10 Painstakingly Obvious Etymologies
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2018
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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Breakfast On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/break...
A Short History Of Bank Holidays: www.dailyedge.ie/explainer-tha...
Second On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/second
Minute On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/minute
Painstaking On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/pains...
Protestant On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/Prote...
Bobcat On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/bobca...
Badger ON Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/badge...
Secretary On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/secre...
Atone On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/atone...
Fence On Etymonline: www.etymonline.com/word/fence...
Marty Gots a Plan Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
A couple of these etymologies are in my upcoming book "The Origin of Names, Words, and Everything in Between" so if you enjoyed this video and want more silly etymologies (and far less silly ones) then why not pre-order it now! bit.ly/originofnames
Check Amazon in your part of the world to see if it's available there!
Hey, I was looking into the name of Neuschwanstein Castle, and I think you should make a video on it, it’s really interesting! Btw I’m definitely buying your book later!
funny dutch one: the saying 'its a hole different cookie' comes from our tea and coffee breaks. in which you ate one cookie and had a conversation. the saying basicly says that the story is to long for that given time(aka how long it took to drink it/the time it took to become cold. because you're only allowed to eat ONE cookie). so it basicly means it's a story for a other time
btw Name Explain you're running out of space for your patreonnames :D good job
Halleluja
comes from hebrew Halellu Ja /Ya (Ya is one of gods names) and means praise god
traffic lights in Hebrew is Ramzor and it comes from the words Remez (clue/hint) and or (light) so a colorful clue
none = not one
Nein (german, No) = Nicht ein (Not one)
"if you've been outside today" we're not that kind of audience...
I went to go and buy lunch and a new bumgun. Didn't actually see any fences though.
Read a book and get some sunshine you dehydrated noodle
Just seen this comment. I was going to say something along those lines but didn’t want to anger anyone. But I had an inkling that this might be the case.
You had an inkling I needed to get a new bumgun? That's some wild intuition, Patrick.
This comment needs more likes
The word "fifty five" is the words "fifty" and "five" put together.
I can count, all the way to schfifty-five
No shit, Sherlock
@Straight White Man And proud of it ironic, isnt it?
ooh ooh, and "fifty" is "five tens"
Really? I had no idea :o
Fortnight => fourteen nights
And there also used to be a word "sennight" meaning a week, coming from "seven-night".
In Spanish they still use that. Semana = week.
In Norwegian we also have this combination, but it is sadly not shortened or anything like that: fjortendager = fjorten dager = fourteen days.
isn't a fortnight 15 days though? maybe I am wrong, I am not correcting. I just had that impression. Come to think of it, I must have had it wrong all my life. idk how that got stuck in my head. You just changed my life
@@PortooCalia hm, dont know anything about it, but 14 nights can still mean 15 days right
Never is a contraction of not ever
"Blush" is a contraction of "blood rush"...
..."Studying" is a contraction of "student dying"
studying comes from "being studious"
While learning German, I encountered the word 'Handschuhe'
Hand = Hand
Schuhe = Shoes
Handschuhe = Gloves
So gloves are literally shoes for your hand in German!
a bra is a Busenhalter a breast holder. in older times Büstenhalter. What is a Büste? A figure of a head (like Ceasar's head or whatever). So it didn't sound naughty like Busen 😂
Same in Dutch (like nearly always seeing German and Dutch are hardly separate languages)
oh come on. German is the Queen of the obvious. Want to describe something? just make up a literate description by combining other thing os the same and there you are.
@Balu kapitány you mean the Kapitänstaschenschlüsselhalter?
alois brenner well technically it still works cause, you know, in English, girls who have big boobs are called busty. Maybe a correlation
Disease is just bad ease, as in dis-ease
desaster comes that you are under a bad star (aster - lat. star)
Ok, now you just destroyed my perspective.
Now I wonder if dis troy is a thing.
@@morianomordekhai hmm like con + struction to build something together so de construct de-build something.
