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Etymology scriptorium

Welcome to the Etymology scriptorium. This is the place to cogitate on etymological aspects of the Wiktionary entries.

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September 2025

How to format the etymology of mora?

The fish Mora moro (the "common mora") is the only species in the genus Mora.

According to The ETYFish Project, the genus name Mora was assigned by Risso in 1827 and is most likely derived from Neo-Latin morrhua, a term used historically for cod-like fishes.

The species epithet moro comes directly from Risso’s original specific name, Gadus moro, published in 1810 — again tied to the vernacular/common name for the fish in French or Italian contexts at the time. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 02:06, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

褱

RFV of the etymology of the character.

It seems implausible that the abstract meaning 'miss' would precede the concrete meanings 'carry in the bosom or the sleeve, wrap, conceal', which are preserved in the modified version 懷 as well as in the Japanese use of the character. Furthermore, the original character has the semantic component 衣 'clothes', which, again, fits in better with original meanings 'carry in the bosom or the sleeve, wrap, conceal' than with 'miss'. I don't see how the concrete meanings 'carry in the bosom or the sleeve, wrap, conceal' could develop from the abstract meaning 'miss', whereas the development from the concrete meanings to the abstract one is much more easily conceivable: 'keep (the memory of) something in your heart' -> 'miss something'. This is also the more common direction of development in languages in general. In that case, the supposed semantic contribution of the phonetic component 眔 'an eye with tear under it' is false, too. In general, the etymology entries have recently been filling with claims of semantic contributions of the phonetic components or reclassifications of phono-semantic compounds as primarily ideogrammic ones, which look, more often than not, like learners' mnemonics, folk etymologies and far-fetched products of excessive eagerness to make the structure of the characters be logical for speakers and learners today instead of accepting the cold truth that the logic was historically transient and crucially dependent on the sounds of Old Chinese. Unfortunately, Wiktionary's lack of a policy requiring sourcing makes such proliferation of dubious claims unavoidable.--62.73.72.101 10:07, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the glyph origin was added to our entry in this edit from 12 November 2024 by Cicognac (talk • contribs). This glyph origin text appears to be a pretty close match to the ZH Wiktionary text in the entry at zh:褱, which was added to that entry in this edit from 30 April 2025 by Fglffer (talk • contribs).

@Cicognac, since your edit was earlier and seems to be the source of the ZH Wikt edit, could you give us any further information on where you got that glyph origin? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:52, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

If I'm not wrong (I did this edit a long time ago), I used the Multi-Function Chinese Character Database. Earlier, I used Ziyuan, which later I stopped using since the MFCCD by Hong Kong University is more accurate. If you find better explanations for glyph origins, especially in the MFCCD, please feel free to improve them. Paleography is constantly evolving, hence I do not pretend to "have the truth in my hands", to express this idea with an idiom (e.g., some of the newest contributions can be found in "Old Chinese" by Baxter and Sagart, 2014). Cicognac (talk) 05:42, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Лакедра(Russian name of Seriola quinqueradiata&Oligoplites)

Etymology of Russian word Лакедра for fish species Seriola quinqueradiata and for genus Oligoplites PaleWizardSS (talk) 14:22, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Obviously the same word as dialectal fish name лаке́рда (lakérda), from Greek λακέρδα (lakérda), from Latin lacerta. Vahag (talk) 09:52, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

stikstof and Stickstoff

The etymologies of both of these terms claim to be borrowings of the other one, so which came first? Horse Battery (talk) 19:07, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

The first German attestation seems to be the one from 1791 linked in the entry, all earlier results on Books appear wrongly dated. Pfeifer (Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache) also points at 1791 for the first attestation in German.

Etymologiebank also says that Dutch calqued from German, and that "stikstof" was first attested in 1793. Lavoisier and French scientists suggested the name "Azote" in the 1780s. Maybe the "coined in Dutch in 1789" mention in the German entry is a misunderstanding of that (it's an uncited claim, anyway). I haven't been able to find such an early usage on Google Books, at least.

Given this, I think we should go with "Stickstoff" being first. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 13:32, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Proto-Basque verb format

I've seen two verb formats here in Wiktionary: root only like *-os- and hyphenated like *e-os-i. Which one is preferable (if any)? My thoughts - influenced by how PIE is done - are that *-os- should be categorized as a root and not as a verb (as verbs verb citation forms were - according to the current consensus on this - created by adding "e-" and "-i" to the root, and possibly some extra affixes), while the verb entry, if it's to be included separately (I think I'd include it), shouldn't have hyphens separating affixes from the root, so like *eosi.

The reason I'm asking about all that is that Wiktionary includes a lot of Trask's reconstructions, but barely any newer Euskaltzaindia's EHHE reconstructions (released in 2019 in Basque only, so it's understandable). I'd like to include them here, but wanted to align on the verb format first. ErdaradunGaztea (talk) 14:01, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree that the verbs can be reconstructed back to forms that still contain the prefix e-/i-, and that there is no actual evidence that the bare root was once an independent word. That is of course quite likely in some even more distant pre-proto-Basque, but we can't get there from modern Basque: joan and ikusi and so on all go back to a complex of root and affixes. This complex is a word and should be the lemma for the proto-stage. -- Hiztegilari (talk) 15:07, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Turkish mırtıp

no idea Zbutie3.14 (talk) 18:27, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

I think it is (with metathesis) from Arabic مُطْرِب (muṭrib), meaning “instrument player” (from the root ط ر ب (ṭ r b); see طرب), borrowed in Persian as مُطْرِب (motreb) meaning “minstrel” (a traveling musician) and in Kurdish, with a different metathesis, mitirb. Here is an artikel about mırtıps that also discusses the etymology.  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:31, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

thanks! Zbutie3.14 (talk) 13:23, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

hyperaffixationalitylike

Looking at neuraminidase, which is clumping (semi-impressively) 4 affixes together, makes me wonder. What's the hyperaffixationalizedest word we've got? Probably able to find out playng with {{affix}}... Vealhurl (talk) 20:40, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

stress +‎ less +‎ ness

{{stress +‎ less|en|ness}}  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:37, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

I broke sürdürülebilirlik into six components. Some editors like to build binary trees where only two affixes at a time are joined. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:06, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

anti- +‎ dis- +‎ establish +‎ -ment +‎ -arian +‎ -ism

{{af|en|anti-|{{af|en|{{af|en|{{af|en|{{af|en|dis-|establish}}|-ment}}|-arian}}|-ism}}}}

Chuck Entz (talk) 15:12, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

välineellistyminen can be broken down to

väljä + -i → väli

väli + -ne → väline

väline + -llinen → välineellinen

välineellinen + -taa → välineellistää

välineellistää + -ua → välineellistyä

välineellistyä + -minen → välineellistyminen

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:49, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

You can further break down the morphemes to more than that: väl-i-n-ee-ll-is-t-y-m-inen (väl- + -i- + -n- + -e(e)- + -ll- + -is- + -t- + -y- + -m- + -inen). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:57, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/vëlka

I was thinking of whether this could derive from Proto-Germanic *welwaną (“to rob, plunder”). Phonetically this seems plausible, compare e.g. *raaka < *hrawaz, ? *narka < *narwaz, *tëla < *þelą. This would rely on the semantic shift being something like “rob, plunder” → “take away” → “debt”. Borrowing a verb as a nominal would also probably need some explaining, though. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:36, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Umman / ümman

Turkish and Azerbaijani have an old word umman or ümman depending on longitude. It means ocean in general or the Indian Ocean in particular. According to {{R:tr:NewRedhouse}} this is an Arabic borrowing and was spelled عمّان in the Arabic script. What was the original Arabic word? Is it related to عُمَان (Oman) (without the geminate m) or عَمَّان (ʕammān, “Amman”) (with a different short vowel)? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:31, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

I have no real expertise in Arabic, but when Semitic words connected to water have an "m" in them, it's often not a coincidence. I do notice there's a verb عَامَ (ʕāma, “to swim or to float”) (Etymology 3), which might be connected somehow. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:55, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

holy smoke

Saw some viral nonsense online about it deriving from smoke pouring out of a metal bull for sacrificing children to Moloch. Would appreciate the real etymology to dispel this misinformation. — 2600:1700:DBF0:9D0:650A:6CEC:1ED0:C0DC 04:40, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

