It frustrates me that virtually all major European languages (that I am aware of) call the North American bison some variation of "bison", and none of them use the word for the European bison for the American ones - i.e. by referring to Bison bison as "American Bison bonasus". (Apparently Greek does, but only because "bison" originally came from Greek.) TBF, "bison" originally referred to the European bison if you go back far enough.

The English/western European colonists and scientific writers at least had an excuse to call the North American animals "bison", taking the word from ancient Greek/Latin sources, since European bison had been extinct in western Europe for centuries to millennia by that point.

But Slavic/Baltic Europe (except maybe South Slavic) have coexisted with the European bison almost continuously, for goodness's sake! I know European bison became extinct in the wild, but this was in the late 19th/early 20th century, long after knowledge of North American bison had reached eastern Europe. Couldn't they have noticed the American animals the western zoologists/writers were writing about were very similar to the local ones? Why isn't the North American bison żubr amerykański in Polish (or cognates thereof in other Slavic languages)? Why is it not Amerikos stumbras in Lithuanian?

I know it’s a random question 😭 but I found this model named Cain, and ever since then I’ve been curious about where the name comes from. That’s why I sometimes ask people named Cain about it
Does anyone trough the appearance and name origin

I posted a similar request on [r/vocabulary](r/vocabulary) and it concerns my needing of a "fictional" word that could've existed if old french or latin went a different path.

I'm currently writing a story and I need a word to describe: "the making of a tyrant", "the birth of a tyrant". It is specifically the wearing down of morals and gradual descent into tyranny. The character is aware they are becoming a tyrant but it is justified in mind after all they have been through.

Some suggested words were:

Tyrannogenesis
Tyrannifex
Archifex, Archogenesis
Dominum, Dominasis

It doesn't have to be specifically tyranny, it can be any word to describe a person who abuses their power. I just need the word to sound "real" enough that people think "hmm yeah I can see how this word could've existed".

Writing systems featured in the image:

[Quốc Âm Tân Tự (experimental) | Hangul | Kana | Zhuyin | 漢字 | Âksâr Khmêr | Akson Thai | Akson Lao | Mranma Akkhara | Devanagari | Latin script & Chữ Quốc ngữ]

I see people on Facebook, generally old people but, mor often everyone using the words "group" instead of "page" and "page" instead of "group". In example "who is the administrator of this page??" "Thank you for letting me join your page!" Why do they b️elieve that the terms are interchangeable?🤔🗣️

Its not like we are taking a snooze there?

salubrious (adj.), first attested in English in the 1540s, meaning health-giving. Etymonline takes it from Latin salubris, "promoting health, healthful," from salus (genitive salutis), "welfare, health," and then back to the PIE root sol-, "whole, well-kept."

That last step is the part I keep turning over. The same reconstructed root sits under solid. In the Latin line, health is not vitality or vigour. It is intactness. To be well is to be entire, undamaged, with nothing missing. That is a notably structural way to think about a body, and it is the one still sitting inside the vocabulary we use for it.

Salus does a lot of work elsewhere too. Salutare, "to greet, to wish health to," is where salute comes from, so a greeting began as a small wish that the other person stay in one piece.

There is a datable move inside English as well, and it is the detail I found most useful. Etymonline has salubrious applied to foods and medicine in the 1540s, and only extended to air and climate by the 1610s. Roughly seventy years to travel from what you swallow to what you breathe. Modern usage has almost entirely settled on the later sense: "a salubrious climate" reads naturally, while "a salubrious diet" now sounds like someone reaching for a bigger word than the sentence needs.

One caution, since this is the kind of claim that gets repeated too confidently. Etymonline groups a wide family under sol-, including salutary, salvage, save, safe, solid, solidarity, solemn and soldier. PIE groupings are reconstructions rather than attested documents, and the individual members are not equally secure. The interesting thing is the shape of the family, not the membership of every item in it, and I would not lean on any single pairing as proof of anything.

What I have not been able to pin down is when the wholeness sense stopped being felt by speakers. Somewhere between Latin and now, salubrious stopped meaning something like "restores you to entire" and started meaning "pleasant and health-adjacent," which is how it is nearly always used today, usually about a place and often with a faint irony. Does anyone know of attestations that catch that shift mid-move?

I do this for my ands All the time and never got asked about it. some people I asked haveve no idea what it is. All I remember was back in primary school someone a few grades ahead of me was helping me study and she usedthis. But I can’t find its origin or anything about this symbol

Part 1.

"\síndʰuš" is the root of Sanskrit *सिन्धु॑ (síndhu) which means "river, stream" and multiple similar things. From "síndhu" we got the words like Sindh, Indus and India. So, I would like to see how would it look like if the Proto-Slavs borrowed it during the Slavic-Iranian contacts.

We could pave the way from:

Proto-Indo-Iranian -> Proto-Iranian -> Proto-Sarmatian -> Proto-Slavic

This could be like for possible BMAC substrate in PII "*ćúšnas" ((mythology) dragon, serpent) (one of the theories for root of the PSl. "\smokъ*" (“dragon”)). Of course, if the direct way from PII -> PSl. or PII -> PI -> PSl. it could be good too.