Moriano Mordekhai unfortunately no, but in Latin destruere, de + struere literally means un build. Struere has the same root as structure, meaning to build
I can move on with that, thanks
"Clock" is an onomatopoeia, the sound of a bell being rung, (just like if you clock someone upside the head, you're ringing their bell.) In the middle ages, clocks were meant to be heard, not seen, so when they came out with smaller clocks that you could pull out of your pocket to look at, it became known as a "watch".
Steve Lovelace clock comes from the Welsh word cloch meaning bell
@@owenprytherchking3124 clock comes from glokken which is German and means bell like the German Glocke
@@owenprytherchking3124 Ok just read Clock can also be Celtic. But not clear.
Most likely means the same thing
That would make sense if bells made a "clock" noise and not a bong or ding noise depending on pitch for the clock to be onomatapeic if would have to be the sound of the second hand (more specifically the gears or pendulum that move the second hand) and not the bell otherwise clocks would be called dongs or bongs
Dude 1: "Hey we need to build up defense"
Dude 2: "What? We need to build up the.. fence?"
Dude 1: "Uh sure... the fence"
*Nervous sweating in ebonics*
I imagine some Jamaicans.
Ah, yes... da fence... we will build that
[Insert border fence/border wall meme here.]
Never got the American spelling why defense makes no sense
One I slammed myself in the face for was the Dutch word waarschijnlijk, which means probably. It's made up of waar (true) and schijnlijk (seemingly), thus it's seemingly true, so probably.
my personal favourite is natuurwetenschappen for science, or natural science literally "knowledge of how nature is/works" naatur(nature)weten(knowledge)schappen(state of being? 'k weet het neit een engles woord voor dat.). Dutch and german are so amazingly to the point with naming. It might be stupid, but it took me forever before I clued in, my brain just took the word at face.
@@FreeManFreeThought I know right. I love it when people learning German and Dutch are like 'what's the word for that thing you put on your hand? Like shoe for your hand? (glove)' and Dutch and German is like: Handshoe 🙃
Polish has a similar one in 'Prawdopodobnie', which means probably or likely, and it is a combination of 'Prawda', meaning truth, and 'podobnie', meaning similar.
Norwegian is similar in all examples: Sannsynlig, of sann - true and synlig - visible, seeming. [Natur] vitenskap is pretty much the same word.
Let's have a look at the final element schappen/skap. In Norwegian, it's obviously linked to creation; skapelse. Where English has creature, Norwegian has skapning. Of course, having been made, it's in a state of being, and in archaic use, skap is also used as a synonym for 'form', 'shape': "He was large of shape" - "Han var stor på skap".
...Not entirely sure where I was going with this ramble, other than perhaps to shed light on that suffix. :p And glove? Hanske, a worn down form of handsko. :)
Mogelijk
I know one: a coincidence is 2 co-incidents
I know it's not obvious, but my favourite etymology is clue. Originally a ball of wool, which in Greek myth Ariadne gave to Theseus to help him find his way out of the minotaur's labyrinth. Ariadne gave Theseus a clew... Ariadne gave Theseus a clue💡
Write at CZcams
" top 10 English Words with their origins "
by Professor Azeem
And watch the etymology of Clue.
Do subscribe for more.
What about the word mortgage?
Mort - death
Gauge - measuring device
So since a mortgage usually takes most or all of a person's working life to pay off, it's a gauge counting down to death.
Conway79 Not definite.The etymology of this word has been hotly debated by linguists.It could mean "death pledge"......property bequeathed to a heir;or it could come from the actual loan being whittled down to non existence.......not the literal death of the individual who has the loan.
Refers to life of loan😁
Conway79, I like your definition best.
Chiming in a bit late, but it literally means the life of the loan, not the life of the person getting the loan. Unless you were being funny, in which case... yes ha ha. :)
indeed you amortize a mortgage which means you kill off the paying down of the loan.
Like Newfoundland literally just new found land
peter himin lolol
Ya but it’s pronounced newfun land
I thought it was pronounced more like newfin land, almost as if it was 'new finland'.
Dogs.
