All English meanings of "check" derive from the chess term:
checklist, checkup, checks and balances, checkers, checking account, checkered past, …
All of them.
check, chess, checkers, shah, Xerxes
There's a very cool fact: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and others are all the species of plant, namely Brassica oleracea, selectively bred for different parts of the plant. (https://www.google.com/search?q=brassica+oleracea+selection)
Only recently did I realized that many …
read moreOne day, I picked up my phone to look up the etymology of Pontic, but got distracted and looked up the etymology of path first. And it turned out they were the same!
But wait, how does that work, cause Grimm's Law? Germanic *paþaz is apparently a borrowing from …
read moreIndo-European seems to have had two words for "blood" *krewh₂-: "spilled blood, blood outside the body" (with extended meanings of bloodshed and cruelty) contrasts to *h₁ésh₂r̥: "flowing blood, living blood" (with extended meanings of family).
The root *krews- is probably a derived root, and means "to harden …
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 moreIn which "olive oil" is redundant.
The Greek and Armenian words are often interpreted as being from a Mediterranean substrate word. But then there's the Slavic *lȏjь: "tallow, suet" and Old Chinese lɯw: "oil, grease", which is plausibly from the Tocharian equivalent of Slavic *lȏjь …
read moreI'm in the process of expanding this family, after merging the original Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃-: "flower" with Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ-: "to swell" (originally under title word a href="/word-family-budget.html"Budget/a)—and putting both under Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-: "to blow, to swell up".
In which "dryad" and "druid" are basically the same word, "trust" and "tryst", "trees" and "truce". Plus horse racing history.
true, endure, tree, derby, larch, druid, dryad, tray
root, orchard, radio, radish, eradicate
Pterodactyl. 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
This is the 100th Word Family Friday in 100 weeks, and the last before I take a break for a few weeks to work on infrastructure and pad my buffer. I originally had a different idea, but then I realized I of course had …
read more