It looks like some sort of minced oath. Probably a substitute for something/someone a Christian would want to avoid swearing by for religious reasons. The whole idea is to substitute something innocuous, and the scenario you're talking about would be the exact opposite of that. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:58, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Another hunch I had, which might also be wrong, was that it could, perhaps secondarily, have some connection to the Vatican smoke signals. Wakuran (talk) 21:27, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

It certainly could be a religious word - but "shit" begins with an s, and might be a candidate too. TooManyFingers (talk) 02:28, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

“Shit” begins with sh. Nevertheless, rebracketing from older adjective declension ending -(e)s it would be anyone’s guess what a moke is, and muk fits the bill, already refers to excrement, also figuratively. A possible etymological connection is conspicuous in the parallel case of reak and Rauch (“smoke”). I have yet to find anything about mockern (“to be smelly”), absent from the dictionaries and I actually doubt that it is related. The uncertainty of *mokkus (“pig”) does not instill confidence either, but see go the whole hog, ”So, we usually don’t know the origin of any word, if you want to go, as they say, the whole hog, if you want to discuss the beginning of beginning.” (Anatoly Liberman, in Because Language no. 98). Holy demands religious connotations, but it is not required relative to whole/y as a more conservative guess. Cultleaderlich (talk) 17:01, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

and not the smoke from incense? I'd be inclined to agree with Chuck. anything else is deliberately sensationalist/overthinking Griffon77 (talk) 05:11, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "selera" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay selera ("appetite") a Sanskrit loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 09:51, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Ulster Irish geafta

Does anyone know where the Ulster Irish form geafta for standard Irish geata (“gate”) gets its f from? The Dictionary of the Irish Language reports a form gepta in Tadhg Ó Cianáin's diary of the Flight of the Earls (early 17th century), but where does that get its p from? The only thing that occurs to me is that since Ulster Irish was in contact with Scottish Gaelic, it could actually be a loanword from Scottish Gaelic geata, pronounced /ˈcɛht̪ə/, and the ft of the Irish word is a phonetic approximation of the preaspirated /ht̪/ of the Gaelic word. Is anyone aware of any published explanations of this form? —Mahāgaja · talk 12:37, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Micheal O'Siadhail's 1989 Modern Irish: grammatical structure and dialectal variation says on page 90:

Although the combination ft /ft/ is rare in Irish, it is noteworthy that the cluster does arise in Donegal where f /f/ seems to strengthen t /t/ in words such as:

(66) geata /ɡ´atə/ → /ɡ´aftə/ (D) ~ /ɡ´autə/ (Gd) 'gate'

  ratan /ratən/ → /raftən/ (Mn) 'rafters'

  lata /Latə/ → /Laftə/ → /Lautə/ (Gd) 'loft'

  scata /skatə/ → /skaft´t´ə/ (with slendering) (Gd) 'crowd'

In Connemara /t/ is retained in such words […] In Munster on the other hand /t/ is sometimes strengthened to give /xt/, e.g. lota /lotə/ → /loxtə/ 'loft' (M), rata /ratə/ → /raxtə/ (M) 'rafter'.

It seems to me that this "strengthening" may not be random: it stands out that in all of these cases (except possibly scata?), there are words in either English, Norse, or Scottish Gaelic which could have influenced things (and in the cases of lochta and rachta, clearly did, as the etyma). - -sche (discuss) 20:01, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

older sources

Among older sources, Nils Magnus Holmer's 1940 On Some Relics of the Irish Dialect Spoken in the Glens of Antrim says little useful about the f, only that it is "intrusive", but of interest it glosses raftan as 'rat' instead of 'rafter'. And Alf Sommerfelt's 1922 The Dialect of Torr, Co. Donegal, volume 1, page 171, § 519, claims (for whatever a book that old is worth) A curious differentiation of the first element with decreasing tension of a geminated consonant has taken place in some isolated cases. Thus in skaf't'ə 'a multitude, crowd': Di. scata; g'aftə 'gate': Di. geata, geafta, from Engl. gate. The differentiation goes back to the time when the first element of the geminated consonant was on the point of disappearing. A desire to maintain the aspect of the word, probably to avoid collision with other forms, gave rise to a reaction which resulted in a differentiation. - -sche (discuss) 21:46, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

@-sche: Thanks! It seems like all these scholars are finding scholarly-sounding ways of saying "I dunno; it's just kinda spontaneous". If it were a medical condition, they'd be calling it idiopathic. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:18, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps we could use them to write something like "The origin of the f in the Ulster Irish form geafta is unclear. Several other words have /ft/ in Ulster Irish where some other varieties of Irish have bare /t/; several of these words also have variants with /xt/ in Munster Irish, and derive from etyma which had consonant clusters rather than bare /t/ (e.g. lochta, lofta from Norse lopt, perhaps also influenced by English loft, and rafta(n), rachta from English rafter). Perhaps the use of ft rather than t in the Ulster form of this word was influenced by the /-ʰt̪-/ of Scottish Gaelic geata." - -sche (discuss) 01:06, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

slart

Any idea what the etymology is? - -sche (discuss) 20:16, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Related to Scots clart maybe? DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 20:25, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Scots has slairt, slaurt (“to gobble food in a messy way, to eat quickly and gluttonously”), which appears to be related to Scots slair, slare (“to smear, bedaub, cover with (some soft, wet, messy substance), to make a mess at any work”) (perhaps with a formative -t ?) Also similar is Scots slairk, slairg (“to smear, bedaub, bespatter (an object with something wet and dirty)”), and slairk, slarg (“a quantity of any messy semi-liquid substance, a dollop, smear”) (perhaps from the same base verb with formative -k ?); all possibly related to Low German Slärke (“a slovenly woman”), dialectal German schlarken (“to loaf or lounge about”), and dialectal German schlarggen (“to smear, mess”). Leasnam (talk) 21:45, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

We have English slatter, Icelandic sletta and Swedish slatt. The phonosemantics seem to be general Germanic. Wakuran (talk) 21:49, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

There is also a German Low German slarren (“to stomp, traipse, trudge”). I suppose the Noun sense at slart (“a small (often residual) amount”) could be derived from an earlier sense of "a drop, smear" (?) Leasnam (talk) 22:03, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Interesting! Thank you. I had worded the noun definition that way to cover all the cites, but those various possible relatives suggest that the two distinguishable subsenses the cites show might even have distinct origins, so I've tentatively split the noun in two: one set of cites use and often explicitly gloss the word to mean "leftovers, leavings", and seem to almost always use it together with ort(s); the other cite seems to mean "a splash, a sprinkle, a small amount", a sense which is in the EDD but which I've had to move to the citations page because I can only find that one cite. (Intriguingly, the EDD asserts that in Lincolnshire the term could mean a large amount instead of a small amount.) I see that the DSL entry for "slairt" also speculates that its own senses (one related to eating, and one, like our verb, related to dirtiness) may be different words. - -sche (discuss) 01:36, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

South Sudanese "payam" etymology

Hello, Is South Sudanese payam ("a subdivision of a county in parts of South Sudan and Sudan") an Arabic/Persian loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 22:50, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

As Standard Arabic lacks a /p/ phoneme, I'd assume not. There's a Persian word 'payam' meaning "message, news, tidings", but it seems unlikely. I wonder whether it could be derived from French pays in some manner. Wakuran (talk) 01:19, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Pannonian Rusyn Сивч

A surname of Hungarian origin. I think it's probably from Szűcs, but any other suggestions? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 05:20, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Old High German goting and gotten

These words appear somehow related to Proto-Germanic *gudjô. Köbler (2014) writes the following, but doesn't provide the expanded forms of the abbreviations:

goting* 1, ahd., st. M. (a)?: nhd. Priester, Vorsteher, Amtsträger, Beamter mit richterlichen Funktionen, Vertreter Gottes?; ne. priest; ÜG.: lat. tribunus Gl; Q.: Gl (nach 765?); E.: s. germ. *gudjō-, *gudjōn, *gudja-, *gudjan, sw. M. (n), Priester, Rufer, Anrufer; vgl. idg. *g̑ʰū̆to-, Adj., angerufen, Pokorny 413; idg. *g̑ʰau-, *g̑ʰau̯ə-, V., rufen, anrufen, Pokorny 413; L.: Karg-Gasterstädt/Frings 4, 367 (goting), ChWdW8 147a (goting), EWAhd 4, 544

Mårtensås ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ AMA 15:50, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Are you asking for the expansion of the abbreviations? Most of them can be found at [1].