How creative
I'm not a native speaker, so I have no clue whether this is something native speakers find obvious, but I find the connection between 'busy' and 'business' very fascinating. If you run a business, that means you have some busy-ness. However, I can't back it up, I'm kind of lazy to do the research. :)
I've also found this one interesting! I did look it up, and yes, they do come from the same thing. Now, 'business' does not come directly from 'busy', in _Modern_ English. Rather, it happened in _Old_ English, where you had the word 'bisig' (busy), which gained '-ness' to become 'bisigness'. Over time, 'bisig' changed to 'busy', where you see the 'y' at the end. 'Bisigness', however, retained the 'i' in the middle when it turned into 'business'. Interestingly, nowadays we do also have the word 'busyness', which just means you're in a state of being busy. So 'business' and 'busyness' formed the almost the exact same way, by adding '-ness' onto the same word. They just happened at different times in history, making the words look a little bit different, in addition to having a different meaning.
punkodie it seems that you are busy with being lazy :P
Selman Ecevit or am I lazy with being busy? :P it's an unbreakable paradox
@@Novenae_CCG it always interrest me how old english words look like their dutch counterpart. Stupid normans.
Bisig looks so much like bezig
Yeah, I'm Dutch myself, so I saw that too, haha. But it makes sense, Dutch is the closest language to English, after Frysian.
The adverb *"only"* is simply the *adjective for "one"* , *exactly* like *in French* where *"unique"* is the *adjective for "un"* or "une".
*So, to say "the one and only" is actually redundant!*
Only is also an adverb, it is literally one + -ly.
@@Konim96 that's what he said
@@ryuko4478 No. He mixed adverb and adjective.
That's only one theory.
I Danish the word enlig, is literally en-lig => one-ly. It means lonely...
Hmm. where did the exactly l- come from in English?
Breakfast in Spanish is called "Desayuno". The word for fasting is "ayunar". So it literally means "un-fast".
In Portuguese it's café da manhã, literally coffee of the morning, since most lusophone countries have light breakfasts and you would also drink a coffee in the evening (café da tarde)
I haven't even looked it up, but French is notorious for annoyingly simple etymologies. I bet there's a similar history en français
Same in French, Déjeuner; Jeûner is fasting, dé- usually means the inverse of what's following.
@@grandsome1 true, but in French from France, déjeuner is lunch and petit-déjeuner (little breakfast?) is the actual breakfast. In Switzerland however déjeuner is the actual breakfast
In Portugal, breakfast is "pequeno almoço" that means "little lunch".
Missed a great opportunity after "bank holiday" to point out "holiday" comes from "holy day," as the first holidays were religious celebrations.
Greetings from Finland. Dragon = lohikäärme, lohi + käärme = salmon + snake, painfully obvious that a dragon is a salmonsnake, isn't it?
Original spelling was louhikäärme. Louhi was evil witch and queen of Pohjola in Finnish mythology, so dragon was Louhi's snake.
SharksAttack Alright that explains it :) I still love how stupid it sounds though.
Hippopotamus is comprised of the words horse and river in Greek so a hippo is a river horse
Hippo is nilpferd in German. A horse horse of the Nile. The less common German word for hippo is flusspferd, which means river horse.
Bex Ed I've heard that "lohikäärme" comes from a Norse word which was something like "flohdraki". At any rate, the etymology certainly does not have anything to do with salmon so it's not really obvious at all.
The (ancient) greek word βοηθεώ (to help) is a combination of the words βοάω (to scream) and θείω or θέω (to run). So it means something like rushing to where someone is screaming.
Aw man was hoping it meant you'd be screaming while you ran
Phillips Le aeraaaaaaa...
Omg I'm Greek and I'm shocked right now. MY LIFE IS NOT GOING TO BE THE SAME ANYMORE. ΒΟΗΘΕΙΑ!
@@michaillazarou You're telling me the daedric prince of treachery and deceit is named "Help". Good god...
Aren't there loads of Greek words that consist of putting other words together. My name is Nikolaos, of course that one should be obvious.
In Spanish we have 2 words for umbrella: *SOMBRILLA* and *PARAGUAS*
Paraguas: If you separate the word it becomes "para-aguas" Wich literally means "water stoper" (that stops water)
Sombrilla: the suffix "illa" in spanish means small or little and sombr(a) means shadow, so it literally means "little shadow"
¡Oh my beautiful language!
