Etymology (/ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/)[1] is the study of the history of words.[1] By extension, the phrase "the etymology of [a word]" means the origin of a particular word.[2]

For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available.

By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in European languages, for example, can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family.

Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.

English language Edit

Main article: History of the English language

English derives from Old English (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon), a West Germanic variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from many languages.[7] The Old English roots may be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and German, particularly seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun, and ten/zehn. Pronouns are also cognate: I/mine/me and ich/mein/mich; thou/thine/thee and du/dein/dich; we/wir and us/uns; she/sie; your/ihr. However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case system, which is greatly simplified in modern English. Certain elements of vocabulary are borrowed from French and other Romance languages, but most of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin.

When the Normans conquered England in 1066 (see Norman Conquest), they brought their Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the vernacular English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d'oïl literature from France.

This led to many paired words of French and English origin. For example, beef is related, through borrowing, to modern French bœuf, veal to veau, pork to porc, and poultry to poulet. All these words, French and English, refer to the meat rather than to the animal. Words that refer to farm animals, on the other hand, tend to be cognates of words in other Germanic languages. For example, swine/Schwein, cow/Kuh, calf/Kalb, and sheep/Schaf. The variant usage has been explained by the proposition that it was the Norman rulers who mostly ate meat (an expensive commodity) and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals. This explanation has passed into common folklore but has been disputed.

Assimilation of foreign words Edit

Further information: Loanword and Lists of English words by country or language of origin

English has proved accommodating to words from many languages. Scientific terminology, for example, relies heavily on words of Latin and Greek origin, but there are a great many non-scientific examples. Spanish has contributed many words, particularly in the southwestern United States. Examples include buckaroo, alligator, rodeo, savvy, and states' names such as Colorado and Florida. Albino, palaver, lingo, verandah, and coconut from Portuguese; diva and prima donna from Italian. Modern French has contributed café, cinema, naive, nicotine and many more.

Smorgasbord, slalom, and ombudsman are from Swedish, Norwegian and Danish; sauna from Finnish; adobe, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, apricot, assassin, caliber, cotton, hazard, jacket, jar, julep, mosque, Muslim, orange, safari, sofa, and zero from Arabic (often via other languages); behemoth, hallelujah, Satan, jubilee, and rabbi from Hebrew; taiga, steppe, Bolshevik, and sputnik from Russian.

Bandanna, bungalow, dungarees, guru, karma, and pundit come from Urdu, Hindi and ultimately Sanskrit; curry from Tamil; honcho, sushi, and tsunami from Japanese; dim sum, gung ho, kowtow, kumquat and typhoon from Cantonese. Kampong and amok are from Malay; and boondocks from the Tagalog word for hills or mountains, bundok. Ketchup derives from one or more South-East Asia and East Indies words for fish sauce or soy sauce, likely by way of Chinese, though the precise path is unclear: Malay kicap, Indonesian kecap, Chinese Min Nan kê-chiap and cognates in other Chinese dialects.

Surprisingly few loanwords, however, come from other languages native to the British Isles. Those that exist include coracle, cromlech and (probably) flannel, gull and penguin from Welsh; galore and whisky from Scottish Gaelic; phoney, trousers, and Tory from Irish; and eerie and canny from Scots (or related Northern English dialects).

Many Canadian English and American English words (especially but not exclusively plant and animal names) are loanwords from Indigenous American languages, such as barbecue, bayou, chili, chipmunk, hooch, hurricane, husky, mesquite, opossum, pecan, squash, toboggan, and tomato.

Arabic numerals are the ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The term often implies a decimal number written using these digits (in particular when contrasted with Roman numerals). However the term can mean the digits themselves, such as in the statement "octal numbers are written using Arabic numerals."

Arabic numerals set in Source Sans

Arabic numerals set in Source Sans

Although the Hindu–Arabic numeral system[1][2] (i.e. decimal) was developed by Indian mathematicians around AD 500,[3] quite different forms for the digits were used initially. They were modified into Arabic numerals later in North Africa. It was in the Algerian city of Bejaia that the Italian scholar Fibonacci first encountered the numerals; his work was crucial in making them known throughout Europe. European trade, books, and colonialism helped popularize the adoption of Arabic numerals around the world. The numerals have found worldwide use significantly beyond the contemporary spread of the Latin alphabet, intruding into the writing systems in regions where other variants of the Hindu–Arabic numerals had been in use, such as Chinese and Japanese writing.

The term Arabic numerals may be intended to mean the numerals used in Arabic writing, such as the Eastern Arabic numerals. The Oxford English Dictionary uses lowercase Arabic numerals to refer to Western digits, and capitalized Arabic Numerals to refer to the Eastern digits.[4]

Other alternative names are Western Arabic numerals, Western numerals, Hindu-Arabic numerals, and Unicode just uses the unadorned term digits.[5]

The Blarney Stone (Irish: Cloch na Blarnan) is a block of Carboniferous limestone[1] built into the battlements of Blarney Castle, Blarney, about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from Cork, Ireland. According to legend, kissing the stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab (great eloquence or skill at flattery). The stone was set into a tower of the castle in 1446. The castle is a popular tourist site in Ireland, attracting visitors from all over the world to kiss the stone and tour the castle and its gardens.

The Blarney Stone

The word blarney has come to mean "clever, flattering, or coaxing talk". Irish politician John O'Connor Power defined it this way: "Blarney is something more than mere flattery. It is flattery sweetened by humour and flavoured by wit. Those who mix with Irish folk have many examples of it in their everyday experience."[2] Letitia Elizabeth Landon described its contemporary meaning in an article entitled 'Blarney Castle' in 1832.