• ahd. = Althochdeutsch (“Old High German”)
• st. M. = stark maskulin (“strong masculine (noun)”)
• nhd. = Neuhochdeutsch (“Modern High German”)
• ne. = Neuenglisch (“Modern English”)
• ÜG. = Übersetzungsgleichung (“translation equivalence”)
• Gl = Glosse (“gloss”) (in OHG on a manuscript)
• Q. = Quelle (“source”)
• E. = Etymologie (“etymology”)
• s. = siehe (“see”)
• germ. = Germanisch (“(Proto-)Germanic”)
• sw. M. = schwach maskulin (“weak masculine (noun)”), i.e. an n-stem
• vgl. = vergleiche (“cf., compare”)
• idg. = Indogermanisch (“(Proto-)Indo-European”)
• Adj. = Adjektiv (“adjective”)
• V. = Verb (“verb”)
• L. = Literatur (“literature”)
• ChWdW8 = Chronologisches Wörterbuch des deutschen Wortschatzes: der Wortschatz des 8. Jahrhunderts (und früherer Quellen) by Elmar Seebold
• EWAhd = Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen by Albert L. Lloyd and Rosemarie Lühr

—Mahāgaja · talk 20:20, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

I add dictionaries' abbreviations whenever I come across them (and they meet CFI) to help with precisely this kind of thing, if anyone wants to help by adding some of the missing ones above! (That is, indeed, why we have nhd. and ahd.—and now ne.—as well as a lot of English placename abbreviations and some Russian abbreviations.) - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

I added ae., which has been misinterpreted as Avestan. Exarchus (talk) 15:44, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

The one that always throws me off when I'm reading Kluge is as. for altsächsisch; I'm always expecting it to stand for angelsächsisch. Of course, language abbreviations can be confusing in English as well. Morris-Jones's A Welsh Grammar uses Ar. for Proto-Indo-European. It catches me out every time; I always think "What is he talking about? That's not an Arabic word!" But writing in 1913, he used the term Aryan to mean Indo-European, and Ar. to abbreviate it. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Pannonian Rusyn циґонь

Means "fishhook". Phonetically, the closest thing I think is a borrowing from Hungarian cigány (“Roma”), but I don't see the semantic connection there, plus there already exists Циґан (Cigan) for Roma. Any other ideas? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:41, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Could there be some relationship to Lower Sorbian wogon (tail)? Although I don't know what the initial tsi- should mean, then. Wakuran (talk) 14:58, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

It is from Hungarian szigony. Vahag (talk) 16:59, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Is the variation *cigony attested anywhere? Or any indication of further etymology? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:35, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't know. Apparently there is dialectal czigony in Tata and Bács. For s > ц Udvari gives another example: szivárvány. Vahag (talk) 18:02, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. I noted that you added a Carpathian Rusyn descendant on that Hungarian term. Can you show somewhere where that's attested? Since I also found Pannonian циварвань (civarvanʹ, “fire hose”). Insaneguy1083 (talk) 19:59, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

It was a typo. I meant Pannonian Rusyn. Vahag (talk) 20:04, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Dialectal civárvány is attested, by the way. So there may have existed dialectal *cigony too. Vahag (talk) 14:03, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "duga" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay duga ("to guess") a Sanskrit loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 23:47, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

“courting candle” etymology

Youtuber “RamsesThePigeon” has a recent short discussing this topic and calls the definition used here, a historic myth. According to this author, the “courting candle” name for historic candlesticks with what he calls “ejectors” comes from a 1960s misconception of them being intended for timing, rather than for allowing the entire length of the candle to be used while also expelling melted wax after use. The “rat de cave” candle itself, the poor man's coiled candle according to this video, is historically not related to the coiled candle holder and was mistakenly linked to it because of its shape. It sounds very much like an improvised light source, similar to rushlight.

The word is certainly a name for the object by virtue of having become common use; it should not be removed. However, it might be a good idea to research the topic and (if the author is correct) to clarify the etymology and definition.

Incidentally, there are no translations listed on the page which I assume is because of the misconception, since we could link instead to the rat de cave. It is apparently derived from a similar concept from Afrikaans and mentioned in the video, the “opsitkers.” (Literally meaning “courting candle,” which I know from everyday cultural memory as an ordinary and very short candle used to tell the time until a suitor had to leave.) 102.64.42.153 07:11, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

يحيى again

This edit (summary) raises a valid point, that our existing etymology was unsourced. I suspect the edit tilted things too far in the other direction (it smells of 'it's in the Quran, it can't be a mistake'), and it notably doesn't cite any sources either. Can someone bring some sources to bear? I added what I could find, but would prefer more and better sources. Small prior discussion: Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2022/December#يحيى, which also mentions the claim (currently cited only to a blog AFAICT) that this spelling occurs in pre-Quranic Mandaeic. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

• Fraenkel, Siegmund (1890), “Miscellen”, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (in German), volume 4, pages 337–338
• Jeffery, Arthur (1938), The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Gaekwad’s Oriental Series; 79), Baroda: Oriental Institute, page 290
• Barth, Jakob (1915), “Studien zur Kritik und Exegese des Qorāns”, in Der Islam‎^[2] (in German), volume 6, number 2, →DOI, page 126 n
• Grimme, Hubert (1895), Mohammed (Darstellungen aus dem Gebiete der nichtchristlichen Religionsgeschichte; XI) (in German), volume 2, Münster: Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, page 96 n 8
• Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2021), “The Pre-Islamic Divine Name ʿsy and the Background of the Qurʾānic Jesus”, in Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association‎^[3], volume 6, →DOI

Now write something about its previous attestation, @-sche. We cannot hope for robust reference works of personal names of Western Asiatic antiquity in the near future. Fay Freak (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks; I've tried to present the various theories. It is fascinating that there appear to be 3.5 mutually exclusive theories, where the one-and-a-halfth theory is itself two mutually exclusive theories which cover the same idea but (unless I am misunderstanding something? which is possible) appear to disagree with each other on seemingly all points: whether the inscriptions or graffiti at al-Ula were written by Jews or by Christians, what language they were writing in, and whether the occurrence of yḥya there means that Jews or Christians had developed Yḥya as a dialectal evolution of Yōḥānān and then Muslim/Arab use of Yaḥyā for Yōḥānān is based on hearing that al-Ula-et-al form of the name, or conversely shows that Arabs already had the name Yaḥyā and the al-Ula-ans adopted it as a naturalization/Arabization of Yōḥānān. Hopefully more scholars look into this so we can have 4.5 mutually exclusive theories... - -sche (discuss) 16:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@-sche: Why? It’s not programming. I would have been much shorter. The name existed as as a minor (in frequency) variant of Yōḥānān or less remote Arabicized forms, but Islam popularized it as the typical Arabic form for John, because as a Holy Scripture the Qurʔān became an authority on language, and onomastics are dedicated to such scriptures particularly notoriously.

Misreading theories, which when disseminated were ignorant of the attestation situation, yet not losing their suggestive power—bad philology continues to exist and be published—, can be discarded, as well as theological ones, which don't even adhere to anything we know about grammar, which was however apt to support the name’s popularity, after Islam as well as before it when it snuck in with Arabic Jews — or was it Christians? what is the linguistic difference? – who attained some edgy originality with it. +10 references thereunder. Fay Freak (talk) 20:45, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

dood ("camel") from dudhwallah?

Our entry claims that the use of dood to mean "camel" derives from someone seeing dudhwallah "milk-man" and misinterpreting the first part as a word meaning "camel" for some unexplained reason. Can this etymology be sourced (and expanded)? - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

well, maybe we can fiund a word like "utwallah" and just say it was onfused with that rahter than claim reanalsysis. it would be easier for me to search if i could read hte script but its just a list of words to me. Lollipop ^{(an alt account of Soap)} — talk 16:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

っぽい

RFV of the etymology.

@Eirikr, you added this etymology in December 20, 2018. No dictionary supports this etymology (looked in NKD2, DJR, DJS/DDJS). You also put "apparently" as if it was some kind of speculative rumor. Your use of "apparent(ly)" also appears in other speculative etymologies or notes. Chuterix (talk) 22:28, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, in 2018, we were not yet including much by way of references for JA entries in general.