Actually yes, I didn't know parasol(looks like Spanish¿Is it?) Was the equivalent of a sombrilla. I'm still learning English
Now that you mentioned umbrellas and parasols, in serbian KIŠOBRAN = KIŠA (rain) + BRAN (a shortend verson of BRANA, BRANIK, etc witch mean protector, guard, etc). So rain stopper/blocker and with parasol SUNCOBRAN = SUNCE (sun) + BRAN.
Doesn't "para" also mean "on the side"? As in "paramour" which is a lover on the side of your wife/husband.
@@kevinandreszaletaandrade4461 actually 'parasol' (or 'quitasol') exists in Spanish and it means 'sun stopper' or 'sun remover', although it isn't as commonly used as 'sombrilla'.
@@gustavselin1197 yes, 'para' can also mean on the side or contrary to, like in paradox, that comes from greek 'para-' and 'doxa' : opposite to the 'doxa' (opinion). In spanish there are some words like 'paramilitar' or 'parafarmacia' with this use of the prefix 'para'.
none = not one
Nein (german, No) = Nicht ein (Not one)
Interesting. I always wondered why in German you out a "k" in front of "ein" to make it negative. Ein + k = kein
In Portuguese, "Nenhum" (none) = "Nem" (not even) + "Um" (one). So "nenhum" would be literally "not even one". I had that insight some time ago, it's interesting how it's the same logic in English and German
In Spanish would be something like "Ninguno" = "Ni" (not even) + "Uno" (one). So "Ninguno" would be "not even one" too haha hilarious.
Alex Perez it was nihein in old high german, which means not any. Then the h strengthened to a k while ni softened to ne and disappeared making kein
Tiada = Tidak + Ada, it means nothing in Indonesia
A bank holiday in the United States is when the stock market crashes lol
*AMERICAN ECONAMY NEVER CRASHES*
A few seconds later
_the great depression_
In German we have a couple of those..
for example:
a lighter is a Feuerzeug.
Feuer = Fire / Zeug = Stuff/Thing
Feuerzeug = fire stuff
a plane is a Flugzeug.
Flug = flight
= flight stuff
toy is Spielzeug
Spiel = play
= play stuff
and my favourite:
Candy is Schleckzeug (only in Switzerland)
whcih translates to.. wait for it..
LICKING STUFF
Also Schlagzeug.
lecker schlecker
Less obvious in German the prefix _ge_ indicates many: Gebeine (skeleton= lots of bones), Gebirge (lots of mountains), Gemenge, Gemetzle, Gerinnung...
I also was stunned when I discovered that every German speaking country has its own diminuitive (Häuschen, Häus(a)l, Hüsli) whereas English does no longer have any, but used to have many.
Moreover, we do have some remains of extinct cases in dialects in particular dual case (two trees etc. doesn't require plural nor singular) and the weirdness of
einherr=>eini/herein
obherr=>obi/herunter
...
(why the Hell did the syllables swap position over time unless we're talking in dialect?)
And I really like the connection between twei, zwei, zwo and two.
edi For verbs, doesn’t the prefix Ge also make them past tense? “Ich hatte gegessen” “ich hat Geschwommen”
I am not a native German speaker (as you can probably tell by my botched use of the past-tense form of habe) but it would be cool if there was a connection between the two uses of the Ge prefix
You might be on to something. I was referring to nouns only.
In Danish (and perhaps Norwegian) the word "edderkop", meaning "spider", literally translates to "poison" + "vessel", so "vessel of poison".
Actually not in Norwegian, but it’s the same word (I’m Norwegian.) I didn’t know “Edder” meant something in danish!
That was quite fun and different! I liked it! Xxx
Rebecca Smith did you just repeat this
Yeah
That was quite fun and different! I liked it! Xxx
A good video as always. One mistake, though. Minutes and seconds were not originally smaller segments of time, as in an hour, but rather smaller divisions of lines of latitude and longitude. The “minutes” and “seconds” etymology is correct, however. These were added to clocks later when they became more accurate and could be used for navigation.
