I am farsi speaker myself. Naan or noon is farsi means bread and we have different types of naan like sangak, lavash, barbari and many more. A while ago i was having a discussion with a parkistani classmate whom i was having doner with then. She made a comment that the bread was very much like naan and then i was like this is bread just a different type of it. And then she was like no this is naan, and not bread. Maybe the definitions are different in pakistan but in iran naan is just the persian translation for bread and not a specific bread. Meanwhile she was trying to tell me that the bread we had with our doner wasnt bread but a naan. What are your thoughts on this? Is bread naan to you or a specific type of bread?

The reason the Ancient Greeks referred to the Iliad and the Odyssey as Epics is not because they were long, or grand in scope, or important. They were called Epics because they were composed in dactylic hexameter, a metrical pattern which was known as epea. The proclamations of the Delphic Oracle used the same pattern: five feet of one long and two short syllables, punctuated by a sixth foot of two syllables.

The word "epic" was thus originally comparable to words like "iambic," referring only to the form of the poem, not the content. It wasn't until much later that the term became synonymous with the heroic epic we think of today.

Ngai and Enkai both mean God.

Historically and (mostly) pre-historically, Maasai and Kikuyu people have had a long and complicated history involving a lot of violent conflict that lead to a large amount of linguistic exchange between the two languages. I'm only familiar with Maa loans into Kikuyu but judging by the number of those I feel comfortable assuming some loanwords went the other way too.

The problem I have is with Ngai and Enkai. I've read here that Enkai means 'thunder, sky, god'. At first this lead me to immediately assume the word was loaned by the Kikuyu from the Maasai, but then I remembered that Kikuyu has the verb 'gaya', meaning divide (among), and one noun that can be derived from that is mũgai meaning "the one who divides/provides". Due to Kikuyu's gender system, you can derive that verb in a number of ways, including as Ngai.

1. it could very easily have been Maa originating with Enkai and the Kikuyu borrowing it as Ngai, which is exactly how one would expect Maa words like that to be borrowed.
2. or that it could have been originating as mũgai but, like many irregular verbs, switched gender from what is expected and ended up as Ngai, and then it was borrowed into Maa as Enkai.
3. the two groups of people just happened to have converged on the exact same name for god, each with their own etymologies that show that it wasn't borrowed from another language.

personally i lean toward the conclusion that Enkai was just borrowed into Kikuyu which happened to have a similar sounding word with a similar meaning that it could be confused for. i have some other theories of a cracked pot nature, if anyone knows what exactly happened here i would be happy to learn more.

One more in the series, after Tree, truth, druid, dryad, tar and dendrite grew from one Proto-Indo-European root, *deru- and Druid, wizard, Providence, Ayurveda, visualization and idea have the same PIE root, *weyd-.

This time *kʷel-. I focused only on English words, and for Greek words added English transcription.

Online: https://p.migdal.pl/pie-roots/kwel/

Repo: https://github.com/stared/pie-roots

English used to have a whole set of words for different kinds of greed, avarice for hoarding it, cupidity for wanting it, rapacity for seizing it, venality for being for sale, peculation for stealing public money specifically and now we mostly just say greed for everything, which is apparently quite a young word that swallowed the lot. What I'm wondering is how much of that loss is just natural drift, fewer sermons, less Latin in schools, and how much gets guided, since a lot of these words describe the vices of powerful people, and powerful people have a fair amount of say in which words stay in circulation, through advertising and the press and so on. I'm not suggesting anyone sat down and banned avarice, more that some words get fed and some get starved.

Hello everyone, I'm from Greece and I'm trying to find the possible origin behind my family name. It's Golinas ("Γκολίνας"). Do you know any possible scenarios? My ancestors lived in a small farmer's village in north Fthiotida in central Greece

Bonus question: is cold weather called nippy because it makes your nipples hard?

This is something that's bugged me for a while and it came up in passing on another post here, someone mentioned awful and awesome drifting off in opposite directions. English has these two matching families, terror, terrible and terrific, and horror, horrible and horrific. All six are negative except terrific, which is positive. Why did that one word make the jump when the other five stayed put?
I did a small bit of digging and terrific did mean causing terror originally, and the positive sense only seems to appear somewhere in the late 1800s, but I couldn't really get any further than that. Also just realised horrid belongs in that family too and that one never went anywhere nice either.

Is it to make to word look better as Compared to “Cocacola” or even “CocaCola” or is it to better convey the fact that Coca-Cola is one word or was it simply just the branding style of the time as “Pepsi-Cola” had the same branding convention?

I can’t seem to find any evidence indicating they are, despite not only an identical sound and spelling, but a striking visual similarity that could easily lend itself to metonymy requiring no explanation: the letter L looks like a freakin’ elbow!

