Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 July 23

= July 23 =

Are gulls 'gullible'?
Does the word 'gullible' have anything to do with (sea) gulls? They don't seem like particularly 'gullible' birds to me. Actually, they seem more quick-witted and 'street-smart' than most. --95.148.107.208 (talk) 16:17, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The "gullible" page at the Online Etymology Dictionary says that indeed the word may come from "gull", in the sense of "someone who will swallow anything thrown at them". Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:52, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * My dead-tree Oxford English Dictionary is a bit convoluted and ambiguous on this one. It claims of gullible that "historically it seems to have been a back-formation from gullibility" which is "apparently an alteration from [and appeared "much later" than] cullibility after gull" in the particular meaning (one of several) of "a credulous person . . ." which is "of doubtful and perhaps mixed origin", natural as a transferred use of "gull" in the meaning of "an unfledged bird . . . (from gull meaning yellow) and perhaps also from gull meaning "to delude", which may be "an application of gull, to gorge, 'cram'."
 * Meanwhile cullibility means "the quality of being cullible . . . easily made a 'cull' or fool of", while cull in the sense of "dupe, silly fellow, simpleton, fool; a man, fellow, chap" is "perhaps [an] abbreviation of cully, "one who is cheated . . .; a man, fellow; a companion, mate."
 * Now, gull in the sense of seagull is traced back (by the OED) to various Celtic-language words (Welsh gŵylan, Cornish guilan, Breton goelan, Old Irish foilenn, all presumably from Old Celtic *voilenno-) referring to the bird, while cully is "originally slang or rogues' cant, of uncertain origin . . . connexion [sic] has been suggested with cullion ["a base, despicable, or vile fellow; a rascal"] or its Italian cognate 'coglione', a noddy, a fool, a patch a dolt . . . (Florio) . . . Leland thinks it of gypsy origin, comparing Spanish Gypsy chulai man, Turkish Gypsy khulai gentleman." Incidentally gullet, the oesophagus; a water channel; a gorge or defile, is traced back to Latin gula, the throat.
 * Phew! What all this seems to suggest is that the words (sea)gull, gull (= unfledged bird), gullet and gullible/cullible have ultimately different origins but may have through metaphorical applications and perhaps repeated confusions influenced one another's meanings over the centuries. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 22:21, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Which is most gullible: a gull, a dodo, or a booby? --Wavelength (talk) 14:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Th in older German orthography
Many German words that are currently spelled with a T were at one time (up to say the 18th Century) spelt with a TH - for instance That, thun, Thur. Did the TH ever represent any different pronunciation, or is there some other reason for it? --rossb (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Neanderthal is probably the most famous example and our artilce discusses the spelling and pronunciation. Rmhermen (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Words spelled in modern German with 't' that were spelled 'th' before the 1901 spelling reform have been pronounced /t/ since the time of the earliest written records of Old High German. Incidentally, I don't think that the 'th' spelling appears in most Old High German texts.  I do not know the circumstances of the origin of the 'th' spelling for the /t/ sound in certain positions, and it will be interesting to see if anyone can find an explanation of its origins.  My guess is that this spelling developed with the advent of printing in early modern times because, in some older versions of Fraktur, 't' was a rather indistinct character that might have been mistaken for 'r', 'i', or 'k' when reading quickly, and that 'h' was added in certain positions to improve legibility.  Marco polo (talk) 01:49, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

From the article th (digraph):

Because neither nor  were native sounds in Latin, an original <θ> in Greek loanwords soon came to be pronounced in Latin with. They continued to be spelled with  in deference to their etymology. This practice was then borrowed into German, French and other languages, where  still appears in Greek loan words, but is pronounced. See German orthography. Interlingua also employs this pronunciation.

In early modern times, French, German and English all expanded this by analogy to words in which there was no etymological reason for it, but for the most part the modern spelling systems have eliminated this. A rare example of unetymological  in English is the name of the River Thames.

In English,  for  can also occur in loan-words from French or German, such as Neanderthal. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 11:32, 24 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hypercorrection affected what became the English word "author" (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=author&searchmode=term).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 13:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I notice that many, maybe most, of the German words that were spelled with ‹th› in the 19th century but are now spelled with plain ‹t›, like roth, thun, That, Thal, Thon, Thor, etc., would have only 3 letters in their basic form (without inflectional endings or any affixes) if spelled without the ‹h›. Perhaps there was a feeling that 3 letters wasn't sufficient for a content word, so they added an ‹h› to pad the words out to 4 letters. The ‹th› spelling was then kept in words derived from these, like erröthen, gethan, Thätigkeit, Thäler, thönern, and thöricht. +Angr 14:47, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * On the German "th" I can´t find any hard facts, but I read one reasonable explanation: One linguist argues that the th (but also the less frequent/obsolete ph and rh) may have been / may be a remnant of medieval scribes who transposed the Greek spiritus asper not only to words with a Greek root, but also to Germanic words containing a T, an F or an R. The fact that Martin Luther, a major influence on the development of the language, used the "th" extensively, would have helped to make this a "standard".  --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Luther's own name is of course an example of this - the h is clearly silent in German, and hence the normal English pronunciation of "Luther", "Lutheran", etc, has no etymological justification. --rossb (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)