Please keep these videos coming.
I still don't get why whenever there are four counters in a timestamp (ex. 00:00:01;24), people call it milliseconds (1/1000 of a second) even though the counter can barely reach 59 without skipping a number.
It wasn't until I was 22 that I realized that the afternoon was after noon.
In Scotland the forenoon comes after the mornin' and before the afternoon !
In Turkish, shoe is Ayakkabı which is literally Ayak(Feet) Kap(Case)
In german gloves is "handschuhe" which is literally hand (hand) schuhe ( shoes) handshoes. merhaba
Goodbye in spanish is "Adiós" which means "a Dios"="to God"
There is a joke that in French, you say, "Au Revoir" to the people you wish to see again ("revoir") and "Adieu" to people you don't wish to see again until the afterlife.
In Irish, hello is Dia dhuit, god be with you. The responses are then god and mary be with you, followed by god and mary and patrick be with you. Dia is muire duit, dia is muire is pádraig :)
In Czech we say Sbohem ( S = with and Bohem is sixth case of bůh which is the god). So we say with God basically.
"Goodbye" is heavily truncated form of "God be with you" "Farewell" is literally asking someone to fare(do) well.
Same in Portuguese, Adeus means "to God"
There's a word for window in my german dialect, which is very close to the english word, but the etymology is just obvious here: "windogen" (spelled like window + genn), wind-ogen actuallly means wind-eyes...
Oh!
Was für ein Dialekt ist das? Hab das Wort so noch nie gehört...
@@malte1984 Plattdeutsch, ist aber nur eins von mehreren Wörtern für Fenster, wird meistens nur bei runden verwendet.
Welches Platt also aus welcher Region? Ich komme aus Friesland und hab das echt noch nie gehört.
So windows=windeyes?
A "movie" is called a movie because the pictures move.
Fun fact, "breakfast" isn't a name for a "thing", it's a verb. Other languages use it as such. In German you can totally say "Wir frühstücken am Morgen" which means "We're breakfasting in the morning."
The other common contraction of words we use is "Goodbye", which is short for "God be with you"... or in middle-English "God be with ye".
It's "Wir frühstücken am Morgen." Deutsche Sprache - Schwere Sprache
Danke, ich jetzt lerne Deutsch.
Not really. It's more like a predicate "break fast", "Fasten zu brechen".
Stück means piece and früh means early.
It's like taking pieces (food) to you at an early time during the day
Yeah, love that about German. You'll find "Stück" in a number of other names for things, but the even more fun IMO is "Zeug" which basically means "gear". So you've got "Speilzeug" (Toy) or "Playing gear", Flugzeug (Plane) or "flying gear", Werkzeug (Tool) or "Working gear".
Mittagessen for "Lunch" also makes a lot of sense because it basically means "Mid day meal". And instead of "Noon" they use Mittag or "Midday". Same with the week, it's not Wednesday, it's Mitwoch, or "Midweek".
Protestant
Pro test ant
😂😂
I've met many ants and I can attest to the fact that they don't like being tested. They are very antitest.
Conway79 ANTitest
Ant, I test 🐜...
Farcas Paul the smartest ant in primary school.
Does the Ministry of Defence use fence outside their office?
Yes
they use The Fence
TheAzorg Nice
Forget about the Ministery of Defence. What about the SECRETARY OF DEFENCE. (Is that even a thing?)
The Ministry of "The Fence" XD
This was great I always do this and it made me very happy that you made this! Please make more
This was fun and different! Loved it!
A walkie-talkie is called a walkie-talkie because you can walk and talk with it.
how do Germans call a cell phone? handy
I'M WALKIE AND I'M TALKIE
Flashback to last video,
_The Northwest Territories are territories in the Northwest of Canada_
Wow, I just discovered your channel, and being passionate about languages and their history, needless to say I am over the moon. Great work, thanks a lot !
Fun fact: The Bobcat's binomial name is Lynx rufus, with lynx coming from the Proto-Indo-European for "light", and rufus meaning "red".
So
Red light ?
Yes, Bobcats are apparently hookers...
