25 years ago, when I wanted to know the etymology of a French word, I had to order a hard copy of an etymological dictionary in French from France.

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 13h ago

It's gotten so much easier to start learning so many more languages, you used to be limited to the 3-5 major languages that a local bookstore or educational institution had decided it was worth making available, and now you can just like, look things up in hundreds of them

Ah, it's "Velvotigerno Magiοtigerni f(ilio) Brit(toni)" As far as I know, the Ueluo- name element is undeciphered (www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/personalname...) His father, Magyotigernos = "Great-Lord" (Mega-Tyrant?)

Alison Fisk@alisonfisk.bsky.social · yesterday

Here’s a link to the excellent Roman Inscriptions of Britain website where you can see the full Latin text and translation: romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions...

Proto-Celtic *tigernos: "lord" 😀 Famously also appears in the name "Vortigern": "Over-Lord". Modern Irish and Welsh "tiarna" and "teyrn", respectively

Alison Fisk@alisonfisk.bsky.social · yesterday

Meet Tigernos, one of Britain’s earliest named sailors! ⚓️ A Briton and Roman fleet veteran, his story is recorded on the bronze Lanchester Diploma issued by Antoninus Pius in AD 150. It grants him honourable discharge from the Classis Germanica and Roman citizenship. #EpigraphyTuesday #Archaeology

There are so many! elements that come from Greek words with unknown or disputed etymologies! λίθος, Μάγνης, Τιτάν, νίκη, σελήνη, βρῶμος, κρύπτω, Νιόβη, Κάδμος, ἴον, Εὐρώπα, Θούλη, Τάνταλος, οὐρανός

Word Family Friday@wordfamilyfriday.bsky.social · 3d ago

I'm working on my element etymologies. "What, no zirconium? I thought I had zirconium—it should go right here. Oh, it's arsenic that I had there. Well, zirconium goes there too!" "gold", "chlorine", "arsenic", and "zirconium" are all the same PIE root. The ǵʰelements 😄

Gotta go fast! *ḱers- → rush, hurry, car, charge, horse, parkour, cursory

I thought I had posted about this, but it turns out I had just posted it to my D&D group. barley ← barley-like barn ← barley-house

dgplacenames (now in Orkney)@dgplacenames.bsky.social · 3d ago

It being a Lammas night, I was reading Burns' Corn Rigs and realised I didn't know where the -ley in barley comes from. Turns out the Old English for barley is bærlīċ 'barley-like'. Are there other examples of x-like becoming the word for x?

I'm working on my element etymologies. "What, no zirconium? I thought I had zirconium—it should go right here. Oh, it's arsenic that I had there. Well, zirconium goes there too!" "gold", "chlorine", "arsenic", and "zirconium" are all the same PIE root. The ǵʰelements 😄

"Arabia" and "Europe" might both be somebody's "west", from the same root as "Maghreb". A word family.

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Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 5d ago

Find the 5 words from your birth year that perfectly describe YOUR vibe ⬇️ www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/

people who read Coptic, anybody know what this word is?

"Arabia" and "Europe" might both be somebody's "west", from the same root as "Maghreb". A word family.

BTW, he never did go to college as a student in Minnesota or anywhere else, but he later taught animation at CalArts to people like John Lasseter, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, etc. Which is why the captain in WALL-E is named after him

I guess if I'm approximating Sanskrit as a parent of Prakrits, I might as well approximate Mycenaean as a parent of Classical Greek, and Old Church Slavonic as a parent of Bulgarian? I dunno ... thoughts?

100 years ago, the closest thing any of my grandparents had to a job was "autistic high school troublemaker". I can totally do that! My grandfather was given his high school diploma under the condition he never try to go to college in the state (MN).

Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 7d ago

Enough “what would you do on the commune questions” If you got sent back 100 years and were given your grandparent’s job, what are you doing?

My current audiobook when I have to drive is Newitz’s _Four Lost Cities: A Sevret History of the Urban Age_. Today I finished pt2: Pompeii and start pt3: Angkor Wat; and the abrupt shift from Cumae [kuː.mae] being relevant to Khmer [kʰmae] being relevant was bemusing 😄

This is the realization that made me start visualizing word families! First for myself, and then for gradually wider audiences www.aidanem.com/word-family-...

Jackson Crawford@norsebysw.bsky.social · last wk.

“Horse” & “car” are from the same word. I swear: Since *ḱ / *k regularly become *h in a Germanic language like English, “horse” is the expected outcome of Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥sós. But we also borrow that word back from Gaulish (via Latin; two languages where *k > *h doesn’t happen) as “car.”