You are certainly correct that the current content at https://kotobank.jp/word/つぽい-3214200, https://kotobank.jp/word/ぽい-626776, https://www.weblio.jp/content/っぽい, lacks anything much about etymology. From the Weblio content, I see that the JA Wikt entry at ja:っぽい includes somewhat similar detail, as in the ja:っぽい#語源 section. If anyone has access to the full NKD, hopefully that will shed some light on this. Given the wording, specifically the mention of "Edo period" I strongly suspect that I got this from an earlier iteration of the NKD via Kotobank -- sadly, each successive site redesign has left us with less and less etymological detail in their entries, I suspect due to ever-tighter licensing terms from Shogakukan. I have not yet ponied up for the subscription-based access offered by Japan Knowledge, and life is leading me away from being able to spend as much time as I'd like doing deep-dive etymology work.

Re: "apparently", I have used that in entry etymologies to deliberately express uncertainty, as a rough translation of Japanese references' phrasing like 「XYZという」 or 「XYZの転か」. While I have no direct recollection of entering the etymology for っぽい (ppoi), I expect that my use of "apparently" there was along similar lines. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:46, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

we have a circular etymology saying -poi and -ppoi derive from each other. i hope we can fix this, and if not, just say its unknown which came first. Lollipop ^{(an alt account of Soap)} — talk 17:17, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@Lollipop I think the senses are different: ぽい originated ("apparently") from 多い in the Edo period as a suffix, then became pronounced っぽい, still as a suffix. Then, ぽい was innovated in recent times by the degrammaticalization as mentioned, and since you can't really pronounce a っ with nothing before it (sometimes it's possible to use the new adjective form at the start of a sentence, even), the っ is dropped. Or, maybe it's dropped for other reasons as well, but either way, the new ぽい ought to be a completely different ぽい than the historical Edo form. That historical form could be listed at ぽい as its own alt-form entry, though. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 22:49, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

> That historical form could be listed at ぽい as its own alt-form entry, though.

And, for completeness, that historical (now-obsolete) version of ぽい (poi) should have its own entry. If and when I can track down sourcing, I'll add it in under a new etym section. If anyone can find the source ref before me, by all means please go ahead and add it. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:23, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

The full unabridged version of NKD2 doesn't have this etymology deriving -(p)poi from ooi (ofo-). The 1988 Kokugo Daijiten Revised Edition (it may have once been available on Sakura Paris before that service was shut down for copyright issues; it was derived from external dictionary files) may have etymologies that even the full NKD2 doesn't have whatsoever. e.g. 鈹 (kawa, “matte”). Chuterix (talk) 16:39, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Wow, so the full NKD2 doesn't have any etym listed for 鈹 (kawa, “matte, for molten metal, such as appears during smelting”)? That surprises me, I'd always thought that the 1988 edition was a subset of the fuller NKD2.

That gives me renewed motivation to dig out that old copy, and set up a VM somewhere with a network-isolated VM of Win XP or something else capable of running that ancient Microsoft Bookshelf software -- something I got as a freebie for buying a laptop in Japan back in 1998 or so. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:27, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I've checked the 国語大辞典 EPWING (the same one used in Sakura Paris) and it doesn't have any notes for the singular (no duplicate) entry of ぽい besides 「(形容詞型活用。多く上の語との間に促音がはいって、「っぽい」の形で用いる) "Adjectival Conjugation. Many of the aforementioned words are geminated, so the form "-ppoi" is used.")」 Oddly enough, that also doesn't have any etymology for 鈹, but has the etymological notes at the beginning in words such as 無駄 (muda, “useless”), 胸 (mune, “chest”), 河原 (kawara, “dried riverbed”), 籬 (mase, “fence that has been lowly woven with bamboo”). Things may be outdated or incorrect though, so don't 100% count on it. Chuterix (talk) 00:36, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

@Chuterix However, Daijisen does say: 「…を多く含んでいるという意を表す」, which wording is very apropos to the etymology written by @Eirikr. Unfortunately, no direct confirmation. My own copy of Nikkoku abridged is evidently the same as yours, since I got the same content verbatim for ぽい, so sadly no lead there. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 01:03, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

a Dios rogando y con el mazo dando

There's currently no etymology given for this expression, other than a literal translation "strike with your rod while you beg to God". The definition says it's a proverb equivalent to "God helps those who help themselves" and "to preach water and drink wine".

I have no proof or reference for what follows:

Spain has a considerable religious history including Judaism and Christianity, and in the first few verses of Exodus 17 there's a very well-known story in which Moses begs God for help, and God directs Moses to use his rod to strike a rock in order to get water from it. Thus, Moses literally does what the proverb describes. The proportion of people who consider themselves religious is much lower than it once was, but I suspect that in an earlier time, this would have been immediately recognized as a scriptural reference by almost all who heard it. TooManyFingers (talk) 16:43, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

bull, etymology 1

The etymology given here lists, among several reasonable cognates, Thracian βόλινθος (“wild bull”), which contains the classic morpheme belonging to a supposed pre-IE Mediterranean/Eteocretan substratum, -nθa-/-ssa- or -nθos-/-ssos-/-mpos- (e.g. Ζάκυνθος, Ὄλυμπος, Παρνασσός, θάλασσα/θάλαθθα/θάλαττα, ἀσάμινθος, καλαμίνθη, Ἁλικαρνασσός, Κνωσσός, etc, etc—though some ascribe the additional -sos occurring in placenames to a separate, Pelasgian substratum).

The entry for βόλινθος even mentions its likely pre-Greek origin.

This should not be included among actual cognates to bull like Latin follis and Ancient Greek φαλλός (phallós).

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 12:25, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

It was added in this 2010 edit by someone known for sloppiness and inconsistant quality of sourcing. The obvious question: where does Thracian β fit in as far as Grimm's law? The PIE root is a voiced aspirate, so one might expect something like *b only in Germanic, unless Thracian has lost the aspiration distinction (though I notice Baltic descendants of the PIE root with "b", and Thracian has been linked to Baltic by some). Chuck Entz (talk) 14:54, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I've removed it (along with the Macedonian and Albanian terms) for the time being... Leasnam (talk) 14:58, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

PIE *bʰ lost its aspiration and became plain b in lots of branches, including Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Iranian, Albanian, probably Dacian, and apparently some words in Ancient Macedonian (but in other words, it becomes *pʰ as in Greek). —Mahāgaja · talk 20:52, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree with the removal because Proto-Slavic *vòlъ is another possible comparison, albeit of unknown origin. I do not agree so much with "pre-Greek" as an argument against Thracian, that's like trying to nail pudding to the wall. Cultleaderlich (talk) 18:02, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Breton chas 'dogs'

(Notifying Silmethule): This can hardly be from Proto-Brythonic *kun (plural of *ki); is it from French chiens or a relative of that, e.g. Gallo? —Mahāgaja · talk 14:27, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

It can't be due to any kind of mutation or palatalization, though? Wakuran (talk) 17:54, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

If from Romance, its source would be what we classify as Old French, in light of the -s.

It would be somewhat unusual (though not impossible by any means) to ‘graft’ a borrowed inflection on to a native word. Is no other explanation available? Nicodene (talk) 18:19, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

@Wakuran, Nicodene: I should have looked at Breton Wiktionary to begin with. According to br:chas, it's from French chasse (“hunt, hunting”), which was apparently borrowed as a kind of collective meaning ‘dogs’. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

+1 but *captiāre is unattested, Romanian: agăța, acăța, maybe cață.Cultleaderlich (talk) 22:17, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Are you certain it is grammatically a(n alternate) plural of ki, as opposed to a separate collective noun, with coinciding meaning ? Nicodene (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't speak Breton myself, so I can't say, but the Breton Wiktionary (presumably written by native or at least fluent speakers) just calls it an alternative plural of ki. Surely the Breton Wiktionarians would have defined it as "a group of dogs" if it were a separate collective noun. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

It may be analogous to e.g. murder in English, which is, loosely speaking, the plural of the concept of a crow but not, linguistically speaking, the plural form of the noun crow.

The majority of Wiktionarians don’t have specialist training, so this sort of misclassification would not come as a surprise.

