Quotes About Etymology

Kankedort (n.) An awkward situation or affair. I take comfort in the fact that even when the editors of the OED do not have the answer to something, they manage to impart this lack of knowledge in a particularly graceful fashion, thereby diffusing what would otherwise be a bit of a kankedort. The etymology for this work reads "of unascertained etymology". see also: zugzwang

The Verbalist, 1894

The name Zechariah comes from the Hebrew root z-k-r, which means "remember"; the "yah" at the end is the marker for YHWH, so the name means "God remembers.

Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.

From the Latin, con clavis : 'with a key'.

You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.

Yes, I know that the word "school" derives from scholia, meaning leisure.

You know the word 'barbarian' came from the Romans? It meant 'redheaded.' They was talking about you people. I saw that on the—what do you call it?—the History Channel, last night.

Most words in the Semitic languages can be completely defined in terms of root and pattern.

strabismic adj. late 17th century: modern Latin, from Greek strabismos, from

marquess. Old English eorl, of Germanic origin. The word earl originally denoted a man of noble rank, as opposed to a churl, also specifically a hereditary nobleman next above the rank of thane. It was later an equivalent of JARL and, under Canute and his successors, applied to the governor of divisions of England such as Wessex. In the late Old English period, as the Saxon court came under Norman influence, the word was applied to any nobleman bearing the continental title

He senses that the effort would be wasted on a pedant obsessed with etymology and grammar, ignorant of life, and willing to sacrifice the true affection he had for a modest laundress in order to please the despotic Mme Verdurin, who feels insulted by the lowly and in her eyes shameful connection. Her soirees are the only social pleasure he knows. How could he capture the beauty and complexity of a great book?

The English word sin is derived from the German term Sünde, which carries the connotation of sundering or dividing.

afterward. The Saxons called the stern of a boat the aft and their word ward meant "in the direction of." Thus aftward meant "toward the rear of a ship," or "behind." Over the years, the word aftward changed in spelling to afterward and came to mean "behind in time," "later on," or "later.

ETYMOLOGY: "Panic" relates to the god Pan; but we can play on etymologies as on words (as has always been done) and pretend to believe that "panic" comes from the Greek adjective that means "everything.

I resent people who use phrases like "my first," so the person they're speaking to is practically obliged to imagine them having sex to complete the sentence. It's not nice.)

In ancient Greek you use the verb ????????, which comes over into Latin as rapio, rapper, raptus sum and gives us English rapture and rape—words stained with the very early blood of girls, with the very late blood of cities, with the hysteria of the end of the world.

I was fascinated by the shape of words even before I knew what they meant.

La mala palabra no nació así. La sociedad la hizo mala.

lady," a word she had found out came from the Anglo-Saxon "lafdig," meaning "she who makes the bread.

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

The word 'comfort' comes from the Latin words for 'with' and 'strength' and originally meant operating from a position of power.

Our word plumbing actually derives from the Latin plumbum, meaning "lead," and that is also why this element's chemical symbol is Pb.

Homosexual,' generally used in scientific works is of course a bastard word. 'Homogenic' has been suggested, as being from two roots, both Greek, i.e., 'homos,' same, and 'genos,' sex.