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 moreNow often called "Indian summer", the period of unseasonably hot weather after an initial autumn cooling was previously called in English "goose summer" because it generally corresponds with the beginning of goose hunting season. Compare Irish fómhar beag na ngéanna: "warm period in Autumn (Indian summer)"
Then the word …
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. If there was a Central Asian …
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 …
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 moresteganography, detect, Stegosaurus, thug, thatch, deck
horn, unicorn, cheer, migraine, carrot, Triceratops
edema, Oedipus, oat, atter, attercop
win, wish, Venus, venom, wonder, winsome
spin, spider, span, poise, peso, ponder
moa, manuk
bird
bird
bird
bird, chicken
chicken
bird
bird
bird
bird
bird …
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 "a clothed (in feathers)" and *h₂ówis: "sheep", "a clother (in wool)".
avian, egg, oval, ocarina, osprey, ewe
I love how Indo-European *udrós, "aquatic", became the word for "otter" in 4 out of the 5 branches where it is attested, except for Greek where it became "sea serpent".
vodka, whiskey, water, hydrogen, otter, hydra, wash
Lucifer, light, Waterloo, Roxane, lunar, lynx
Two final, small "horse" families.
Update: I have re-made the "ride"/"palfrey" family on a separate page. It is not small.
and
On St. Patrick's Day, I reveal the secret reason I did horses in March.
Also, 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 …
read moreIn which "horse" and "car" turn out to be almost identical words! Both from <*kr̥sos>: "running thing".
course, car, charge, cargo, walrus, horse, rush
hippopotamus, equestrian, zebra