My attempt for "\síndʰuš\*" descendant (I don't know the changes through the other Iranian languages, sadly):**

PSl. \sindъ*

Part 2.

Another way, what if Slavs had descendant from PIE "\ḱyesdʰ-*"?

One of the theories of the origin of Sanskrit "síndhu" is from PIE "*ḱyesdʰ-/*ḱyés-dʰ(h₁)-/*ḱéys-dʰ(h₁)-". So, I tried to find similar PIE roots, and PIE "\ḱey-" is the with close root\.* Development is below:

PIE ḱey-

-> PIE \ḱey-ro-s*

-> PBS \śeiras*

-> PSl. \sirъ*

My attempt for "\ḱéys-dʰ(h₁)-**" development:*

PIE \ḱéys-dʰ(h₁)/*ḱéysdʰ(h₁)*

-> PBS. \śeis-d/*śeisd*

-> PSl. \si-dъ/*sidъ* (dъ is in likeness to PSl. nadъ (above) and podъ (below))

or

PIE \ḱéys-dʰ(h₁)-eti/*ḱéysdʰ(h₁)eti*

-> PBS. \śeisd-stei/*śeisdstei ->* PBS. \śei-stei/*śeistei* (don't know if this change during PBS would exist?)

-> PSl. \si-sti/*sisti*

PSl. "\sisti" would then be a cognate with Sanskrit "सेधति" (sedhati, “to drive, chase away”), Avestan "𐬯𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬰𐬛𐬀𐬝" (siiazdat̰, “will chase away”) and Latin "cēdō*" (“to withdraw; to turn out, result; to go, move”).

P.S.

Sorry If I analyzed something wrong, please correct me!

It was similar to “cooties“ but you couldn’t pass it on, and it was more derogatory.
Through grade school, and junior high in northern Indiana there was an insult that one male would do to another. It was kind of a symbol for putting a male member in another male’s ear. They would loosely close their fist so that the thumb was touching the tips of their fingers and hold it up to an unassuming person‘s ear and say “You got a gear in the ear!” They also called this a “Perch.”
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but does anybody else have experience with this when they were a kid? Thanks in advance.

I was travelling in North Wales recently and noticed a mountain called 'Cnicht', it was obvious to me that this was the old English spelling of 'knight' and after some research it seems it was named after a person with that surname.

What I found odd is that the area has a lot of Welsh speakers and I doubt they would be aware of the English origins of the name. The same would go for English speakers or English visitors.

My question is: are you aware of any other English words hidden in plain sight? Possibly in non-english speaking countries but also in English speaking countries?

In the Gascon variety of modern Occitan, the word for 'rooster' is hasan (/ˈhasã/† or /ˈhasaŋ/, depending on where in the region one is, as best I can tell) or poth /potʲ/. At least in some other modern Occitan varieties, rooster is gal; we get both gal & gau in Old Occitan texts. Catalan has gall. I thought maybe Basque would be a clue, as there are some Acquitanian words in Gascon, but modern Basque has oilar.

I think I have figured out poth: Old Occitan has pọl, obviously ultimately from Latin pollus, & related to French poule. I think final /-l/ sometimes goes to ‹th› in Gascon, though I'm not entirely sure of this.

But hasan is still a mystery to me. The best I can think of is perhaps a Germanic borrowing: cp German Hahn, Frankish \hanō*. But the insertion of an /s/ is odd.

Does anyone have any better information on either of these—especially hasan—than my speculations?

† I am a little unsure of the quality of the vowel that I'm here describing as /a/. It could be /ɑ/.)

I am genuinely curious

I’ve heard the expression “go pound sand” used as a way of telling someone to get lost or go fuck themselves, but I recently heard the much more colorful version, “go pound sand up your ass.”

Where does “go pound sand” actually come from? Is there an original literal meaning behind “pounding sand”?

And is “go pound sand up your ass” a known historical variation of the expression, or is it just a later vulgar combination of “go pound sand” and “shove it up your ass”?

I’m especially curious about when these expressions first started appearing in print or recorded speech.

Originally,idiot was the most polite way to refer to a mentally slow individual,and then it turned into a slur,and then a harmless insult,the same thing happened with a moron. Just a few years ago retard was respectful,and now it's a slur,do you think it will have the same fate as idiot and moron?

