Quotes About Etymology

Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes).

Entomologists have a name for young flies, but it is an ugly name, an insult. Let's not use the word maggot. Let's use a pretty word. Let's use hacienda.

The Spanish for 'vacuum' is aspiradora.

If we remember that the German word for holy (selig) is the root of our word silly, we may be forced to make some pertinent connections.

I've often wondered why condoms are called French letters.

In the Hebrew language, the word for "anointed one" is mashiach, from which we get our word messiah. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the translation of mashiach is christos, whence we get our word Christ.

The word 'glamour' comes from the word 'grammar', and since the Chomskyan revolution the etymology has been fitting. Who could not be dazzled by the creative power of the mental grammar, by its ability to convey an infinite number of thoughts with a finite set of rules?

The authors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, having surveyed the uses of the two forms over six hundred years, conclude, "The traditional rules about shall and will do not appear to have described real usage of these words precisely at any time, although there is no question that they do describe the usage of some people some of the time and that they are more applicable in England than elsewhere.

No one thinks of Thursday as Thor's Day anymore, or of breakfast as breaking a fast. Modern English has thousands of former phrases and complex words that have congealed into what people now perceive as simple words, such as business (busyness), Christmas (Christ's Mass), and spinster (one who spins).

boor (which originally just meant "farmer," as in the German Bauer and Dutch boer); villain (from the French vilein, a serf or villager); churlish (from English churl, a commoner); vulgar (common, as in the term vulgate); and ignoble, not an aristocrat.

The English language is a rich verbal tapestry woven together from the tongues of the Greeks, the Latins, the Angles, the Klaxtons, the Celtics, and many more other ancient peoples, all of whom had severe drinking problems." Let

The word "Yankee" itself, I was informed, came from that simplest of Dutch names - Jan.

I believe my last name Hunt is an anglicized version of O'Fianna.

The dictionary is like a time capsule of all of human thinking ever since words began to be written down. And exploring where words have come from can increase your understanding of the words themselves and expand your understanding of how to use the words, and all of this change happens in your thinking when you read the words.

There's so much that we just accept, but the reasons behind how certain rules came to be are so fascinating and funny, it just increases your affection for language.

Sad, shocking, horrible, yes," underlining each word, "but..." (Oliver often said that but was his favorite word, a kind of etymological flip of the coin, for it allowed consideration of both sides of an argument, a topic, as well as a kind of looking-at-the-bright-side that was as much a part of his nature as his diffidence and indecisiveness.)

There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese.

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

Imposed isolation began with that thirty-day rule in 1348 but was then extended to forty days in 1403. The label "quarantine" stuck because cuarànta means "forty days

Bishop Asser was an earsling, which is anything that drops out of an arse.

Hooker was falsely thought to be the origin of the word for "prostitute," because his camp was so rowdy.

Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.

After all, the Indo-European word cunt was derived from the goddess Kunda or Cunti, and shares the same root as kin and country.