r/etymology

It frustrates me that virtually all major European languages (that I am aware of) call the North American bison some variation of "bison", and none of them use the word for the European bison for the American ones - i.e. by referring to Bison bison as "American Bison bonasus". (Apparently Greek does, but only because "bison" originally came from Greek.) TBF, "bison" originally referred to the European bison if you go back far enough.

The English/western European colonists and scientific writers at least had an excuse to call the North American animals "bison", taking the word from ancient Greek/Latin sources, since European bison had been extinct in western Europe for centuries to millennia by that point.

But Slavic/Baltic Europe (except maybe South Slavic) have coexisted with the European bison almost continuously, for goodness's sake! I know European bison became extinct in the wild, but this was in the late 19th/early 20th century, long after knowledge of North American bison had reached eastern Europe. Couldn't they have noticed the American animals the western zoologists/writers were writing about were very similar to the local ones? Why isn't the North American bison żubr amerykański in Polish (or cognates thereof in other Slavic languages)? Why is it not Amerikos stumbras in Lithuanian?

Where has this phrase originated from?
I am really into short phrases and I have a large plethora of pretty good ones but a lot of very common ones that you have definitely heard before. I’m going to start off and Hope for The Best.
My intentions are to find the history and stories behind these phrases..
Thank you for your time!

I was thinking yesterday about a deck of “Happy Family” cards I had as a little boy. It’s a very simple game similar to “Go Fish” but played with special cards showing four members of a family, with each family comprising:

Mister Name, the Profession
Mrs Name, the Profession’s Wife
Master Name, the Profession’s Son
Miss Name, the Profession’s Daughter

As a boy, I found it very confusing that a child of the family was called “Master”. And I’m wondering now the process by which this nomenclature emerged.

Of course, “Mr” was itself originally a form of “Master” or “Meister” — but some form of that usage exists in most European languages and I believe began before modern English was a thing.

But getting back from “mister” to “master” and then applying it to the son rather than the father is a puzzle to me.

As an adult I’ve seen the play “Master Harold and the Boys” which gives the usage strong racial and class connotations in the context of South African Apartheid — in that play, the “Boys” are adult black men and “Master Harold” is what they must call their employer’s teenage son.

Are those connotations basic to the usage? Or did it originate simply as a joking compliment, as when a little boy is called “big guy”? How innocent or entangled in oppression is this term?

And, more simply, how old is it?

I posted a similar request on r/vocabulary and it concerns my needing of a "fictional" word that could've existed if old french or latin went a different path.

I'm currently writing a story and I need a word to describe: "the making of a tyrant", "the birth of a tyrant". It is specifically the wearing down of morals and gradual descent into tyranny. The character is aware they are becoming a tyrant but it is justified in mind after all they have been through.

Some suggested words were:

Tyrannogenesis
Tyrannifex
Archifex, Archogenesis
Dominum, Dominasis

It doesn't have to be specifically tyranny, it can be any word to describe a person who abuses their power. I just need the word to sound "real" enough that people think "hmm yeah I can see how this word could've existed".

Its not like we are taking a snooze there?

I was travelling in North Wales recently and noticed a mountain called 'Cnicht', it was obvious to me that this was the old English spelling of 'knight' and after some research it seems it was named after a person with that surname.

What I found odd is that the area has a lot of Welsh speakers and I doubt they would be aware of the English origins of the name. The same would go for English speakers or English visitors.

My question is: are you aware of any other English words hidden in plain sight? Possibly in non-english speaking countries but also in English speaking countries?

Originally,idiot was the most polite way to refer to a mentally slow individual,and then it turned into a slur,and then a harmless insult,the same thing happened with a moron. Just a few years ago retard was respectful,and now it's a slur,do you think it will have the same fate as idiot and moron?