But we should of course ask a native or fluent speaker if one is around. Nicodene (talk) 21:07, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Yun labels themself br-4 in their Babel box; maybe they can help us further. Another possible English analogy is people, which functions straightforwardly as a suppletive plural of person (in addition to its collective meaning which has a plural of its own). —Mahāgaja · talk 21:18, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, the plural "chas" - attested in 1519 - replaced the old plural "kon" in everyday language. This comes from the fact that dogs were used for hunting (French "chasse" = English "hunt").

Reference: Albert Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton, Éditions Label LN, 2021, page 146. --Yun (talk) 05:22, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

@Yun: Are there any grammatical tests to prove whether chas is a true plural or a collective meaning "group of dogs"? I know such tests are difficult in Welsh, because nouns appear in the singular after numbers ("three dog", "four dog" etc.), and verbs appear in the singular after plural subjects ("the dogs is barking"). Welsh does inflect some adjectives for number, so the presence of a plural adjective can show that a noun is plural, but apparently Breton doesn't even do that. So is there any behavior that allows us to say "chas is definitely plural because it does X; if it were singular it would do Y"? —Mahāgaja · talk 07:44, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Yes, it's definitely plural. For example, in these sentences:

• Chas dispar int, a lavare o mestr. "They are great dogs, said their owner." (breton wikisource), the verb is in the plural form: int="are" (the singular would be eo).
• Ar chas ne oant ket pell, ha santet o doa c’houez. "The dogs were not far away, and they had smelled the scent." (breton wikisource), the verbs are still plural: oant="were" and o doa="had" (the singular would be oa and en doa (masculine) or he doa (feminine)).
• « Va chas mat, » eme ar roñfl, « kit da gerc’hat an tremeniad d’in d’am lein. » "My good dogs," said the ogre, "go and fetch me the passer-by for my lunch." (breton wikisource), the verb kit (="go") is in the plural form (the singular would be kae).
• Ar chas a ve great guelloc’h d’hezo. "The dogs are treated better." (breton wikisource), d’hezo (modern spelling: dezho) means "to them", not "to it" (the singular would be dezhañ (masculine) or dezhi (feminine)).

--Yun (talk) 08:53, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! I hope that answers Nicodene's question. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:39, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

It had to do with whether chas is an inflection of ki rather than whether it functions as a plural. Would a speaker count ‘one ki, two chas’, for instance? Some other test may be needed if counting works as in Welsh. Nicodene (talk) 10:55, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

The word chas is not an inflection of ki: they are two different words with different origins. Ki is used in the singular and only chas in the plural; kon, which is an inflection of ki, has long since disappeared from everyday speech. Like Welsh and the Sami languages, Breton uses the singular after a number: one ki, two ki, three ki, etc. --Yun (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

It sounds, then, like chas functions as a (suppletive) inflection of ki, and so the current handling seems appropriate. Nicodene (talk) 17:53, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

Urdu: علیزہ / Aliza

Potential variant علیزے as in w:ur:علیزے اقبال حیدر (transl. Alizeh). Does not appear to be Arabic? Speculations: French Alizé, Hebrew w:en:Aliza, clipping of علیزاده (see میرزا). The name of a popular actress at some point? Written with the 'ayn might throw away borrowings from English/French. Really just stumbled across this South Asian name and wondered its origin. Kritixilithos (talk) 14:19, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

Hebrew ציפורן ("fingernail" and "clove")

In very many languages, "clove" is referred to as "nail" because it looks exactly like an old-fashioned nail or spike. (In fact, English "clove" is from Latin "clavus" too.) But how is it that Hebrew refers to it with the word for "fingernail"? To my knowledge, there is no identity between the two kinds of "nails" anywhere but in the Germanic languages. So my first thought was a mistaken calque from Yiddish, but this seems unlikely on second thought, not least because it would have to be quite recent. So what's going on here? Just coincidence? And if so: why call the plant "fingernail" in the first place? 90.186.83.113 16:20, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

As Hebrew shares the connection between carnation and clove, that basically only seems to be found in Continental Germanic (and possibly Finnish), it seems highly likely that Yiddish or German has had an influence here. Wakuran (talk) 17:11, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

@Wakuran: It's a bit wider than Germanic. One of the older varieties of carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) was selected for its clove fragrance at a time when South Asian spices were only available in Europe via a couple of tightly controlled trade routes, and extremely expensive. Most of the names for these clove pinks are derived from Ancient Greek κᾰρῠόφῠλλον (kărŭóphŭllon, “cloves”) (e.g. English gillyflower), or Arabic قَرَنْفُل (qaranful, “cloves”). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:27, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

How early is the sense "clove" attested? That could rule some possibilities in or out. I notice the sense "stylus" is in the Tanakh; maybe the sense "clove" derives from that; cloves look about as much like styli as nails, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

Note the sense “claw”, which may have led to the transfer to other spiky things.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:13, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Proto-Bantu for mzungu

mzungu is a common Bantu word for "white person, European". Under that word we have Chichewa and Swahili referring back to a 'Common Bantu' form - but different ones. The exact form is not reconstructable, and the various alternatives all seem to include the same list of descendants. Shouldn't there be one central repository of descendants (even if we admit we don't know it's correct), with alternatives pointing to it? Isn't it much harder to maintain if there are four different, parallel copies of it? --Hiztegilari (talk) 22:02, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Where is the duplicated content? It seems like the descendants are listed at Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/mʊ̀jʊ́ngʊ̀, and the alt forms all link to that page (Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/mʊ̀cʊ̀ngʊ́, Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/mʊ̀díʊ́ngʊ̀ and Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/mʊ̀dʊ̀ngʊ̀ are redirects). - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Redirects! I never even saw that. Is it at all common to use redirects for alternative forms? I thought we never did that. Anyway, apologies for wasting your time. --Hiztegilari (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

kadiasker, cadilesker

Same word? Different transmission routes, or why did the first one drop the l? (Edit: aha, cadiascher suggests Ottoman Turkish dropped Arabic's l.) Definitions also need to be deduplicated / one made a synonym/altform of the other, presumably. - -sche (discuss) 01:28, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Because there is at least one Arabic word in it, the compound could use the Arabic article. And when there is an Arabian or Persian word, izafet is permissible, and therefore it is to be presumed here—where the article is not seen—, otherwise it would be asker kadısı.

The vocalism of the first عسكر is expected by the authorities due to the laryngeal, but since Turkish by itself has no such laryngeal but vowel harmony it is probable that the colloquial had /ɛ/ instead of /a/, which is actually seen in some descendants of the Ottoman Turkish we give, and of course also attested in transcriptions, e.g. in this practical primer 1882. Fay Freak (talk) 15:59, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

I found it in {{R:tr:NewRedhouse}}. Equivalent to Arabic kazin al-asker. At least three forms including قاضی العسكر (kadilasker) and قاضیعسكر (kazasker). Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:03, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

In {{R:ota:Devellioğlu}} as قاضیعسكر (kadî-asker, kazî-asker) equivalent to modern kazasker. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:09, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both! I have edited the entries so the definition is not being repeated in multiple places. Please edit further (or undo my edits and we can discuss further) if needed. - -sche (discuss) 00:33, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Note that قاضی العسك is actually kadı al-asker, so what was dropped was not just an ℓ but the Arabic definite article.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:03, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

PIE *k → Verner's law → English

Wikipedia says the English outcome of PIE *k (and *ḱ) following an unstressed vowel and hence Verner's law is y. I am momentarily drawing a blank: what is an English word descended from a PIE *k (or *ḱ) that followed an unstressed vowel and underwent Verner's law? - -sche (discuss) 07:29, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

PG *g becomes Old English ġ, English y, yell. PIE *k/ḱ in unstressed position becomes PG *g. For example, -ly and like. Are you new around here? Verner von Brown (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Our entries say -ly and like come from PIE *g (Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/leyg-), not *k. - -sche (discuss) 21:17, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

There are certainly cases where *k in a Verner position shows up in Old English as ġ, such as the past plural forms and past participles of strong verbs that ended in -h(w)an in Proto-West Germanic, such as liġen (to lēon), wriġen (to wrēon), þiġen (to þēon), sċriġen (to sċrēon) and ġefeġen (to ġefēon), but I'm not finding any cases of it showing up as y in Modern English. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:07, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Maybe yclept where the y- is from Old English ġe-, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱo(m)-? —Mahāgaja · talk 06:18, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