Light red
Not european. The species here is lynx lynx.
Ok. So its apparently eurasian lynx in english. Which is funny considering its the same genus in scientific nomenclature. Northamerican "bobcat" is lynx rufus. Eurasian "lynx" is lynx lynx. But its not an exception rather a very common thing in english. It doesnt follow the binomial principles of scientific nomenclature. Thats why you have cases like this which can be pretty confusing. If those 2 cat spieces are from the same genus (lynx), one is lynx rufus and the other lynx lynx, they should be either both called bobcats or lynx. But to be honest there are not many languages that actually apply the rules and principles of scientific nomenclature in their naming of animals or plants. Slovak and czech does for all I know. Are there any other?
Atone means to fix something you did wrong, not to agree. It does still come from "at one" though, since when you fix something, you often put it back into one piece.
Yessss! I teach ESL and I am definitely going to show my students this video. xoxo
Fun little bonus etymology for "secretary," the suffix "ar" is often used to mean "a collection" i.e. library="a collection of books." So from this, a secretary is not just someone you can trust with your secrets, but is literally a "collector of secrets"
Great channel! Ones of my faves!
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, MUSHROOM, MUSHROOM.
Didn't get the reference, would you please explain! :)
Snake...
czcams.com/video/EIyixC9NsLI/video.html
...spleen.
Speaking of the words 'mush' and 'room'...
Breakfast in Icelandic is Morgunmatur which translates to Morning Food. Similar things apply with the other meals like Dinner being Kvöldmatur or Night Food and Lunch being Hádegismatur or High Day Food.
P.S. #BadgerPride ;)
I just discovered this channel and I’ve only watched 25 seconds of this video and I had to hit pause and comment. This is the kind of channel I’ve been waiting for, but didn’t know I wanted and didn’t think to look up a dedicated CZcams channel about etymology. It never occurred to me that other people might be as fascinated with words and names as I am. I only watch 25 seconds, but I am hooked and I will certainly absorb the entire library because it’s far more palatable than reading a Google search..👍👍👍👍👍
Love the graphics and the content. Hope you do more and make much $$$$$$ for your efforts.
Defense comes from the Latin 'defensa' from the verb 'defendo' from 'de' ('from, away from, out of') and 'fendo' ('hit, thrust'). So it basically means to stop a hit.
Seems kind of odd to wall your garden with 'thrust' though.
It's amazing how they dropped a prefix without knowing it.
I was like HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT for the whole video. Good work!
I loved this unexpected video. Please make more of these.
i distinctly remember figuring out one day when i was a kid that newspapers are ... paper with the news on them ...
Window comes from the old norse terms for wind eye (vindr auga, contracted to vindauga), as they were auga (aka openings) in buildings where the vindr could blow through (remember, no window glass back then)
amazing video like usual!!
Loved this video: great job buddy
German has a lot of these words which are 2 combined words. Some are pretty obvious Like Schlafsack -sleep bag (sleeping bag) , Schokoladenmilch(chocolate milk) but others like Schildkröte -shield toad(turtle), Löwenzahn which means lion teeth (dandelion from French dents de lion which also means lion teeth)
Kühlschrank -cool case (fridge) are pretty weird . German is a Petry logical language that the main reason why people say that.😅 This combing system gave us also Rindfleischettiketierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz...
Dutch works with the same concept, kaaswinkelwagen - Cheese Shop Shopping cart
koelkast(same explanation as the German one) but it is not as bad as in German 😂
I like Mittwoch (hope I got that right) which means middle of the week or Wednesday
Plus Krankhaus or sick house as in hospital. Or Ratthaus for town hall ( I not actually sure what Ratt actually means might, I just think of the furry things)
@@mellonmarshall It's Rathaus and Rat means council.
And Koelkast gave Indonesian the word kulkas
Finnish and German have this in common, they're called compound words. For example, in Finnish, a match you use to light a fire is called... wait for it.... a fire stick (tuli = fire, tikku = stick).
You should have made it more clear that it's "fence" that comes from "defence" and not the other way around; "defence" coming from French "défense" (from Latin "defensa").