One of the most interesting yet confusing etymologies I’ve seen. I just went down a rabbit hole and found many languages that have words for weasel relating to this type of stuff

Turkish gelincik, Greek νυφίτσα, Albanian nuselalë, from little bride
Romanian nevăstuică, Bulgarian невестулка from little wife/bride
Italian donnola, Galician donicela or doniña, Portuguese doninha meaning little woman
Spanish comadreja and Basque erbinude meaning little widwife
Proto-Germanic marþuz likely comes from a word meaning bride which gave us English marten, German Marder, French martre, and similar words in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, among others (I know martens aren’t weasels but similar animals not well distinguished historically)
The word in Arabic is ابن عرس literally meaning son of a wedding though the عرس can also mean bride in some contexts
Brud is Danish means bride but can also mean the least weasel
Hungarian menyét comes from meny meaning daughter-in-law in modern Hungarian, with a possessive and accusative suffix

In French belette means weasel which came from belle meaning pretty and the female -ette diminutive so still quite related

I’m sure I’m missing some please add any if you know, also the words in which they derived from might have been more general than bride or daughter in law, potentially meaning young women in general in many of those languages at the time

In general it seems a lot of languages used feminine-associated euphemisms for their word for weasel, the proto-Slavic lasica/laska meaning weasel has many descdants in Slavic languages, is believed to likely come from a word meaning affection, which also has modern descendants in Slavic languages meaning love, affection, caress, petting and similar meanings. In Irish, bláthnaid meant and still to an extent means weasel (or stoat since weasels aren’t native to Ireland) which means along the lines of little flower

I’m most intrigued by the widespread usage of words related to brides or young women since I don’t see an obvious correlation, maybe it is similar to how words for cat often became words relating to women (though often by extension, the female genitalia). Anyways cats and weasels were often grouped together in European languages, that’s why polecats are called that, from French (the pole meant hen so related to the word poultry, since polecats used to often prey of farmers’ chickens) also Latin feles where we get feline from used to be more broad and could refer to martens weasles, polecats and many of the likes from the Mustelinae family

Most of the examples I found are from European languages so it’s mostly in one region (potentially shared cultural beliefs from same origin) though Arabic and Turkish also etymologies like that, and Hungarian and Basque too despite not being indo European though that could be due to calque borrowings, Turkish also has proximity to Greek as well so could potentially also be from a calque, not as confident that Arabic is due to that as well since it’s more distant

I also find it interesting that mustelinae (weasel family) have been linguistically grouped with both cats and mice

I am genuinely curious

I’ve heard the expression “go pound sand” used as a way of telling someone to get lost or go fuck themselves, but I recently heard the much more colorful version, “go pound sand up your ass.”

Where does “go pound sand” actually come from? Is there an original literal meaning behind “pounding sand”?

And is “go pound sand up your ass” a known historical variation of the expression, or is it just a later vulgar combination of “go pound sand” and “shove it up your ass”?

I’m especially curious about when these expressions first started appearing in print or recorded speech.

In the Gascon variety of modern Occitan, the word for 'rooster' is hasan (/ˈhasã/† or /ˈhasaŋ/, depending on where in the region one is, as best I can tell) or poth /potʲ/. At least in some other modern Occitan varieties, rooster is gal; we get both gal & gau in Old Occitan texts. Catalan has gall. I thought maybe Basque would be a clue, as there are some Acquitanian words in Gascon, but modern Basque has oilar.

I think I have figured out poth: Old Occitan has pọl, obviously ultimately from Latin pollus, & related to French poule. I think final /-l/ sometimes goes to ‹th› in Gascon, though I'm not entirely sure of this.

But hasan is still a mystery to me. The best I can think of is perhaps a Germanic borrowing: cp German Hahn, Frankish *hanō. But the insertion of an /s/ is odd.

Does anyone have any better information on either of these—especially hasan—than my speculations?

† I am a little unsure of the quality of the vowel that I'm here describing as /a/. It could be /ɑ/.)

It was similar to “cooties“ but you couldn’t pass it on, and it was more derogatory.
Through grade school, and junior high in northern Indiana there was an insult that one male would do to another. It was kind of a symbol for putting a male member in another male’s ear. They would loosely close their fist so that the thumb was touching the tips of their fingers and hold it up to an unassuming person‘s ear and say “You got a gear in the ear!” They also called this a “Perch.”
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but does anybody else have experience with this when they were a kid? Thanks in advance.

I can think of phage (as in esophagus and macrophage) and vor (as in carnivore and voracious). What other roots pertain to consumption and mouth action?