This is not an example, though, of *ḱ following an unstressed vowel.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:42, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

That's an interesting one, thank you, as the application of Verner's law is irregular there (as Lambiam points out). - -sche (discuss) 21:11, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

That's true, but it is part of a cross-linguistic tendency to voice obstruents in proclitics and other unstressed elements, e.g. English /ðə/, /iz/, Irish go from Old Irish co, Old Irish do- from Proto-Celtic *to- and so on. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:39, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Well actually, proclitics are likely to appear in Wackernagel-position interfixed after vowels stressed and unstressed (cafe con leche). *ḱóm is accented as predicted by Verner's. There even is an argument that *ga- was enclitic to begin with. However ġelīċ simply becomes like says the entry. Yorik Molik (talk) 08:03, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

@-sche: Using searches for PIE roots ending in k- and ḱ-, I was able to find some examples: edge, enough, fair, fay (Etymology 1), fly (the insect), owe, pail, saw (Etymology 1), tong (Etymology 1), wry (Etymology 1), and thig. It looks like the outcome depends a lot on the environment, with "y" due to neighboring front vowels/semivowels, and gemination also playing a part. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:19, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Esperanto liva

My first thought was that it might be from Ukrainian ліва, which made me super curious, but I could not find any information. My first time using this, hope it is the right place to ask such questions Bneugxu (talk) 09:50, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

L. L. Zamenhof apparently had a working command of several Slavic languages, including Russian and Polish, and the earliest drafts of Esperanto included several words directly derived from Slavic, which in later iterations were replaced with equivalents derived from Romance or Germanic, as the language families were deemed to be more internationally familar. Anyway, whether derived from Latin laevus or some Slavic cognate, I would have suspected a *leva variant form, but maybe that word was thought to fit another meaning better. Wakuran (talk) 19:13, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

This is pretty clear, but it was the "i" that caught my attention. Shifting Common Slavic (or in this case even Indo-European) "e" into "i" seems like a pretty district feature of Ukrainian, at least as far as I am aware, so it made me really curious of whether this is a contribution from Ukrainian, or there is a different explanation of why it is specifically "liva" when nearly all IE languages have it closer to "leva". Either way there is a missing piece in its etymology, and I can't stop thinking about this word... Bneugxu (talk) 22:01, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

The only other option that occurs to me is that English levo- has /iː/. The entry for liva says it's a neologism, so maybe English is more likely than Ukrainian, though if Zamenhof himself had invented the word, it would be the other way round. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:20, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian "obral" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian obral ("to sell") a Dutch loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 06:26, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

From what Dutch word? It doesn't sound much like verkopen. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:22, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

The only Dutch term that is somewhat similar is overal, which, however, has a completely different meaning.

BTW, no dictionary (other than Wiktionary) seems to list this as a verb. Instead I see two noun senses: (1) “discount sale”, (2) “sale” (an event where goods are sold), and an adjectival sense: “on discount”.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:19, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

The ending is similar to jual, so it could be a portmanteau. Although then, I don't know which word obr- would be derived from. Wakuran (talk) 10:11, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

pantheistical

Can someone fix/templatise the etymology? +maybe alt-forms Vealhurl (talk) 04:51, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I’ve kicked the can down the road by declaring this to be “From pantheistic +‎ -al.” This is in analogy with how we treat e.g. ascetical, genetical, mystical, statical, tactical, although I have some doubt about the etymological soundness of this approach. Continuing the kicking, I have changed the etymology of pantheistic to “From pantheism +‎ -tic.”

I have left the etymology of pantheism untouched, but this appeared to be a bit of a rabbit hole. What is stated there seems to be copied from the Catholic Encyclopedia but cannot be right, since Fay wrote in Latin and used the Latin term pantheismus. It also contradicts the section Pantheism § Etymology at Wikipedia. I have no reason to question the correctness of what is stated there, but have not investigated this further.  ​‑‑Lambiam 18:41, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Hall_of_Fame#Tallest_etymology_trees

I have started collecting some very tall etymology trees into this list. Currently the top entry is Dutch treitervlogger with an incredible 18 steps: Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- → *h₂életi → Proto-Germanic *alaną → *aldiz → *weraldiz → Proto-West Germanic *weraldi → Old English weorold → Middle English world → English world → worldwide → World Wide Web → Web → weblog → blog → vlog → vlogger → Dutch vlogger → treitervlogger. I'm curious whether there's any other term that can match this. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:46, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Besides, there is still a lot to be added for the treiter part, which apparently is derived from French traître just as English traitor (seemingly unrelated to the similar Swedish träta (quarrel) ). Wakuran (talk) 10:03, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

美味しい

the link 美しい that's supposed to be the source is the wrong word / doesn't actually cover the etymology kwami (talk) 04:21, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

That is the correct etymon. It's just that we don't have any content yet for the ishii pronunciation at the 美しい spelling.

For Japanese readers, see also the NKD entry here at Kotobank (scroll down to the appropriate section):

• https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%BE%8E%E3%81%97%E3%81%84-440756#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:22, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

no, that is not the etymon, it's just the same kanji. kwami (talk) 03:15, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

美しい is the orthographic representation of the いしい etymon, and I've just added that pronunciation to it. Horse Battery (talk) 04:02, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

thank you kwami (talk) 05:05, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 15:46, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up. If you are like me, then we saw that YouTube video by Kyouta which recently talked about いし and both went to see if it was on Wiktionary :) Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 15:46, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, I've expanded the etym at 美しい (ishii). HTH.  :)

I'm curious, could you share a link to the Kyouta video you mentioned? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:50, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

i don't think WP will allow me to poist the whole link, but it's at shorts/11HM4xvEfzQ kwami (talk) 05:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

「おビール」 -- "if you want to annoy people". 🤣 Thank you for the link! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

yup, exactly kwami (talk) 05:20, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Ahaha! Great to see I was right :) the world's smaller than we think, I suppose. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 23:58, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

榎 (え・えのき)

I don't think any of the theories added by @Eirikr can be the etymology of this term. 榎(え) (e) is consistently described as having an OJP pronunciation of /e/ (ア行のえ). This is distinct from 枝(えだ) (eda, “branch”) and 柄(え) (e, “handle”) which can be traced to a common /ye/ root (ヤ行のえ), and 餌(え) (e, “feed”) which can be traced to OJP /we/ (ゑ). Horse Battery (talk) 23:01, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the edit at issue is this one from 2018:

• https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%A6%8E&diff=prev&oldid=50068151

While I have no distinct memory of this some seven years later, after reviewing the sources I would have likely consulted at the time (and that I can still access), I believe I got that from Nihon Jiten, relevant entry here:

• https://www.nihonjiten.com/data/46198.html

If a deeper understanding of Old Japanese and Proto-Japonic phonology rules out these theories, we should certainly rework our entry's etymology. Given the age of that edit, and that the Nihon Jiten entry itself is publicly available, I'd recommend keeping that content on our page, and clarifying that these theories have been found invalid, and explain the reasons why. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:30, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Battery, I've updated the etym for 榎 (e). Have a look and adjust as appropriate. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:52, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it looks good Horse Battery (talk) 02:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

October 2025

bloody

RFV of the etymology.

Is this really from "by lady" Chuck Entz (talk) 07:15, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I’ve read and heard two rival etymologies before. The first is that ‘drunk as a Lord’ became ‘drunk as a blood’ (from the idea that a ‘blue blood’ is a Lord or noble) which became ‘bloody drunk’ and then it later started to be used as a general intensifier. The second theory is that it’s from ‘by our lady’, referring to Mary, mother of Jesus. The first of these seems more plausible but, in any case, I doubt it’s a contraction of ‘by lady’ without the word ‘our’ in between ‘by’ and ‘lady’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:03, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

In Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Eric Partridge says the relevant sense of bloody "results naturally from the violence and viscosity of blood". —Mahāgaja · talk 20:28, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

That does not account for my username, bloody beginner.

I did a spit-take once seeing that Danish phonology contains a blødt d, blød (“soft”), from *blautaz, because it sounds like blöd (“dull, silly”), from *blauþaz, same meaning but from a notably different root, which is closer to μαλάκας.