Ok, some obvious etymologies.
English : "hamburger"... a meal from Hamburg
French : "belle à croquer"... usually, "croquer" means "to munch" or "to crunch", so it confuses some French speakers, because it looks like it means "beautiful to crunch" (or "so beautiful you want to crunch her") but actually, here it's in the sense "to sketch", so it literally means "beautiful to sketch"... or for a more accurate translation "so beautiful you want to sketch her". Generally, French people know that second meaning of "croquer", but it's funny that a lot don't even think that it might be used in this sense in this expression.
German : Ok, actually, German is an amazing language for this. "Glühbirne" => "glowing pear"... a lightbulb; "Nacktschnecke" => "naked snail"... a slug; "Schildkröte" => "shield-toad"... a turtle
But I guess those are so obvious to German people, they don't even facepalm, they probably just go "well...yeah"
He said "the word 'fence' literally comes from taking the 'de' off 'defence'. How wonderfully silly is that?"
Can't get much clearer than just saying it.
WOOPS when I rewatched the part to make sure I didn't miss anything, I cut before he said it, for some reason.
Well, how wonderfully silly of me, missing it twice.
"wonder full"
Alarm in french, german and english comes from a l'arme meaning "to arms".
I always thought Hamburger meant a burger with ham "ham-burger".
Jeeeze.. that really was 'pains taking' but man... do I an'alf love your static-animatic flow.. Your comic timing is genius!!! That had me grinning throughout 😁.. without sounding creepy.. I'm totally obsessed!! When can I expect your next vid??
Keep doing this type of videos my friend
Soy milk is basically a milk who introduces itself in Spanish.
Soy milk.
Glorious.
in Spanish, 'to rest' is "descansar" which literally means "un - tiring" from des (un) and cansar (to get tired)
I'm a long time subscriber but this video was one of my favorites
love your videos man
*Spanish:* alarma(alarm)= al arma : to the weapon.
santiago Merchan what about alarm? Did the English take the word from the Spanish?
@@okaywhatevernevermind like the most: from french alarme
@@okaywhatevernevermind probably but Spanish took the word from Italian, that's all what I know
alois brenner it’s from french, but the french (and Spanish) word originated from Italian all’arme
@@anguswu2685 exactly
And of course from defence/fence we also get fencing.
As in the sword-based combat, not putting up fences.
Because, before it was a sport or even a specialized form dueling combat, that sort of swordsmanship was primary as a form of armed self-defence.
OlaftheFlashy Actually defence comes from the latin word defendere, which consists of de- (from, away) and fendere (push, strike). So defence simply means to push/strike away. And fencing comes from fendere as well.
2:42 in… and watching this video is like watching a person mirror my constant contemplations out loud. This is now officially my favorite CZcams channel and I can say definitively that I can empathize with.”name explain” than any other person I’ve ever met in my entire life.
Great video! Etymology is so interesting to me.
"Howdy" comes from "How do you do?"
exacly ;)
In polish you can sometimes hear "siemasz" which is short of "jak się masz" which in english is "how do you do". So I guess "howdy" literally translates to polish "siemasz" ;)
"Breakfast" in Brazilian Portuguese is "café da manhã", which means "morning coffee". :P
One of my favorites is the Romance word for "liver", like Spanish hígado, Italian fegato, French foie. It comes from the Latin word "ficatum", which was part of the phrase "iecur ficatum" which means "figged liver". This was the Roman name for the dish we now call foie gras. Over time, the part that meant 'liver' (iecur) dropped out, and through metonymy, the part that meant 'figged' (ficatum) came to mean 'liver'. It then evolved into all the Romance language words for liver. So Romance speakers are actually saying "figged' when they talk about livers.
As to why the Romans called the dish 'figged liver', the explanation I heard was that figs were the preferred food for force-feeding the ducks and geese that would yield the foie gras.
In Spanish, you don't usually say something equivalent to "I'm sorry", you say "disculpame". This is the word "disculpar" in the command form with the object being "me". If you break "disculpa" in two you get "dis-" and "culpa". "Culpa" means "fault" and "dis-" is a prefix used to negate a word, so "disculpame" could be said to mean "reverse my fault" which is why it gets translated as "forgive me".
