#wiktionary.org

[thinksandthings]

Heya! Your recent dino etymology was super fun to read (≧▽≦)

I'll be really interested to read more of it :))

Also purely out of curiosity, but is there any story behind your knowledge of dino etymology?

I'm so glad you liked it! x) Here's another one:

So there is currently a dinosaur referred to as the Edmontosaurus, which means the not-so interesting "dinosaur from Edmonton," however, one of its earlier classifications was anatotitan, which much more interestingly means "giant duck." If I am being entirely honest, duck is not the first thing I would have likened to the pictures I've seen, but I guess with a layer of feathers it might make a little more sense.

The word is a compound in two parts, the first being the Latin anas which means "duck," and I've seen it be credited to a few different Indo-European roots, but the clearest connection looks like anat- for "duck" or "water bird." This particular root was what gave rise to the original Old English term for duck, ened, which was eventually replaced by a different Old English term duce, meaning "diver, dipper or ducker."

The second half is actually the same as one of the components of a previous dinosaur post, being titan which means "large, grand" coming from the Ancient Greek Τιτάν titan, which refers to the race of mythical, pre-Olympian giants.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I've learned so many of these. On more than one occasion I've fallen down an internet rabbit-hole finding increasingly bizarre names for sometimes otherwise innocuous or sometimes utterly entirely absurd creatures. Scientists are much more creative people than they get credit for.

[thinksandthings]

peryton

This isn't quite a real word, but since that has never stopped me before, I looked around to see what I could find about its usage. A peryton is a mythical beast, composed of the body of a stag and the wings of a bird. They're actually quite majestic in a lot of the artwork depicting them. Also fairly irrelevant, but I think it's interesting it is an anagram for entropy.

The term was coined in a very interesting book, the title of which is A Book of Imaginary Beings in English, by Jorge Luis Borges and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Its original Spanish title from the first 1957 printing is Manual de zoología fantástica. The book received a few updates over the next couple of decades before landing on the final Spanish title, El libro de los seres imaginarios, in 1969.

There is a fairly long, but very interesting passage on them in the book. Their most pertinent details are originating from Atlantis, having the shadow of a man until they manage to kill a human, at which point their shadow is restored to their own figure, and being very bloodthirsty, violent creatures.

I found fleeting mentions of similar beasts before Borges' book, but none especially substantial, suggesting there was either predecessor to his creation or some inspiration for it. Either way, this particular version of the concept came from Borges, who originally penned it as the Spanish peritio.

However, this word has gone on to accumulate more meaning, and after a publication by S. Burke Spolaor et al., the term was adopted into astronomy as meaning "a terrestrially originating burst of radio waves." (As someone who is very not an astronomer, I can't explain what this means, but apparently you can produce them by opening a microwave door prematurely).

[thinksandthings]

banshee

The current Britannica article describes them as a “supernatural being in Irish and other Celtic folklore whose mournful “keening,” or wailing screaming or lamentation, at night was believed to foretell the death of a member of the family of the person who heard the spirit.” Although modern stories make them out to be twisted spirits or demons, the original Irish folklore painted them more as heralds of death, allowing the family to prepare. 

They are described in all different manners of apparition, from beautiful young women to old, ragged crones, but one of the most consistent features is painful eyes red from crying. 

The word is actually made up of two from Irish, which are ben, or “woman” and sid, or “fairy hill.” The Old Irish was bean sidhe, with the same breakdown, meaning more precisely, “woman of the fairy mounds.” The sidhe were the hills in Irish and other Scots folklore where fairies and other mythological creatures dwelt. That particular morpheme can be interestingly tied to the Proto-Indo-European root sed-, meaning “to sit.”  

[thinksandthings]

elf

Elves are fun because there are so many vastly different interpretations. Everything from Santa's toymakers to Elrond and his court qualify into our concept of elven forms.

