Quotes About Etymology

Etymologically, a disaster is a bad star.

He told me once that being blessed meant being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English - but not in Greek or Hebrew. So whatever understanding might be based on that derivation has no scriptural authority behind it. It was unlike him to strain interpretation that way. He did it in order to make an account of himself, I suppose, as most of us do.

In eighteenth-century England, anchovy sauce became known as ketchup, katchup, or catsup.

In Middle English, cod meant a bag or a sack, or by inference, a scrotum, which is why the outrageous purse that sixteenth-century men wore at their crotch to give the appearance of enormous and decorative genitals was called a codpiece.

At times soldiers were even paid in salt, which was the origin of the word salary and the expression "worth his salt" or "earning his salt." In fact, the Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier.

The Romans, Jones pointed out, called a man in love salax, in a salted state, which is the origin of the word salacious.

Ketchup derives its name from the Indonesian fish and soy sauce kecap ikan. The names of several other Indonesian sauces also include the word kecap, pronounced KETCHUP, which means a base of dark, thick soy sauce. Why

Our galaxy is called the Milky Way, and both it and the word "galaxy" have their origins in the Greek word for milk, gala.

According to many lexical authorities, the word that Londoners used for traders from the Hanseatic eastern cities—easterlings—became shortened and incorporated into the English language as the word sterling, with its implied meaning of solid reliability.

I don't know why the word "mustache" exists, though. Can't we just call it lip hair?)

Bizarrely, our English word 'sturdy' may go back to the Latin turdus, thrush. Anyone described as 'sturdy' in the 1200s was wilfully reckless and possibly as immovable as a sozzled bird.

Quite often people ask me 'Is there a word for... ' and go on to highlight a gap in our language that we need to fill.

According to some statements, the Irish (Hibernienses) derived their name from the aforesaid Heber; or rather, according to others, they were so named from the Hiberus (the Ebro), a river in Spain.

The word "BAE" which is popular in North American society is actually the Danish word for poop.

Q: Why is the roach clip called a roach clip? A: Because "pot holder" was taken.

People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time.

So familiar are eggs to us, however, that in the eighteenth century they were referred to as cackling farts, on the basis that chickens cackled all the time and eggs came out of the back of them.

Chaldean roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.

The English language is an arsenal of weapons; if you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or no they are loaded you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time. Poppycock means soft shit - from the Dutch, I need scarcely remind you, pappe kak.

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone.

It is probably significant that the most widespread words in the world—borrowed into virtually every language—are the names of the four great caffeine plants: coffee, cacao, cola, and tea. [Quoting F.N. Anderson's 'The Food of China' (1988).]

Since algebra derives from the Arabic jabara = to bind together, fractal and algebra are etymological opposites!)

The word Chivalry is derived from the French cheval, a horse.

????? «Ã'"??????» ?????????? ?? ?????????? famulus, «Ã'луга», ???????????? ?? ????? familia, ????????????? ???? ??????????, ? ?????? ? ????.