Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2024/September

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← August 2024 · September 2024 · October 2024 → · (current)

---

aquafaba

We currently claim that the French term comes from English, and that the coinage in English was by Goose Wohlt in 2015. However, from reading the English Wikipedia entry, it seems that his discovery of aquafaba as a cooking ingredient coincided with that of that the French musician Joël Roessel. Based on what we know, is it possible to definitively state whether the term originated in French or English, and who coined actually coined it in the first instance? ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Following the Wiktionary links, it appears that Joël discovered aquafaba but actually called it ‘blanc de pois chiches’[1] but Goose, or perhaps his Facebook associates, invented the term ‘aquafaba’ a bit later[2] Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:36, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Severonis

The protist Severonis is the type genus of the family Severonidae. I have not been able to find its etymology. I think the name is derived from a proper name, a person or a place of discovery. Gerardgiraud (talk) 07:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Gerardgiraud: here is the original description, but I can't see enough of the article to find anything helpful. My only guess is that it might have something to do with Russian север (sever, “north”). Chuck Entz (talk) 05:07, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

This may be an approach, but it remains to be decided on the suffix -onis, meaning woodlouse in Latin. Gerardgiraud (talk) 11:32, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Turkish kaka

turkish kaka same meaning as Proto-Indo-European *kakka-

Maybe from persian ککه? Zbutie3.14 (talk) 15:02, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but I think it's also one of those globally spread baby talk words like mama and papa/dada. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:37, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Compare also Hijazi Arabic ككة (/ˈkak.ka/) from an area not in contact with Persian, Estonian kaka, Finnish kakka, Georgian კაკა (ḳaḳa) and Hungarian kaki, all non-Indo-European languages.  --Lambiam 12:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Korean 설거지

I'm probably on the completely wrong track, but might the first syllable be from Old Chinese 洗 (OC: Baxter-Sagart /*[s]ˤərʔ/, Zhengzhang /*sɯːlʔ/)? Awelotta (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Yiddish productivity of ־סטווע

As title. We've got היפּאָקריטסטווע (hipokritstve), which from all the dictionaries I've consulted, seems to be a pretty well-accepted word for "hypocrisy", yet Russian гипокри́тство (gipokrítstvo) and Ukrainian гіпокрі́тство (hipokrítstvo) are almost unheard of, which suggests that this formation could perhaps be internal to Yiddish in the form of היפּאָקריט (hipokrit) +‎ ־סטווע (-stve). And now, I've just encountered a צבֿועצטווע (tsvuatstve) as seen here, from the same root as צבֿועק (tsvuak). So clearly this is an internal Yiddish formation, unless somewhere in Eastern Europe, they've borrowed tsvua into their vernacular of Slavic languages, appended the Slavic ending, and then started using it in their Yiddish as well. So could we consider ־סטווע (-stve) a productive suffix in Yiddish now? I imagine it might require finding more nouns ending in this suffix that aren't direct Slavic borrowings in and of themselves, but I reckon צבֿועצטווע (tsvuatstve) makes a pretty convincing case for the suffix being actually productive in Yiddish. And of course the spelling ־צטווע (-tstve) as opposed to ־טסטווע (-tstve) also mirrors the rebracketing found in Polish -ctwo and Belarusian -цтва (-ctva). So what do we say? Productive or not? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 10:59, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Update: I've also just discovered רביסטװע (rebistve) as well as גזלעווויסטווע (gazlevoystve), the latter of which seems to be related to גזלן (gazlen). Are three words enough to constitute productivity? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Productivity of course is a spectrum, not a binary. I certainly think the fact that it's added to non-Slavic words, even if only a handful, is sufficient to warrant creating an entry for ־סטווע (-stve) as a Yiddish suffix. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:32, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

קאָנזשילעס

Anyone got an idea of where the kon- component comes from? In my mind it immediately goes to some sort of Polish ką-, but I couldn't find any word starting with kąży-. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

klirren

any idea of what the etymology of klirren is? i can't find it Cheesypenguigi (talk) 13:19, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

