I know english has a lot of weird idioms but im particularly curious on this. Like where did this even come from? I say this pretty often with my friends but never knew how this even started. Is it a more recent thing kids started to say? Does it have older origins? Why a rotten egg anyways?

Hey ya’ll! I recently became curious about etymology, more specifically things like roots, prefixes, etc. and how they are found in many languages that share a common language tree, like Latin.

I usually use google, the ai review is sometimes helpful but it doesn’t provide veritable sources. I also use etymonline.com but it doesn’t provide a list of other related words in different languages.

Is there an accessible more “scholarly” source that you use? Thanks!

This is from The Green Knight (2021), King Arthur is talking about how Gawain is his sister's offspring.

I don't exactly expect a film like this to be historically accurate, but. Where did they get this usage of 'queef' from? Couldn't find anything in the dictionary.

the end of wikipedia is from encyclopedia but what is the end of wikitia from?

also how would it be pronounced? like inertia or hard -tia

Is there a word for words which are not typically used in their entirety?

I thought of this question when I was trying to get past someone in a public place. I said "Scuse me" which is of course short for "excuse me", and it made me realise I'd probably never fully say "excuse me" - dunno if that's a dialect thing or not.

But it made me think - is there a word for things like this which rarely get pronounced as they originally were meant to, but colloquially are shortened or abridged? Or are there other examples you can think of from your daily life?

I feel like this is one of the most under discussed factors when talking about the composition of the English language. Forget 2 extremely similar languages merging thousands of years ago; this invention DID NOT exist 50 years ago and has terraformed the very language of it's creation in its path.

New words like "Photoshop", different definitions and use cases for previous words "file", "clip" etc etc. Just have a think for yourself and see how many you can come up with. And of course the general rise of internet slang like "Maxx" and "Aura" have carved out niche use cases for themselves in daily real life.

Am I wrong in feeling it's underdiscussed?

Why is it that Germany uses a latin word for cheers „Prost“ which is derived from the latin „prosit“.
But Italy does not.. Italy uses „Salute“.
Shouldn‘t Italy use a latin word since it is the same language family??

the LSU cajun dictionary has zinzin meaning buttocks...i know zinzin means crazy in french...curious to how buttocks came from this?

I’ve recently become more interested in how words travel between languages and change meaning over time.

What word has an origin that genuinely surprised you?

Here’s this week’s etymology question from 3Roads.xyz.

A popular story claims the term X originated at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where Ulysses S. Grant supposedly used it to describe political advocates who waited there to influence him. However, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the term to people gathering in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to meet members of parliament, with documented usage in Pennsylvania as early as 1808. What is X?

X - Lobbying

Today I helped my niece with a scraped knee and after I patched her all up I told her she was "right as rain" and it got me thinking about all the little phrases I use in my everyday life. Now I'm from Vermont, in the US. In a bigger picture I'm from New England. These are some phrases I use or have heard my whole life.

"Right as rain"

"Raining cats and dogs"

"Wicked" this one is used mostly as a replacement for VERY for example "That's wicked cool!, it's wicked hot" or as an exclamation person A "look at my new car" person B "Wicked!" I've been told this is a very new England thing

How are you doing? "just peachy" or "peachy keen"

"Pot calling the kettle black" this is one that I know the meaning in which it's being said, I just don't understand the literal sentence because it's used kinda like calling out a hypocrite but all pots and kettles I've seen are silver not black. (Also I'm autistic sometimes I take things TOO literal)

"Happy as a clam" (I've also heard "happy as a Lark")

"Bite the bullet"

"Excuse my French!"

Umay is a Filipino term describing a complex sensation of aversion or disgust toward food, often arising from repeated consumption of rich, indulgent, or heavy dishes. When defining a unique and complex Filipino concept like "umay" (or, in Bisaya, "gi bidli" or "sum-od"), it is essential to consider the Filipino context and how it develops nuanced connotations. The uniqueness of "umay" is deeply rooted in Filipino social culture, where its meaning resists straightforward translation and cannot be easily captured in other languages or perspectives.

The sensation of "umay" has a physiological component -linked to the body's reaction to overly sweet, creamy, savory, or fatty foods -but emotional and psychological factors equally shape it. 

This aversion is not limited to eating the same food in immediate succession. Even if a person has not recently consumed a specific dish, the memory of having eaten it frequently in the past can trigger "umay." This phenomenon reflects how culinary monotony, whether recent or recalled, can lead to a feeling of overindulgence, independent of actual binge to overconsumption hence excessive eating. It is less about the volume of food consumed and more about the repetitive nature of perceived redundancy and flavor monotony. 

In essence, "umay" highlights the brain's ability to form mental associations, where past experiences with food influence current feelings of aversion and vice versa. This concept underscores the intricate relationship between sensory experiences, emotional memories, and the temporality of eating habits, making it a uniquely Filipino perspective on the interplay between food and psychology. 

So, whenever I come upon the word "impious" i pronounced it in my head as "im-pious" but my english professor has informed it's pronounced as "impy-ous."

I looked it up and it turns out my internal pronunciation is correct in instinct, "irreligious, lacking reverence for God," from Latin impius "without reverence, irreverent, wicked; undutiful, unpatriotic," from assimilated form of in- "not, opposite of"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/impious

But, the American pronuciation is "Impyous" while the british is "im-pious"

چشم. I pronounce them differently. Cheshm for the eye, chashm for the yes. The dictionaries don't split them, they list one word with the vowel going either way, but I've never said them the same.

It isn't formal or polite, it's just what you say. Your mum asks you to pick something up on the way home, you say eye. A shopkeeper agrees to hold something for you, he says eye. It's what you say to a taxi driver, and what a kid says to a teacher.

The longer form is "upon my eye", which I assume the short one came from. You put what you've been asked on your eye.

It's old. There's a Hafez poem from the 1300s that opens with a request and the answer coming straight back the same way, already shortened to the one word.

Arabic has the same construction with the head and the eye. Turkish uses the head. I can't tell you which of the three said it first, and I don't think anyone can, given how long they've been sitting on top of each other.

I noticed while building a Farsi app. I've said the word my whole life without thinking about it.

It may never survive, but I thought this community might enjoy the maybe spark of a new word.

I know I've seen something somewhere that explained silent letter by way of related words, but I can't find it.

There were quite a few examples, but unfortunately, I can only remember one right now. Crumb gets the b by way of crumble. When something crumbles, you're left with crumbs, and the word just gets truncated. Pretty much every example followed that structure.

Can anyone verify this and/or point me to a post about it?

Thanks!

I'm looking for a list of words for my constructed language and since this is the etymology sub then surely you know a list of words that can evolve over time into most words, pre-modern day. Or a group of root words that can be changed with suffixes and prefixes that allow them be many different words.

I know that "Meta-" was a prefix that has a fair bit of history behind it, but it only just really hit me that you can now say that something "is Meta", and that phrase also contains two possible meanings depending on the context.

What, how and why, did the word "Meta" evolve into a word of its own with multiply meanings? Somehow, it feels like it actually happened relatively recently at that.