And even Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, but none of the other Germanic languages.

Old High German: zil
    Middle High German: zil
        German: Ziel
            Hunsrik: Ziel
            → Bulgarian: цел (cel)
            → Czech: cíl
            → Hungarian: cél
                → Romanian: țel, țil
            → Macedonian: цел (cel)
            → Polish: cel, cyl, czel (Middle Polish)
                → Belarusian: цэль (celʹ)
                → Esperanto: celo
                → Kashubian: cél
                → Slovincian: cél
                → Russian: цель (celʹ), цѣль (cělʹ) — pre-1918 spelling
                    → Yakut: сыал (sïal)
                → Ukrainian: ціль (cilʹ)
            → Serbo-Croatian:
                Cyrillic script: ци̑љ
                Latin script: cȋlj
            → Slovak: cieľ
            → Slovene: cilj
        → Old Czech: cíl, cíľ (alternative writing)
            Czech: cíl
            Old Polish: cel
                Polish: cel, cyl, czel (Middle Polish)
                    → Belarusian: цэль (celʹ)
                    → Esperanto: celo
                    → Kashubian: cél
                    → Slovincian: cél
                    → Russian: цель (celʹ), цѣль (cělʹ) — pre-1918 spelling
                        → Yakut: сыал (sïal)
                    → Ukrainian: ціль (cilʹ)
                Silesian: cyl
→ Proto-Finnic: *tila
    Estonian: tila
    Finnish: tila (“room, space”)

Edit: I proofread the title like three times, but still missed a word :/

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At what point do two languages stop being dialects, are there specific parameters that distinguish a language from a dialect, like I know the Chinese government considers the Chinese languages dialects of each other to maintain the perception of a homogeneous nation, but at what point did Tamil and Malayalam stop being dialects and become two independent languages?

My writings in the neuroanatomy of the mind/body interface have led me to contemplate an interesting the homophonic and potential cognate pairing of cord as in ‘spinal cord’ and caudal (‘tail-end’ as counter polar to cephalic (‘at the head end’). ‘Cord’ appears to come from the PIE ghere- ‘intestine’ while ‘caudal’ is from the Latin cauda ‘tail’ – whose earlier forms seem less clear. But, in terms of differentiating the distinct parts of the CNS (central nervous system) of the *brain vs the spinal cord, the homophony of this being its caudal part is somewhat tantalising to me as an amateur linguist and natural philosopher – retired from a main career as a mind/body doctor.

I've been reading about the etymology of the word "China" and its connection to the Khitan people (契丹). From my basic research, I know that:

• "Cathay" entered English via Marco Polo's accounts and was used in medieval Europe.
• "Kitay" (Китай) is still the standard word for China in Russian and several other Slavic/Turkic languages.
• Modern English eventually shifted to "China" (likely from Sanskrit "Cina" via Persian), leaving "Cathay" as a poetic or archaic term.

What I'm curious about is the historical and linguistic divergence: Why did English and most Western European languages settle on the "China" root, while Russian and its neighbors kept the "Khitan/Cathay" root? Was it purely a matter of trade routes (land vs. sea), or were there other political/cultural factors at play?

Would appreciate any historical context or references to early modern English usage! Thanks!

hello, I'm a dumb, stupid artist and I have a couple word building projects but I always curl up and die on naming things, at first my solution was to look at obscure languages but that's probably distasteful, obviously I don't want to be distasteful while making dinky projects like a "Prehistoric Fantasy world" or any of my other projects so I thought getting into etymology would help me actually name things in my projects, animals, plants, locations, habitats, people, etc. so, where should I start in learning etymology?

I am an English student interested in translation. How can understanding the origin and history of a word help translators choose the correct meaning in another language?

Many female names in European languages are derived from male names (Johanna, Harriet, Martina/Martine, etc). What examples are there of male names being derived from female names? I'm curious about all languages, not just European, although that was my frame of reference for this question.

hi hi !! so my surname is i think came from spanish due to the philippines being colonized by spain for 333 years.

but i tried to find sources to find the meaning of my surname but couldn't find any that seemed legitimate :/

i might as well try here hehe

thank you for your help

The ancient Greeks named Egypt “Αἴγυπτος” (Aíguptos), likely deriving it from “ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ” (“the temple of the ka of Ptah”), the Egyptian name for the temple of the god Ptah in Memphis, which was also used by metonymy for the city itself.

Several Egyptian religious records show that Ptah was considered a creator god and a patron deity of craftsmen, artists, and architects.