There is none. Pfeifer dates it to the 17th century while noting earlier sound-word(?) *klirr* and half a dozen of different half sound-symbolic half sound-imitative verbs. I can confirm that it is used as an interjection, but I doubt that the theory of sound-symbolsim is thorough. It cannot be confirmed by similar formations in completely unrelated languages, it isn't imitative of noise. I.e. would clash be similar enough, modulo iota-rhotacism? karashi (karashi)? After a day of idle speculation I have two doublets in PIE, *kelh₁-, *ḱelh₂- and *gleyH-, *h₂leyH-, ... twice as many onomatopeia and a couple of wanderwords of ultimately unknown origin, limiting myself honestly. In conclusion: 1. If intransitive verbs in pronoun droping languages look like onomatopoeia, question morphology. Alisheva (talk) 18:39, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

prallen

sorry for making another topic, but i also need the etymology for prallen. Cheesypenguigi (talk) 13:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Cheesypenguigi: Usually, that is for any word part of current German as opposed to exotisms, you just click on the link for Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache on the bottom. Wolfgang Pfeifer, d. 2020, wrote his etymologies there, providing the best etymological dictionary of German, and all needed associations. Fay Freak (talk) 13:44, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Cf. Prellbock (w:de:Prellbock), refer back to Fay Freak for بره, cf. ram, Rammbock for the typical comparison. Not entirely sure, of course. Alisheva (talk) 18:06, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

bodge

How sure are we about the current distribution of senses between etymology 1 and etymology 2? On what basis do we assume the adjective meaning "insane" is more closely related to the noun "water in which a smith would quench items heated in a forge" than to "clumsy/inelegant job", for example? - -sche (discuss) 19:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

*kreupaną

brought up creepypasta's etymon in a disccusion with @Ythedegengo and they took issue with *kreupaną coming from *yéti(this was an edit made by @Ioaxxere, who admitted to me that this was indeed likely wrong) and suggests it's actually comes from *-eti

"All the other Germanic class II strong verbs that have complete reconstructions give *-eti"

*-eti = thematic vowel *-e- + infinitive *-ti

Akaibu (talk) 04:47, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Boethius βοηθέω source

I think this name is from on the Greek word βοηθέω (and means helper or helpful), but I cannot find a good source. 72.203.88.75 06:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Sranan Tongo sebrefata

Could it be from Twi? AG202, Egbingíga, Lambiam, does this ring any bells? Appolodorus1 (talk) 08:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Lacking a better theory, it cannot be excluded that the word came to Suriname with enslaved Twi speakers. But is there a specific argument in favour of the theory? Is a cognate found in Aukan or any other language (e.g. Jamaican Creole) that has terms derived from Akan?  --Lambiam 21:53, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any specific arguments :) The facts I have:

1) It's extremely unattested. Not in any of the 18th/19th century dictionaries as far as I can see, nor in any digitised text I can find predating Edgar Cairo (1970s).

2) It was described as a "grandma word" to me.

As Huttar writes: "African etyma likely: items of social, religious, and material culture "retained" from Africa or developing within the nascent black societies; specific terms for some items of the natural environment of the plantations and of the interior; and aspects of everyday life that slaves wished to keep at least partly secret from Europeans."

So that suggests a word not used in front of whites, hence an African source, but it could be Gbe or Kongo or (...), too.

@Vorziblix does this look Cariban to you? Appolodorus1 (talk) 07:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

@Appolodorus1: Not as far as I can tell. I don’t know of/can’t find evidence for any similar term, and moreover most Cariban languages don’t have an f-like sound to begin with. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 09:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

puyuh

How did the word "puyuh" derive from *puRuq? Is it possible that the change of the word "puyuh" from Proto-Austronesian *puRuq be due to influences from Philippine languages, like Kapampangan, which is known for changing the sound *R to "y"? Aprihani (talk) 12:48, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

stroop

"From siroop."