I imagine that some connotation of weak, small, and effiminate could eventually give rise to the b'lady theory. As for the allusion to blue, see fair, eventually my fair lady. bloody mary, now that I can see refer to its viscosity and color, naturally. Blutiger Anfänger (talk) 21:30, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Added here; seems like an obvious folk etymology. Boldly removed. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 00:37, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Attestation of Ukrainian дієслово (dijeslovo) in 1800s?

Is this Ukrainian term attested in the 1800s at all? Because then I can possibly determine whether the Pannonian Rusyn дїєслово (djijeslovo) was modelled directly off of that, or borrowed from an earlier Carpathian Rusyn cognate of the Ukrainian term. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 08:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I found an occurence from 1865, at least. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 07:43, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

niuR in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian should link to niuR in Proto austronesian

The entry currently says 'Particularly: “Any PAN term for the coconut? The Taiwanese Aboriginals should be familiar with them.”' (https://www.trussel2.com/ACD/acd-s_n1.htm#30190) Tripoderoo (talk) 02:10, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

That's been there since April of 2019, and the reason seems to be that there is no word in Proto-Austronesian, as asserted by Coconut on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . The genetic evidence seems to show that the type associated with the Austronesian-speaking peoples was domesticated in the Philippines by the early Malayo-Polynesian-speakers after they left Taiwan/Formosa. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:49, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. That's a real long time Tripoderoo (talk) 06:14, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Levantine Arabic interjection "abaw"

See أَبَو (ʔabáw, ʔabaww). It's used primarily among Armenians from what I can tell, to the point where one of the quotes I added claims it means wow effect "in Armenian", but an Armenian friend online tells me the "aw" sequence is foreign to Armenian (even Western). Any ideas? Still, when you think about it (talk) 19:52, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Does not sound Armenian. But maybe @Hovsepig has heard it? Vahag (talk) 20:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Armenians in Lebanon use it a lot. But I just figure it’s an Arabic word. Hovsepig (talk) 20:20, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Huh I asked an Arab friend from Lebanon. He doenst recognize that word. I guess it’s an Arabic word that Lebanese Armenians use in their speech, perhaps because of community ties with Syrian Armenians. But I’d still classify it as an Arabic word and not an Armenian word. Hovsepig (talk) 20:31, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Very confusing. It has no apparent Arabic etymology either. The only hint so far is that one of the quotes I added refers to it as an Aleppine term without making reference to Armenians specifically, but given that Aleppo has the largest Armenian population in Syria that still doesn't isolate anything... Still, when you think about it (talk) 21:29, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Something like /waʊ/ or /waw/ is found in a lot of languages as onomatopoeia, with its contrast of high-rounded and low unrounded sounds. The current form would seem to be the result of this passing between languages with mutually-incompatible phonotactics- Arabic in general has no problem with initial "w" sounds, but Armenian seems to convert them into "v". Would the local Arabic lect convert that into a "b"?. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

You know, this isn't impossible honestly. I say بَرَنْدَا (baranda, “balcony”, literally “veranda”)! Still, when you think about it (talk) 20:32, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

This pronunciation might stem from Spanish baranda.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:38, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Modern Spanish generally doesn't distinguish "b" and "v" in pronunciation (see ve de vaca). Chuck Entz (talk) 14:02, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I was talking about pronunciations. Orthographic ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ both are pronounced with the phoneme /b/. The North Levantine Arabic pronunciation with a /b/ might be explained by borrowing from Castilian or Occitan instead of from Italian.  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:03, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I wondered whether there could be some connection to the Arabic expletive "ʔabu", but maybe the semantics don't really make sense... Wakuran (talk) 22:10, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

This isn't a bad idea at all either. أَبُوه (ʔabū́, literally “his father”) actually feels really intuitive to me to use as an interjection, and it would traditionally be pronounced ʔabáw in much of rural Lebanon. The only problem would be determining whether the areas that historically exhibit this -ū(C) > -aw(C) diphthongization (off the top of my head Zgharta, the entire(?) Beqaa, and the Shiite south) are the same areas where "abaw" is attested or where there are Armenians, and honestly I don't know if there's a lot of overlap there. There are many Armenians in the Beqaa, but there are also many in Beirut (where this diphthongization hasn't been attested), and the term is also found in Aleppo (where there are again a lot of Armenians but no traditional diphthongization). Still, when you think about it (talk) 22:21, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

jump scare

What is the relation between jump and the device denoted by this word? Could be clarified in the etymology section. Imbricitor (talk) 00:51, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

The senses of jump include (mining) “a dislocation in a stratum; a fault“ and (architecture) “an abrupt interruption of level in a piece of brickwork or masonry”. As an adjunct noun, it can indicate a dislocation or an abrupt change, seen in the mathematical term jump discontinuity and in the term jump cut. So I guess that in jump scare it stems from the abruptness with which the scary thing is introduced.  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:31, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I always assumed it was just a scare that made the viewer jump. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:03, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

-ente

Its etymology is currently Borrowed from Latin -entem.

That {{bor+|it|la|-ens|-entem}} used to be {{uder|it|la|-ens|-entem}}, but it was changed in a 2025-03-04 "pronunc" edit Special:Diff/84122154 by IP user Special:Contributions/91.94.107.234 that also changed Spanish -ente's etymology from {{uder}} to {{bor+}}.

-ente is the inflectional suffix to form the present participle of verbs that are not regular -are verbs.

Unlike (as far as I understand) in Spanish, in Italian, present participle is indeed a verbal inflection which can have an object:

• Quella è una scatola contenente [=che contiene] due rane.

  That is a box containing [=that contains] two frogs.

• Un quadrilatero è un poligono avente [=che ha] quattro lati.

  A quadrilateral is a polygon having [=that has] four sides.

Does it make sense to say that it is borrowed from Latin? Is it actually borrowed, and not inherited?

Also note that French -ant's etymology says it is inherited from Old French -ant that says it is inherited from Latin -āns.

o/ Emanuele6 (talk) 16:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I also noticed that Spanish -ante's etymology is currently {{inh+|es|la|-ans|-antem}} (while Italian -ante's is {{der}}); similarly Spanish -iente's is {{inh+|es|la|-ēns|-entem}}.

So why would Spanish's -ante and -iente be inherited while only -ente is borrowed? Emanuele6 (talk) 17:06, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

well, /e/ to /je/ was a pretty common sound change, so i assume because of the sound change, people assume it underwent changes while evolving from latin instead of having been borrowed, leading to the belief that it's inherited TooSimilarT0DaFollowingUsername (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

In Spanish, the reason for saying that -ente is borrowed is because the regular inherited outcome of Latin "e" in stressed syllables is "ie" (aside from certain exceptions), so a word like "contenente" should have been "conteniente" if it was inherited: compare "conteniendo". However, there are a few complications that would be good to clarify in regard to -ente, -iente, Category:Spanish terms suffixed with -ente and Category:Spanish terms suffixed with -iente.

• First, "ye" is regularly used in place of "ie" after a vowel (compare incluyendo, atrayendo). So in my opinion, forms like incluyente and atrayente, currently categorized as ending in -ente, should actually be marked as ending in the suffix -iente. Do others agree?
• Second, verbs like dormir (from Latin dormīre) could be considered to have a stem ending in -i-, and so words like durmiente (compare Latin dormientem) could theoretically be divided as durmi-ente. But I think it is easier and feels more consistent to categorize these as ending in -iente.