One of these records is the Shabaka Stone, an ancient Egyptian slab probably first erected in Ptah’s temple in Memphis. It was inscribed around 700 BCE, during the reign of Pharaoh Shabaka, and its text claims to be a copy of an earlier papyrus he found in the temple.

The stone was at one point moved to Alexandria, then taken to England and transferred to the British Museum in 1805, where it remains today.

The kꜣ (ka, hieroglyph 𓂓) was an Egyptian concept close to the idea of “vital essence”. Egyptians believed that either Heqet or Meskhenet was the creator of each person’s kꜣ, breathing it into them at the instant of their birth.

The graph was made on miraris.app (a site I made that lets you see etymology trees for any Wiktionary word).

You can interact with the etymology tree for Egypt here, and see the sources used to build it.

I hope you find this etymology as interesting as I do!

Other sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah
• https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA498
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabaka_Stone
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_conception_of_the_soul

Is there a word with a similar ending as "misogyny", "misandry", or "miscegeny" that has to do with discrimination on a racial basis?

The Greek sarx - flesh - has given us a few words.

Many people know about the sarcophagus - literally flesh-consumer - as limestone coffins were supposedly capable of dissolving human remains.

Sarcopenia is the medical term for the loss of body mass, most noticeably muscle mass, that usually accompanies old age.

But thanks to the inestimable Susie Dent on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Unspeakable’ this morning I learned a new one. Sarcasm. Greek grammarians adapted the noun sarkasmos to describe a biting, cutting remark—a verbal "tearing of flesh" where a speaker smiles while wounding someone with insincere words.

I have extremely little knowledge on this, so please forgive me if this is a stupid post.

So I know that Latin and Greek are old languages, and I think that a lot of English words come from them, but where did they come from? Were they built off of other languages? If so, how did they get there. Any new knowledge on this subject would be greatly appreciated I just want to know more about Latin and Greek really. Thank you.

I recently realized many people assume “pencil” has always meant the graphite stick we write with. Its history goes back much earlier, and the original meaning has nothing to do with modern pencil leads.

The word comes from Latin pencillus, meaning “little tail”, a diminutive of penis (tail). In ancient Rome, a pencillus referred to a small brush made of animal hair, used for painting or marking. This Latin term passed into Old French as pincel, still describing a painter’s fine brush.

When the word entered English around the 14th century, “pencil” still meant a tiny artist brush. Graphite sticks only appeared in the 16th century in England. People called the graphite sticks “black lead” at first. Later, they reused the old word “pencil” for this new writing tool, because it made thin lines like the old hair brush.

Many folk etymology posts mix this up. The word never referenced graphite or lead itself; it referenced the thin, brush-like mark it creates. Even today, painters still talk about “pencils” of paint in some older texts.

I wonder: are there similar cases where old words shifted from describing a brush to a writing tool in other languages? Did any Romance languages keep the original “small tail” sense? Let me know if I got any details wrong.

I made False Root, a small daily word game for people who like debunking origin stories that sound too good to be true.

Each day you get a word and four possible origins. One is real and three are made up. You strike out the fakes one at a time, and hitting the real one ends the round.

The fakes are built the way real false etymologies tend to arise: a made-up person the word was supposedly named after, genuine Latin or Greek that happens to be the wrong root, or a borrowing through a language the word never went through.

After each round you see the actual history step by step with dates, plus links to Wiktionary and Etymonline.

There are 90 words so far, unlocking one a day in order, so starting late doesn't mean you've missed any. Free, no ads, no third-party trackers, no account.

If one of my "fakes" turns out to be attested somewhere, please tell me.

https://falseroot.com

I just found out today. After so many times noticing the "salmon" part in "salmonella", the bacteria, I decided to look up its origin and found out the bacteria was named after Daniel Salmon, an American veterinary surgeon.

Two caveats though:
• not just raw eggs, salmons, too, can carry salmonella;
• salmons are native to North America. So Mr. Salmon's parents might have name their child after the fish.

Why do words like “know” and “knife” have a silent “k”?

Why do words like “know” and “knife” have a silent “k”?

I saw this shopfront in Santander, Northern Spain today and was interested in that thry appear to refer to Darts as 'Diana'. Is this some reference to Diana the Huntress of Roman religion?

Have you ever come across a word whose historical origin explains a cultural meaning that its modern definition doesn’t fully capture? I’m interested in cases where knowing a word’s etymology changes how we understand it, especially when translating it into another language. Does preserving a word’s historical or cultural associations matter in translation, even when those associations are no longer obvious to modern speakers? I’d love to hear examples from different languages.