How did sir- > str-? -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 00:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I've updated the etymology. Please have a look Leasnam (talk) 02:26, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 12:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

"to look like" in Scandinavian languages

Do anybody has any thoughts about the nature of Norwegian Nynorsk sjå ut, Swedish se ut and Danish se ud? May it be, like Russian выглядеть (vygljadetʹ), a calque of German aussehen or some Old Low German? Are they from a rare Old Norse usage? Tollef Salemann (talk) 06:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

My initial guess would be Middle Low German (or its predecessor Old Saxon), it's the source of so many loans that have become fully naturalized by now. Wakuran (talk) 11:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

As Icelandic seems to lack similar phrases, I'm even more inclined to assume it's a later loan-translation. (Although the phonologies of Middle Low German and Medieval Scandinavian were so similar, that a sentence roughly like *"Dat siet gôt ut." might have been understood even by people with minimal MLG skills.) Wakuran (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Icelandic has líta út though, which looks like it was similarly calqued. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 07:23, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Which has apparently not the same meaning as Old Norse líta út, so it can be a newer calque (maybe from Danish?). Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:19, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

That would also be my guess. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 14:03, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

The MLG etymon would be ûtsēn which has three meanings, to look out, to look forward to, to look like, if I understand the glosses in Lübben—Walther correctly (e.g. ausgucken as in Ausguck)—Lübben, et al. Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch. Norden und Leipzig, 1888. Darmstadt, 2005. Print. WBG-Bibliothek. Alisheva (talk) 21:05, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for info! Tollef Salemann (talk) 17:30, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

tout

RfE OE tōtian. I suggest that this is related to the previous question. Alisheva (talk) 19:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I've created an entry for tōtian, including Etymology section for your review. Also, I've updated the Etymology at tout to reflect the proper OE term. (talk) 17:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Apsiktrata

The protist Apsiktrata is the type genus of the family Apsiktratidae. But I am perplexed by the name Apsiktrata which does not seem to be derived from either Greek or Latin. Do you have any idea? Thanks. Gerardgiraud (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

My first thought was that it looked vaguely Sanskrit, but {{R:sa:MW}} lists no words beginning apsi- at all. Ancient Greek ἅπτω (háptō, “to touch”) does have several derived terms beginning with ἁψι- (hapsi-), but we'd expect those to be romanized hapsi- in internationalisms. Moreover, Greek has no words beginning κτρ- (ktr-) or even ικτρ- (iktr-) to be the second element, so I'm out of ideas. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:01, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps "i" stands for eta or upsilon rather than iota. If prefixed with a-, the base could perhaps be ψήκτρα (psḗktra), ψυκτήρ (psuktḗr), or ψύκτρα, with the Latin suffix -ata.--Urszag (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

It seems it is ψήκτρα (psḗktra) in the modern Greek sense "brush": "Finally, Foissner, Berger and Kohmann transferred this species from the genus Holophrya to the newly created genus Apsiktrata, because in contrast to Holophrya and Prorodon species of the genus Apsiktrata do not possess a dorsal brush." (Real Micro Life)--Urszag (talk) 22:58, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

!!! DCDuring (talk) 23:32, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Urszag for this brilliant analysis. Gerardgiraud (talk) 04:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Quixote

What's the etymology of the Spanish name Quixote? Is it of Basque origin? Did Cervantes just make it up? —Mahāgaja · talk 17:47, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Supposedly means "thigh" or "cuisse," from Catalan cuixot (e.g. related to Spanish quijote (“champion”), French cuisse, Latin coxa (“hip”)), said to be referring to his horse's butt. Maybe a bonus pun with quijada (“jaw”). DJ K-Çel (contribs ~ talk) 23:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

@Djkcel: The English Don Quixote entry states that it is “the older spelling of modern Spanish Don Quijote”, which is “equivalent to Quijano (his actual surname) +‎ -ote”. The Spanish Don Quixote entry likewise states that it is from “Quixano (modern Spanish Quijano), his actual surname, + -ote”. J3133 (talk) 06:14, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

зловещ

Bulgarian. Currently the etymology is given as "Fossilized present active participle of Bulgarian зловя́ (zlovjá, “to commit evil acts, atrocities”) + -ещ (-ešt)." I question this.

зловя is not to be found in the Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language, the other Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language, or the Infolex Bulgarian Dictionary.

Conversely, our entry for вещ#Bulgarian in the sense "omened, prophesized, foretelling" lists злове́щ as a derived term. This would imply an analysis of зло (zlo, “evil”) + -о- + вещ (vešt, “foretelling”). This alternative derivation both fits the meaning of злове́щ and parallels the etymologies of Russian злове́щий (zlovéščij), Polish złowieszczy, etc. (see other Slavic cognates at злове́щий).