As for Italian, while it also had the e > ie change in open syllables (at least in some words), I think it did not generally occur in closed syllables like it did in Spanish (compare viento and vento, tierra and terra, ciento and cento). So in terms of form, I don't know of a reason why Italian -ente could not be inherited.--Urszag (talk) 20:12, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I’m inclined to analyze incluyente as inclui- +‎ -ente, with the same [ʝ] < [i] change preceding a vowel, reflected in the spelling, as we see, e.g., in incluyo.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:18, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I can't say for sure whether it makes more sense to interpret verbs like incluir as having an underlying stem ending in -u- or -uy- (likewise leer, etc.). If we look at cases like traer/atraer, where tray- is found only in the gerund, that suggests that atrayente at least is probably best analyzed as atra- + -iente. Furthermore, in the gerund, I don't believe we ever see -endo after consonants except for -y-: assuming we analyze the -y- as stem-final, that suggests that the sequence -yie- (which seems to not really be allowed according to Spanish phonotactics) is simplified to -ye- in verb inflection: compare also the preterites of verbs like comer/comió, recibir/recibió, incluir/incluyó (not incluyió). So regardless of whether the first component of incluyente is inclu- or incluy-, I think the second element can be -iente, and I think this inherited suffix is more likely than the borrowed suffix -ente because we know words ending in -yente were not borrowed as a whole from Latin forms: Latin doesn't use -y- as a consonant.--Urszag (talk) 00:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

you mean -endo?

i believe that -yente feels like a variant of -iente because of the gerund doing the same thing with -yendo and -iendo

the adjective "estupendo" came from a latin participle, but that isn't grammatically used as a gerund, so we can assume it's borrowed (plus, in spanish, gerunds don't decline, yet estupendo does decline)

i believe -ente is borrowed in spanish and -iente/-yente is inherited for this and just because of the aforementioned "/e/ to /je/" sound change TooSimilarT0DaFollowingUsername (talk) 15:51, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

plus, there is no *estupir or *estuper that we can model this off of anyway, so considering that there isn't even an infinitive of the verb the adjective is based off of, and that there are other borrowed derivations of the verb (i.e. estúpido), we can say that it's borrowed. TooSimilarT0DaFollowingUsername (talk) 15:55, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, correct "-ende" above to "-endo".--Urszag (talk) 19:25, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

On the fence

Sirs.

I wonder, did this one develop after sit on the fence? 87.218.84.97 07:22, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "saraf" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay saraf ("nerve") an Arabic loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 10:31, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

-ittus

1. I conjectured a faulty hypothesis that has a fair chance of not working
2. I suggested relation to -illus/-ellus but it could just be related in shape or form TooSimilarT0DaFollowingUsername (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hobo

Hobo is short for hoe boy. It refers to an agricultural worker that travels by foot carrying a hoe, which is his main work implement. They were often seen carrying a small bundle of items which were tied to the hoe end of the tool handle and slung over the shoulder. This accounts for the oft mentioned relation to the term bindlestiff. 74.254.4.122 16:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "judul" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay judul ("title, heading") an Arabic loanword? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 00:39, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

The online Indonesian dictionary seems to say so.

You can see this screenshot of the etymology in case you can't access the website. GinormousBuildings (talk) 14:39, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Our entry for Arabic جَدْوَل (jadwal) says that Malay jadual and Indonesian jadual, jadwal are descendants, so if judul is also from that word, they should be marked as {{doublet}}s. It would also be good to explain why the “title, heading” word has different vowels from the “schedule” word if they're both borrowed from the same Arabic word. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:53, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

For the word tì in Vietnamese and its meaning "dollar, buck" (I'm not even sure if it have broader meaning)

I seen the using of the word tì in the translation of the novel The Catcher in The Rye, publish first time in 1964-1965, with a typical old writing style and a strong Southern Vietnamese vibe at the time. I can't find a single definition for this meaning of the word in any dictionary, from the one I had in 1980s to current online dictionary. Queen Duck שא (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Malay "arkib"

@DDG9912 Regarding "arkib", I think it's probable that it was borrowed from English "archive" because it's not unheard of for Malay to adapt English words with the "price" vowel as /i/ or /e/ as we can see in words like "lésén" (from "licence"), "Palestin" (spelled before as ڤاليستأين (Paléstain)) and "prébet" (from "private"), and adaptation of English final "-ve" as "-b" in Malay can be found in other words too in words like "rizab" (from English "reserve").

In fact, this adaptation of that "price" vowel as /i/ or /e/ can be found in loanwords from other languages as well such as the Arabic names "Husin" and "Syuib" which came from "Husayn" and "Shu'ayb".

(Note: In the first paragraph I'm only referring to English loanwords that entered Malay before around 1972 when English loanwords started being spelt to reflect their etymology rather than based on how Malay speakers actually pronounced them)

GinormousBuildings (talk) 14:35, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

سنكف (singuf singuf)

This one has puzzled me for a while. Is it some other language's word for pinky, or for coffins, or for cutting someone off? All I've been able to find is a 1973 Lebanese play by the name سنكف سنكف (“Singof Singof”), but the title uses it as an already-established term and I don't have access to the script to see if there are any hints. There's also a reasonable chance it was originally with /k/, as in *sinkuf sinkuf or *sinkif sinkif, if those forms look at all usable... also, this transcription convention is somewhat opaque, and it might be more familiarly spelled sengof or singof or the like. Still, when you think about it (talk) 19:45, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Forgot to clarify that I'm wondering about coffins because of the rhyme سنكف سنكف عالتابوت (singuf singuf ʕa t-tābūt, literally “singof singof on a/the coffin”). Any relation to zinc as a coffin liner...?

A forum thread mentions that the associated pinky gesture is found outside of the Levant, just with the Arabic verb حَارَب (ḥārab) instead of سَنْكَف (sangaf), which to me says it must be a new loan applied to an old practice.

Considering new loans, the only crackpot connection I can think of is to Russian цинков (cinkov), which is a match in form but a stretch semantically. (In light of the military sense listed at Russian цинк (cink), I suppose it's worth noting that Russian military terms are well-known from the days of the civil war in Lebanon -- كْلَاشِنكوف (klāšinkōv, klāšinkōf, which is entrenched enough to have a familiar abbreviation I forget... klāšin?) -- but I don't know if that helps.) Still, when you think about it (talk) 19:54, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Added a better guess to the page (Arabic اِسْتَنْكَفَ (istankafa)). Still, when you think about it (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Indonesian/Malay "manja" etymology

Hello, Is Indonesian/Malay word manja ("pampered", "spoiled") a Sanskrit loanword मञ्ज् (mañj, "to cleanse", "be bright")? Yuliadhi (talk) 23:39, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

orchil

RFV of the etymology.

Expanded by @HeatherMarieKosur from:

From Old French orchel, orseil (modern French orseille), of uncertain origin.

to:

From Middle English orchell, from Old French orchel, orseil, from Catalan orxella (influenced by dialectal Arabic 'urjālla), from Italian oricello, from Latin ōricilla, diminutive of ōricula (variant of auricula), both diminutives of auris (“ear”)) + illa (a double diminutive suffix) or from auris (“ear”) + cula + illa. The name of the dye was influenced by the visual resemblance of the lichen used in production to a small ear.

Like many of the contributions of this editor, this shows a great deal of knowledge and research, but odd lapses in details and no sources. The Arabic term here is a redlink because it was created as a Latin-script entry with no headword and no sources that might be consulted to fill in necessary details. I hope they're not using AI to create entries in languages they don't know. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:51, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Source for the Arabic 'urjālla: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=orchil HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 17:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Page 291: https://archive.org/details/diccionario-critico-etimologico-castellano-mi-ri-corominas-joan-pdf/page/n141/mode/2up "Orcina, V. urchilla Orcino, V. erizo Orco, V. orea, huerco y horca Orchella, orchilla, V. urchilla" directs to page 718: https://archive.org/details/158436196-diccionario-critico-etimologico-castellano-rj-x-corominas-joan-pdf/page/n357/mode/2up with full entry. "En autores hispanoárabes tenemos los testimonios más tempranos del vocablo en cualquier idioma: Abenyólyol da ’urgála o ’urgálla como nombre vulgar del liquen de Dioscórides, aplicado a una hierba que servía para teñir; el anónimo sevillano de h. 1100 también cita ’ ur¿álla repetidamente como nombre de una especie de liquen o musgo que crece sobre las peñas húmedas del mar (Asín, pp. 207, 307)." (Meaning that Hispano-Arabic authors provide the earliest attestations of the word including an anonymous author from Seville from around 1100 repeatedly using 'urjālla as the name of a species of lichen that grew on the sea-cliffs. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 17:53, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I also went back and added sources for the other updates. I will do better to specifically add those in the future! HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 22:34, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Slovak and Old Slovak cudzoložstvo, Pannonian Rusyn цудзоложство

Means "adultery". The cudzo- and -stvo are self explanatory, but where does the -lož- portion come from? It appears that the term derives from cudzoložiť as a verb, but then what is ložiť? I can't find that in the Old Slovak dictionary. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 19:03, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

cudzołożyć, i.e. położyć. Vininn126 (talk) 19:09, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I just found out about Proto-Slavic *ložiti. But unprefixed ložiť isn't at all attested in Old Slovak. Could Old Slovak have borrowed/calqued Polish cudzołożyć then? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 19:20, 9 October 2025 (UTC)