The latter is indeed the first component of elbow. It was (and occasionally still is) originally spelled eln, and most of its cognates in other languages contain an n. This appears to come from a proto-Indo-European root for a bend or bow. Like the names for most body parts, it’s conserved rather well and recognizably through most daughter languages.

The Classical Latin reflex of Proto-Indo-European *Heh₃l- was ulna. Remember that the Romans wrote only with majuscule / capital / upper-case letters, so their L would have looked like an elbow. But as far as I can tell, they only ever called the letter el, like we do, and derived the names for most of their letters from simply putting a vowel with the letter to make it a pronounceable syllable. I can find no evidence to suggest ulna, or any intermediate form between ulna and el, was ever used to refer to this letter.

The letter L derives originally from the Canaanite letter lamed, which originally meant a staff-like instrument, either the type used for sheep herding or the type for beating grain on a threshing floor. Note that both of these instruments feature a bend, typically.

I feel like the semantic and etymological connection is right there in front of my face, but just out of reach. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked either way, whether these two “ells” that English has ended up with are related, or this is a complete coincidence.

Also, while we’re at it, I’ve heard it falsely claimed that Allen wrench is a corruption of “an ell wrench” or “an eln wrench”, because of its shape. It’s actually named after the man who invented it. Unlike the monkey wrench.

Lavand لوند , Persian: "unemployed, idle, aimless".

Seljuks Turks hired the unemployed people as a feudal foot soldiers. So,

Levent Turkish "an armed soldier in the retinue of a provincial feudal lord."

During the Ottoman period a Levent referred to a naval troop in the navy and coast guard roles.

Greeks soldiers in the Ottoman Navy were well respected members of their communities. So,

Leventis (Λεβέντης) Greek: A culturally unique Greek word describing a man who is brave, honorable, handsome, generous, and possesses a proud, upright stance on life.

Why do we say awesome/awe-inspired/awe-stricken and it has positive connotations but when we say awful it only has negative connotations? Surely being ‘full’ of ‘awe’ should be a good thing? Like awesome?

Was it because an Apple is considered the forbidden fruit or did the founders simply liked the name?

Is it because Truth starts with the letter “T” and that “Tea” is also pronounced like the letter “T”

I just read this post where someone has translated a 14th century German text on table manners:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/1v0p7h5/manners_in_the_fourteenth_century_how_to_properly/

It includes the German/Viennese word "gouch" here translated by OP as meaning an unmannerly person.

I was immediately struck that this is identical to the word used to describe people who are experiencing a heroin high that makes them slouch, half asleep in their chair. Others have claimed that they use it to describe a cannabis high. The word is often used as in "he was gouching" or "I was gouched out".

Can anyone shed any light on this? It seems to obscure to bother googling for.

It seems Icelandic typically uses a third word, "af hverju" instead, but also has a cognate to "why" as "hvi", also "wherefore" doesn't seem to be attested in Old English, but considering it's used in so many other Germanic languages, it should be from Proto Germanic?

Why is the English word “internecine” (meaning originally : sthg that leads to complete destruction, and later : that leads to the destruction of both sides) translated into French as “intestin” (which also means intestine, the organ) ?

I read online that “internecine” comes from the Latin “internecare” : kill/destroy, but its French translation “intestin” comes from “instestinum” which means intestine.

What causes this difference in origin ?
Why did something like “internécin” never appear in the French language ?

Thank you for your lights on the subject !

Hi all! I'm looking for a book about etymology and I'm not sure where to start. I'm not extremely familiar with etymology, but I do have an MA in Philosophy and a minor in English Lit so I have some familiarity with the concept. That said, I do not have the language to describe exactly what I'm looking for so please bare with me while I attempt to grok it!

I am fascinated by the origins of language, but also by the ideas contained within words. I first learned about this idea Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and his investigation into what our modern understanding of Greek concepts has lost. Giorgio Agamben and Foucault do this a little too. Of course this is largely important in the work of classicists as well, and I'm fond of Anne Carson. I've always been fascinated by the tidbits of this type investigation that flow over into philosophy but I want to know more about it. Maybe I'm describing Philology? But either way can anyone help me? Please forgive my ignorance if this offends any etymological experts.

I'm also an avid podcast and audiobook listener, so any resources are appreciated!

This idiom cracks me up because of the implication that a person may have an extra person with them just to carry their belongings.

Too fancy for luggage, book bags, or purses? Just buy a person.

I just imagine the next time I need to fly for work, I’m gonna put my 10 year old niece in a trench coat and fill those pockets like she’s my personal suitcase.

“Do you have anything on your person, sir?”

points at niece

“Ask her, man”

Recently read and heard the phrase 'drinking the kool-aid' or 'bought the kool-aid'. I can make a guess that this means that you are buying into an opinion? Correct me if wrong. I was wondering where this idiom originated and if there is a British or other countries equivalent?