However, I drew a blank in Georgiev's Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary and am no expert in Bulgarian myself, so others' thoughts would be welcome. Voltaigne (talk) 23:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic "an iar" and "an ear"

Scottish Gaelic "an iar" and "an ear": I think the "an" actually translates as "in" (short form), not as definite article (or possessive pronoun). Otherwise the noun before it wouldn't take the definite article. 178.142.227.198 07:46, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

It's actually from Old Irish an- (denoting a movement away from some reference point), the origin of which is unknown, but it's probably neither "in" nor "the". —Mahāgaja · talk 08:15, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

bpl & ببر

The Persian etymology refers to the connection to Proto-Indo-Iranian *wy(H)āgʰrás as "dubious" yes that's the etymology the Middle Persian gives. These etymologies should be sorted out. — BABR・talk 18:16, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Sanskrit error in Kroonen (and maybe de Vaan)?

I noticed that Kroonen gives the Sanskrit jóṣate at *keusan-, but there simply is no Sanskrit verb like that. There is the present verb जुषते (juṣáte) and then there's also the form जोषति (joṣati) but the latter has long been analysed as an aorist subjunctive (already in Whitney's Roots). And de Vaan mentions joṣati at gustus but doesn't indicate that this isn't a present verb (which is the normal way to interpret it). My guess is that they got this from Pokorny. Exarchus (talk) 19:30, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Good find. I can't find a bhávati-type thematic present in Grassman, MacDonell, or Mayrhofer, only the subjunctive you mentioned. Also, the exact form †jóṣate Kroonen quotes doesn't seem to exist. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:37, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

From what I've looked at, it's just Monier-Williams giving a class 1 present verb, I assume because that's the traditional analysis of it. Exarchus (talk) 14:57, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

pod

OED says: Origin uncertain; perhaps shortened < podder n.1, or perhaps an alteration of cod n.1, although the motivation for this is unclear. Compare earlier peascod n. and later pea pod n. The origin of podder is said to be: Origin uncertain; perhaps an alteration of codware n.1, although the motivation for this is unclear. Compare later pod n.1, and also later pedware n. We don't have podder (the particular sense), codware, nor pedware. Our etymology for pod is entirely different, connecting it to Old English pād. Does this have any merit, or should I just completely replace it with the etymology given in the OED? Ioaxxere (talk) 00:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I think we should certainly add [add back (?)] the Uncertain tag. I added Sense 6 at podder, tying it to podware, from Middle English pod ware. I will move the Old English pād derivation to a more speculative stance. Adding the rest above, I have no objection to at all Leasnam (talk) 18:07, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The derivation from pād seems entirely reasonable. 24.108.0.44 19:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Maori parakuihi

Forgive my lack of knowledge of Maori phonotactics, but what does the -ihi part correspond to? Could this actually be a borrowing from English brekkie instead? Still doesn't necessarily explain the -hi, but at least it's much closer in terms of the vowel, and you're not trying to justify how -fast might shift into -ihi. Unless ihi is a term in Maori meaning "fast" or something, in which case this would be a partial calque. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 13:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Dongola~Tungul~ⲧⲟⲩⳟ

w:Old Dongola tells us the Old Nubian form was Tungul. Old Nubian ⲧⲟⲩⳟ (touŋ, “to be secure”) seems a good explanation of the name, a noun formed from this verb would mean fortress. w:Dongola tells us that Doñqal means red brick in modern Nubian, but I can find little evidence for such a word. If it exists, it probably derives from the original fortress meaning. Old Nubian Dictionary, p 184, Gerald A Browne also shows ⲧⲟⲩⳟⳟ. Kaffeeklubben1 (talk) 19:40, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

turkish merak

from ottoman turkish مراق Which is from where? Arab مرق? The defenitions of the arab word seem to have nothing to do with the defenitions of the turkish word Zbutie3.14 (talk) 20:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

French word 'garderobier'

I recently created the Swedish noun garderobiär (“cloakroom attendant”). The sources tell me that this is from the French garderobier, which makes me a bit uncertain. Superficially, this seems to be the case. But is garderobier even a word in French? It is not listed in Littré, for example. I know that German has the word Garderobier, which the German Wiktionary says is a modern formation meant to appear French. That is, not an actual loan word from French. Anyone with more info on this supposedly French word? Gabbe (talk) 08:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

