&#39;Gabriel&#39;&#39; Correia (talk) 21:39, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Citations and the English language subsection
I appreciate the References provided, but it seems to me that this article needs more specific citations to back up particular claims, like how the meaning of 'bead' changed (under Types of word origins), or that there's dispute over the popular explanation for cow/beef, swine/pork, etc. (under English language). Regarding the English language subsection, I see above that at least a couple of people are of the opinion that it's out of place, and (while I'd certainly like to see a separate Etymology of English article) I'm not sure I entirely agree. Isn't English etymology likely relevant to someone who'd look up an article on etymology written in English? The French version of this article has a comparatively brief subsection that lists languages that have influenced French in bullet points, without examples of specific words but with notes on the extent and area of influence, e.g., that Greek can be seen in philosophy and Arabic in astronomy and math. Perhaps the English language subsection could be reorganized along similar lines and made more concise, especially since there's already a link to "Lists of English words by country or language of origin." Hwxec (talk) 19:10, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Anglophonism

 * etymizing = etymon + US: -ize, UK: -ise
 * etymologizing is
 * a. constructed with a less fundamental constituent (etymology)
 * and
 * b. unnecessarily complex — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8206:200:89F7:906C:AA32:7DC0 (talk) 02:11, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Place names
Can anyone exlpain how the terms 'place' and 'location' are COMPLETELY ABSENT from the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.18.13.17 (talk) 02:46, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I think the origin of place names is the subject of toponymy, not etymology. --- Abacos (talk) 21:33, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Etymology of Etymology
WHY IS THERE NO SECTION CALLED "ETYMOLOGY" IN THE ETYMOLOGY ARTICLE EXPLAINING THE ETYMOLOGY OF ETYMOLOGY???? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darkwolf107 (talk • contribs) 01:50, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

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