Generally speaking, we might define elf as being a "spirit, sprite, fairy or goblin; some kind of usually mischievous supernatural creature." This same definition existed for the Middle English term elf, alternately recorded as alfe or elfe. In Old English, the word was ælf, still retaining its meaning of "sprite, incubus or fairy," but specifically with a masculine connotation. The feminine version of the word was ælfen, which interestingly is the predecessor to our modern adjectival form elven.

The word branches out of the Germanic family, and we can point to some other connected words in Old High German, like alp which meant "nightmare." There is actually an Old English cognate which is ælfádl, also meaning "nightmare," but more literally, "elf-disease." Another interesting elf-induced sickness was though to be hiccups, which is reflected in the OE translation ælfsogoða.

Beyond this era of the Old English and German there is some debate about where the words originally sprouted from. The trail may be related to albus or alphoús ἀλφούς, the Latin and Ancient Greek terms for "white" respectively. The cultural theory implies that elves were considered beings of light, brightness and beauty, and thus as this concept evolved from those ideas, so did the English form out of the adjectives.

[thinksandthings]

ferret

Ferrets are very cute. This is a scientific fact. They are a long, furry, domesticated subtype of the European polecat. They have a look on their face like they are ever so slightly irritated at having been recently woke up, and I love them very dearly. 

Anyways, the Middle English feret (also documented as fyrette), was borrowed from the Old French firet, which is a derivative of the Latin fūr, meaning “thief.” This is also a cognate to the Ancient Greek φώρ phṓr, also “thief.” 

What I find fun about the Ancient Greek, is that it also can be used to refer to a bee, specifically a “robber bee.” I absolutely love the fact that both the Latin and Greek chose to refer to tiny animals as being the perpetrators of some thievery, namely that they “carry things away,” from the Proto-Indo-European bher- meaning “carry.” 

I also particularly enjoy the fact that this Latin also gave us furtive, “done in a sneaking, secretive way,” more specifically from fūrtīvus, “stolen.”  

[thinksandthings]

ameliorate

I looked this word up a few years ago to use in an essay, and it has since become one of my favorite words. It has a lovely meaning (”to improve, perfect or enhance”), and it just feels nice to say. 

It arrived in English around the 1650s as a backformation of the French améliorer, from the Old French meillor, which you might recognize as being related to the modern French meilleur “better.” 

The Latin root melior, of the same meaning, was influenced by the Ancient Greek term μάλα mala, a term imparting an adverbial meaning of “very much, exceedingly.” Ultimately, it likely came from the reconstructed PIE mel-, “big and strong.” 

[thinksandthings]

aa

There is no real “shortest word in the English language.” We have at least two single letter words, (depending of course on how you define word, but that argument aside...) I and a. There are also several two letter words, (again, some like we and an may be disqualified, but we’re not arguing that specifically right now). 

So, I will instead phrase an introduction to this word as “one of the shortest words in the English language,” which is the noun borrowed from the Hawaiian ʻaʻā. In English, it is written aa, and it refers to a specific type of Hawaiian lava of a basaltic composition, and jagged, stony appearance. 

The Hawaiian can also be used as a verb to describe something as glowing, which I quite like. 

[thinksandthings]

honey

I love seeing how different trails of words end up in modern English. We have two veins to follow for “honey.” The word honey specifically came from the Old English hunig, which ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *kn̥h₂ónks, meaning “yellow.” It’s thought to be a cognate to the Welsh canecon, “gold,” and the Ancient Greek κνῆκος, knêkos, “safflower.” 

The other path to trace comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *melit-, which literally meant “honey.” This became the Ancient Greek μέλῐ, méli, which was borrowed by Latin to form mel. The Late Latin word mellifluus, “flowing with or like honey,” was adopted into English as mellifluous, meaning “sweet as honey, pleasing.” This is actually the more popular strain, and most European languages contain a derivative of *melit-, such as the Irish milis, “sweet,” Old English milisc, “honeyed, sweet,” and Gothic miliþ, French and Spanish miel, and Portuguese and Catalan mel, all of which retain the original meaning, “honey.”