There you are https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_fr&tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=garderobier&num=10. Tim Utikal (talk) 08:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is a word found in Middle French, also [here] Leasnam (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

chope

A Dictionary of Singlish, quoting linguist Lionel Wee, suggests a different etymology: an alteration of chop#Etymology 4. As a matter of fact, the dictionary also has an unrelated interjection entry with the same etymology as ours, but we are missing that sense. (It seems like the verb sense has a chup altform, used in Malaysia: [3], [4] etc.). Einstein2 (talk) 21:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

常

RFV of the etymology (toko-).

@Eirikr: You added this etymology "The way the term is used in the historical record suggests that this was originally a noun" in 2015. No dictionary or source even suggests this. Closest is tokoshi- in words like とこしえ and とこしくに. Sources? Chuterix (talk) 15:43, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

바람

RFV of the etymology.

"Orthographic evidence shows that the eighth-century Old Korean word for "wind" also ended in *-m."

What orthographic evidence? This is totally a BS claim. Chuterix (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Japanese 繋辞

Could somebody please verify this etymology, and correct it if needed? Says it's derived from Latin but I'm not seeing how. (The word's pronunciation is entirely different so it's not a phonetic loan. It doesn't look like a calque either. Maybe it's saying that this word was coined by grammarians as a translation for the foreign word "copula" which is ultimately of Latin origin, but that's kind of a stretch...) 2601:49:8400:392:CAB:D3CC:B93A:6EB3 19:04, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems to be a compound of characters meaning "connect" and "speech", so arguably the first character, at least, is a loan-translation. Wakuran (talk) 20:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

захолустье

Из монгольского зах(а) улс? 149.27.61.117 05:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Russian Wiktionary gives: "Происходит от неустановленной формы. Сравнивали за- и ст.-слав. халѫга «изгородь», словенск. halóga «кустарник, морская трава», но в таком случае ожидалось бы *захалужье. Влияние слова холосто́й (Преобр.) невероятно. Неудовлетворительно также сравнение с холо́п, холу́й. Сближали также с холудина, хлуд.". It doesn't mention your explanation and yours seems kind of unlikely (mainly, it being derived from Mongol strait from etyma), do you have any source for your claim or any other such exemple ? Tim Utikal (talk) 06:04, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

harren

Origin of Middle High German term? 90.247.59.252 12:01, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I've added to the etymology. Leasnam (talk) 03:49, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Ceftriaxon

Cef - Cephalosporine tri - third generation axon - effective in central nervous system 2A06:93C1:301:3:89B3:469B:B620:6C63 08:24, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

gaunt

An IP posted the following comment on the talk page of gaunt: "[T]here's no way Old Norse gandr comes from PIE *gʷʰen-. *gʷʰ doesn't become PG *g before *a. (As if the semantics weren't suspicious enough. What would that even be—"striking tool > bent stick"?) — 2600:4808:9C31:4800:CC55:E44:C7:25BF 03:28, 16 September 2024 (UTC)". This etymology was already in the entry before I edited it in preparation for WOTD, and it also appears at Icelandic gandur. The OED only mentions that the word might be related to Norwegian and Swedish, and goes no further. Could someone conversant with PIE shed some light on this? Thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Cf. Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/gunþiz, I guess. Otherwise, *gʷʰ- usually turns into Germanic b- or w- (/ v-). Wakuran (talk) 15:45, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Wakuran: so does the etymology need to be updated? — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:10, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm no expert, really. I'm awaiting further comments. Wakuran (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Wakuran *gunþiz is consistent with my notes; it's one of the few bits of evidence that lead us to conclude the change *n̥ > *un is older than the changes concerning *gʷʰ in Germanic (cf. Kroonen (2013), p. xxviii). The only way to get a Germanic root *gand- out of *gʷʰen-(T-) would be to back-form it from *gund- at a late stage, except such a root is otherwise unattested as far as I know, making this highly unlikely. And that's not even considering the unexpected suffix: on top of the other problems we'd have to assume an isolated instance of a fossilized dʰ-extension (like *-dʰh₁-) or a *-to- suffix on *gʷʰen-, ad hoc. The semantics might fit with *-dʰh₁- (roughly “to set, place, do”), if it preserves an old meaning of "strike" (⇒ "that which lays a strike, striking implement" > "stick in general"), but not easily with *-to-. Nothing about this etymology looks good; it's altogether far too much of a stretch to be taken seriously. The lack of insight is probably why it's absent from both Kroonen's and Orel's dictionaries. — 2600:4808:9C31:4800:CC55:E44:C7:25BF 20:40, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly the semantics of Icelandic gandur are highly divergent. I can only guess what the connection between “riding animal, dangerous beast” and “magic staff” might be (not “slayer”, by the way, as the subject of *gʷʰen- is almost exclusively men; and the “staff” sense is not particularly associated with killing). The entry for Proto-Norse ᚢᚾᚷᚨᚾᛞᛁᛉ (ungandiʀ) gives the definition of (the direct descendant of) *gandaz as “foul spirit; a witch’s familiar” and might imply that it was also an adjective “bewitched”. Whatever the semantic associations, they seem rooted in mythology. — 2600:4808:9C31:4800:CC55:E44:C7:25BF 21:03, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Ereshkigal