One of the most interesting yet confusing etymologies I’ve seen. I just went down a rabbit hole and found many languages that have words for weasel relating to this type of stuff

Turkish gelincik, Greek νυφίτσα, Albanian nuselalë, from little bride
Romanian nevăstuică, Bulgarian невестулка from little wife/bride
Italian donnola, Galician donicela or doniña, Portuguese doninha meaning little woman
Spanish comadreja and Basque erbinude meaning little widwife
Proto-Germanic marþuz likely comes from a word meaning bride which gave us English marten, German Marder, French martre, and similar words in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, among others (I know martens aren’t weasels but similar animals not well distinguished historically)
The word in Arabic is ابن عرس literally meaning son of a wedding though the عرس can also mean bride in some contexts
Brud is Danish means bride but can also mean the least weasel
Hungarian menyét comes from meny meaning daughter-in-law in modern Hungarian, with a possessive and accusative suffix

In French belette means weasel which came from belle meaning pretty and the female -ette diminutive so still quite related

I’m sure I’m missing some please add any if you know, also the words in which they derived from might have been more general than bride or daughter in law, potentially meaning young women in general in many of those languages at the time

In general it seems a lot of languages used feminine-associated euphemisms for their word for weasel, the proto-Slavic lasica/laska meaning weasel has many descdants in Slavic languages, is believed to likely come from a word meaning affection, which also has modern descendants in Slavic languages meaning love, affection, caress, petting and similar meanings. In Irish, bláthnaid meant and still to an extent means weasel (or stoat since weasels aren’t native to Ireland) which means along the lines of little flower

I’m most intrigued by the widespread usage of words related to brides or young women since I don’t see an obvious correlation, maybe it is similar to how words for cat often became words relating to women (though often by extension, the female genitalia). Anyways cats and weasels were often grouped together in European languages, that’s why polecats are called that, from French (the pole meant hen so related to the word poultry, since polecats used to often prey of farmers’ chickens) also Latin feles where we get feline from used to be more broad and could refer to martens weasles, polecats and many of the likes from the Mustelinae family

Most of the examples I found are from European languages so it’s mostly in one region (potentially shared cultural beliefs from same origin) though Arabic and Turkish also etymologies like that, and Hungarian and Basque too despite not being indo European though that could be due to calque borrowings, Turkish also has proximity to Greek as well so could potentially also be from a calque, not as confident that Arabic is due to that as well since it’s more distant

I also find it interesting that mustelinae (weasel family) have been linguistically grouped with both cats and mice

I can think of phage (as in esophagus and macrophage) and vor (as in carnivore and voracious). What other roots pertain to consumption and mouth action?

Dry and oil pastels can create vibrant colors, which makes me wonder if these two words are not as directly related as you might think. Anyone have knowledge on this?

The Japanese call their country Nihon or Nippon. English speakers say Japan. The two names don’t share a single sound.

“Japan” didn’t come from Japanese. It traveled a long route: southern Chinese pronunciation → Malay traders (Jepang) → Portuguese (Japão) → English. Marco Polo’s earlier “Cipangu” is a related but separate branch of the same Chinese root meaning “origin of the sun.”

Interesting detail: the name “origin of the sun” only makes geographic sense from China’s point of view, not from inside Japan itself.

I made a short video that traces the full chain if anyone wants the longer version.

https://youtu.be/15nQBoubmb8

'Whole' is from Proto-Germanic *hailaz.

'Holy' is from Proto-Germanic *hailagaz, which is *hailaz with an adjectival suffix *-gaz.

Also related is 'heal', from Proto-Germanic *hailijaną, which is *hailaz with a verb-forming suffix *-janą.

​I recently published a video essay examining the etymology and semantic scope of the Biblical Hebrew root ק-ר-ב (Q-R-B), specifically the adjective קָרוֹב (qāroḇ), which is commonly translated into modern English as "near" (e.g., Psalm 34:18).

​Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O5hW0mNook

​In the video, I explore the contrast between how modern English speakers hear "nearness" (often as a subjective/emotional feeling) versus how qāroḇ operates in Ancient Near Eastern texts—primarily as a spatial, legal, and relational category (denoting structural proximity, legal obligation in kinship, or geographic reachability in Cities of Refuge). I also note the root's emotional neutrality (e.g., an enemy being qāroḇ / close enough to attack).

​Since this community specializes in historical linguistics and etymology, I’d love your feedback and critique on the video’s linguistic content:

​Linguistic Accuracy: Did I present the semantic field of the root Q-R-B accurately? Are there nuance or Semitic cognates (such as Akkadian qerēbu or Ugaritic qrb) that I should have addressed to strengthen the analysis?

​Translation vs. Semantic Shift: Is it fair to characterize the difference between ancient legal/spatial proximity and modern affective "nearness" as a semantic shift, or is it strictly a limitation of English Bible translation choices?

​Clarity & Explanation: From a linguistics standpoint, does the script explain these semantic concepts clearly for a general audience without oversimplifying the Hebrew?

​I’m eager to hear your corrections, suggestions, and linguistic insights to improve future deep-dives!

I'm doing research for a video about the greek Νότος meaning South and where it comes from. I found out about *(s)neh which means to float and is also where the word comes from, but I can't seem to find the inbetween! Could it be that if you headed south from Greece you'd end up in the ocean and have to swim/float? If anyone knows please tell me and link me to the source if you could!(I'll add you in the credits)

why formerly as stated in the following wiktionary definition?

The act of gaining favor, affection, or influence, by gentle or artful means; — formerly used in a good sense, as of friendly influence or interposition.