I've included (possibly) two families again in this one, Proto-Indo-European *wet-: "year, year-old" and Proto-Indo-European *wósr̥: "spring (season)". There's no formal connection, but it's not hard to imagine on either the phonetic or the semantic level.
Acrostatic *ó-r̥ nouns like *wósr̥ are from very early PIE. You could imagine …
read morewolf, wolframite, Ralph, Raoul, lycanthrope, lupus
One final "turtle" word: "honu"
It is very tempting to unify *pəñu: "sea turtle" with *pəNuʔ: "to fill, full, container". And *pəNuʔ: "full" has potential cognates in the possible Sino-Austronesian macrofamily/Southeast Asian historic sprachbund.
And then at that point you're speculating a link between "green …
read moreTurtledoves are not named after turtles, in fact "turtle" has meant the bird for longer than it meant the reptile.
In Middle English tortu meant "turtle" (from Latin tortuca) and turtel mean "turtledove" (from Latin turtur), then they collapsed into "turtle". The modern meaning of "turtle" won out, and …
read moreA whole pile of words for things with shells and exoskeletons built on something like *kar-
Some of these are probably each of
Here I'm following Blažek's compelling argument (2017) to derive *h₂ŕ̥Tḱos from *h₂r̥dh₂éḱh₃-s: "bee-eater", similar to many later words for bear that mean things like "honey eater", "honey pig", "thief of bees", "bee bear", "bee wolf", … . This instead of the traditional connection …
read morefee, feudal, cyclops, peculiar, fight, Shadowfax
I've been thinking about herons and egrets a lot recently. For the past year or so, our morning walk goes by a half mile of drainage ditch with an amazing variety of water birds. We regularly see 4 different species of heron: great blue heron, great egret, snowy egret …
read moreThe period of unseasonably hot weather after an initial autumn cooling—now often called "Indian summer"—was previously called "goose summer" in English because it corresponds with the beginning of goose hunting season. Compare Irish fómhar beag na ngéanna: "warm period in Autumn (Indian summer)", literally "little autumn of …
read moreWhile *linom: "flax" and *līnom: "flax" obviously must be connected in some way, the difference in vowel length cannot be reconciled by any regular changes.
All versions with the long vowel are plausibly attributable to derivation from Latin līnum. All the short vowel versions could theoretically be from Greek …
read moreProto-Indo-European has *gʷṓws: "cow, cattle" and *woḱéh₂: "(female) cow". The expected feminine of the *gʷṓws would be something like **gʷow(s)éh₂. *woḱéh₂ looks similar, but not quite there.
Sino-Tibetan *ŋwa: "cattle, ox" is also highly reminiscent of *gʷṓws …
read moreI present two families for "pig" here, partly because Armenian խոզ xoz is derivable from either family (see footnote [1])
Family 1, Indo-European *suH- pig, sow?", possibly related to Akkadian 𒊺𒄷𒌑 še-hu-u₂ and Sumerian 𒋚 šah; and family 2, Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰóryos: "pig", probably central PIE dialect (Greek …
read moreI get a little speculative here, if not downright provocative. There are words for dog all over Eurasia that recall each other. These could be onomatopoeic, but they do not much resemble the common forms you find in words that actually used as dog sound …
read morePterodactyl. Two cool realizations about Greek "pter-". 1) "Helicopter" is so strongly segmented as "heli-copter" in English, it's fun to realize that the Greek construction is actually "helico-pter": "twisting (helix) wing". 2) More recently I realized it's an awesome example of Grimm's Law: apply …
read moreAnkylosaurus! And as an unexpected bonus, I found Azhdarchid pterosaurs deep in the family, too. Pterosaurs are probably my very favorite Mesozoic animals (stay tuned for next week!). Also in this family: various spiders and snakes and fears and sins in various languages.
I …
read moresteganography, detect, tile, Stegosaurus, thug, toga, thatch, deck
horn, unicorn, cheer, migraine, carrot, Triceratops
edema, Oedipus, oat, atter, attercop
win, wish, Venus, Darwin, vanadium, venom, wonder, winsome
spin, spider, span, poise, peso, ponder
Donald Duck dives to the deep abyss of Dover in a Bathysphere! (What a dope.)
Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwis: "bird" and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis: "sheep" appear to be umlaut variants, presumably through the more sparsely attested root *h₂ew-: "to put on clothes, to cover". *h₂éwis: "bird" would be from a passive participle, "a clothed (in feathers)". *h₂ówis: "sheep" from an active participle …
read moremulch, marmalade, Melissa, mead, amethyst, methane
This one is really cool and just might go back all the way to the original domestication of horses in Central Asia. Maybe—just maybe—the Thai word for the knight piece in chess and the Welsh word for the knight piece in chess might be …
read moreoxygen, acid, eager, vinegar, tear, lachrymose, edge, axe, hammer, hear, acoustic, coin, cuneiform, cone
subtle, text, technology, dachshund, city, haunt, position
light, Lucifer, Nowruz, berkelium, Waterloo, Roxana, lunatic, lynx
Two final, small "horse" families.
Update: I have re-made the "ride"/"palfrey" family on a separate page. It is not small.
and
In which car and horse turn out to be the same word: "thing that runs". As are corsair and hussar.
course, corsair, current, curriculum, excursion, parkour, car, charge, walrus, horse, epicurean, corral, rush
hippopotamus, equestrian, zebra