If 𒊩𒌆 is read as NIN elsewhere, even various other deity names (and 𒊩 and 𒌆 individually have readings even more distant from EREŠ), what is the reading of 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒆠𒃲 as ^DEREŠ.KI.GAL based on? I see the name is attested as "Eres-" in Greek (Ερεσ-) and Demotic Egyptian (-⁠⁠⁠); can those be assumed to reflect the Sumerian pronunciation? The Greek attestations are said to have had little knowledge of Sumerian. Was the name ever written in Sumerian or Akkadian with other symbols that were read ER and EŠ also in other words? @Sartma. - -sche (discuss) 17:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Transcription of one lexical list in Ebla goes: [[ereš]] = SAL.TUG2 = u₃-ru₁₂-šum₂ {{R:sux:ePSD}} grep "queen". Can't access ePSD2 for a while and wouldn't bother browsing CDLI on my own, nevermind I cannot read Neo Assyrian cuneiform. Alisheva (talk) 16:09, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

As to the spelling, it occured to me that SAL.TUG2 looks close to the Akkadian gloss šarratum. That's certainly not how it is normally transcribed, but the logograph SAL could have made it a prefered choice. As such, the logograph could be read however. Alisheva (talk) 18:30, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@-sche: As @Alisheva wrote, there are lexical lists where the sign 𒎏 is given the phonetic pronunciation /ereš/. I can't search extensively at the moment, but I found two instances:

• 𒂊𒊕 (e-reš) (Neo-Babylonian lexical tablet)
• 𒂊𒊑𒌍 (e-re-eš) (Neo-Assyrian lexical tablet)

So yes, there is cuneiform evidence that one of the pronunciations of 𒎏 was indeed /ereš/. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 21:30, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I see. Thank you both! - -sche (discuss) 22:05, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

run and rung

Both has kind of similar pronunciation, and both refer to the action of shaking. I'm thinking they could be cognates. Duchuyfootball (talk) 14:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Vasa

The Swedish royal family made do with patronymics until the 16th century, then adopting the surname Vasa. What does Vasa mean? All sources agree that the name derives from the emblem on the fanily coat of arms, but opinion is divided on what it is, and what the word is. Later sources say it comes from vas (“vase”), and the emblem over time starts to look a bit vase-like. But it mostly looks like a wheatsheaf, and Old Norse had a word vasi, meaning sheaf, and this is the more likely origin. Probably derived from Proto-Indo-European *weys- (“to produce”), in which case cognate with vaĩsius (“fruit”). 24.108.0.44 06:30, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

PIE *ǵʰrem-

Apparently Victar thought it was a good idea to invent a PIE root with zero sources.

Among other things, we are supposed to believe that Sanskrit हृणीते (hṛṇīte) (see Proto-Indo-Iranian *ȷ́ʰárati) is a descendant of *ȷ́ʰárati ~ *gʰr̥mánti / *ȷ́ʰr̥ntáy ~ *gʰr̥matáy (!). Exarchus (talk) 11:35, 20 September 2024 (UTC)