Reading the minutes of Unicode Consortium meetings from years ago and yelling at them

It's Shark Week, but also any week is a good week to think about the mystery of the word "shark"

Word Family Friday@wordfamilyfriday.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The English word "shark" was two different meanings: a predatory cartilaginous fish and a predatory scoundrel. We sometimes understand the predatory scoundrel to be by metaphor from the predatory fish, but evidence suggests these two meanings have entirely separate origins—German … and Maya?? 🧵 1/18

weirdly, "prose" and "verse" are close relatives (and "weird") verse ← Latin versus: "a furrow, a line of writing, a dance step" ← PIE *wértos: "a turning" (action/result noun) prose ← Latin prōrsa/prōsa: "straightforward, direct" ← Italic *prōworssos: "turned forward" ← PIE *wr̥ttós: "turned"

This is related to why we see so many language isolates and very small families in the early Imperial Age, which sometimes confuses people used to the way large language families have dominated the last few thousand years. (paper's conclusion is that the green line is most likely)

Damián Blasi@damianblasi.bsky.social · 2w ago

How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....

my catch phrases, apparently: circumvent bsky image compression word family graphs quenya dual etymologies k-bʰ-l/gʰ-bʰ-l word final positions/word final neutralization Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin Emily Shaw and Yves Delaporte wanderwort cloud SEA areal word same two roots

Minor Mobius@minormobius.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good news everyone! You can now evaluate your posts for your personal memes: bigrams and trigrams you repeat but which appear nowhere else. The set is evaluated for people who do share your phrases, your comemeticists b.mino.mobi/meme

“fate of Linear B” reminds me of how cool it is that many Cypriot syllabary symbols are recognizably related to Linear B, still being used in e.g. the Idalion bilingual in 388 BCE (you can see glyph relation graphs like this at lab.aidanem.com/explorer/cha...)

Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · 2w ago

tfw you’re googling “Hathaway” and “Damon” like a normal post-movie person, but your partner is googling “fate of Linear B”

Oh, and while I've got "autonomous" up, the French word for scuba is "scaphandre autonome" ("self-ruling boat-man")

Word Family Friday@wordfamilyfriday.bsky.social · 2w ago

I was looking for words I was missing in *dyew-, and found "ASMR" 😆 *h₂ew: "away from, since, again" *nem-: "distribute, give, take" (cf. "numb", "number") *me: "with, at, between" + the everpresent *dʰeh₁: "do, put" (cf. "middle") *dyew-: "bright, sky" ("divine", "Zeus", "journal") *sent-

I was looking for words I was missing in *dyew-, and found "ASMR" 😆 *h₂ew: "away from, since, again" *nem-: "distribute, give, take" (cf. "numb", "number") *me: "with, at, between" + the everpresent *dʰeh₁: "do, put" (cf. "middle") *dyew-: "bright, sky" ("divine", "Zeus", "journal") *sent-

having trouble concentrating on reading right now, so I'm doing some comfort reading. I'm reading _Celestial Matters_ by Richard Garfinkle for the 4th or 5th time over the last 30 years. I think some of you guys would like it!

"Agamemnon", "megamansion" from *meǵh₂-: "big" and *men-: "to stay"

Does anyone know _why_ Egyptian "nfr" is depicted as a heart and windpipe? Homophony?? Symbolism??

First pass 😁

dgplacenames (now in Orkney)@dgplacenames.bsky.social · 2w ago

Just learned from watching Tom Hanks' WW2 series that Molotov means hammer, making it cognate with Mjǫllnir, mill, molar etc @wordfamilyfriday.bsky.social have you posted about *melh₂ ?

In addition to all the living signifigance of Chaco Canyon, it is an archaeological site of major worldwide signifigance. On the order of sites like Çatalhöyük.

Daniel - Desert Apostate@hcexvangelical.bsky.social · 3w ago

The asshole administration is planning to remove the mining buffer around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. This is being done without tribal or expert input and the public comment time is incredibly, and cowardly short. Please comment to help try and save Chaco. www.koat.com/article/chac...

“fate of Linear B” reminds me of how cool it is that many Cypriot syllabary symbols are recognizably related to Linear B, still being used in e.g. the Idalion bilingual in 388 BCE (you can see glyph relation graphs like this at lab.aidanem.com/explorer/cha...)

Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · 2w ago

tfw you’re googling “Hathaway” and “Damon” like a normal post-movie person, but your partner is googling “fate of Linear B”