WumbologistPhD Same in German Entschuldigung, ent- is a prefix indicating that something is undone and schuldigung comes from Schuld, meaning guilt. So it means to unguilt somebody.
There's nothing I can think of.
No thing at all.
In Finnish there's the swear word "jumalauta", which would be roughly equivalent to "goddamnit" in English. I haven't confirmed it, but I've heard claims that it's just a contraction of "Jumala auta" (lit. "God help").
Why are you so god damn wonderful to listen to at late nights?!
Cred cred!
Unveil is quite literally un-veil. Like removing the veil from a bride for example
Undermine is also a dead metaphor for mining under someone’s point like undercutting someone’s route of mining in the ground
I think you mean painfully obvious...?
THANK YOU I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS COMMENT FOR SO LONG!
Yeah, "painstakingly obvious" just makes no sense
I thought that, too.
Yep, painstaking means fastidious, careful.
Is Russian there is a world "очевидно" (obvious). It is literally means "you can see it with your own eyes". With "оче" - old Russian world for eye and "видеть" is "to see".
In slovak and czech its the same. Očividne and očividně. Except oči (eyes) is not an old slovak or czech word, its used today too. Funny side note, we have a werb derived from eyes. Oči - zočiť (suddenly spot, notice with eyes)
Same with german "augenscheinlich"
Augen + Schein + -lich
Eyes + shine (sth. appear to be) + -ly
o-CHYE-veed-no for all non russian speakers
“Name explain” you have inspired me to start a CZcams channel. I feel like my stream of conscience, which is so similar to yours. It seems is sufficient well of Contant, and I never thought to do it, but whenever I have a conversation with someone it always comes up. So I think that blurting out the videos will be quite easy but I don’t have any idea how to edit videos. Looks like I need to do some tangential resear. THANK YOU!
The one I can think of off the top of my head is the Norwegian word "sykehus" for hospital. It literally translates to "sick house."
OH MY GOD, breakfast etymology is exactly the same from spanish "desayuno"!
And the same as french's "déjeuner"
In Poland we say "płacić" which means basically "to pay". The origin comes from the past before money was in use. Back then the most common thing that people were using to trade were "płaty płótna" which were pieces of plain weave. So people were using PŁATY płótna to trade or to PŁACIĆ. Amazing video plus greetings from Poland.
Wow! “Platiti” in Montenegrin, pay is “plata” and cloth “platno”, and as always the fascinating thing about Slavic languages, even though I don’t know a single word in Polish, I’ve understood this and learned something about my own language as well.
the word fee comes from German Vieh which means cattle or animals
this was a fun video!
You have my subscription, sir!
Turnpike - to turn a pike (spear) in order to let a person through once they paid. Goodbye - slightly less obvious, but it's a contraction of "God be with ye (you)". Midnight - middle of the night. Sunday - day of the sun. In Russian, vorobey (sparrow) = vora bey (beat the thief). Vtornik (Tuesday) obviously comes from vtoroy (second). Parikmaher (Barber) = parik (wig) + maher (german for "maker") - wigmaker.
Peter, I always suspected that Russian has German borrowings: Parikmaher, Gostarbeiter, Buhalter.... but where do Spasibo and Pažalujsta come from?
That the Å in Åland is the word Å or Creek in English, as it is the Land of Creeks, even though we are just an collections of islands.
what
Å = creek, stream, river. Åland is thus the Land of creeks/streams/rivers as Karl says.
In spanish breakfast translates to "desayuno" which has an identical etimology, des- has a similiar meaning to break, and -ayuno is, like in english a time spent without eating. It amazes me how these two words sound so different yet they are so similiar.
Simply amazing video
Woolen - ‘of wool’
Leaden (heavy/dull/slow) - ‘of lead’
Linen - ‘of lines’
Linen and Lines have the same route. I facepalmed when I found this recently.
No, there’s a plant called lin, aka flax. LOL
I'm not sure how obvious this is but I may have realized what's the etymology for "dandelion". At one point I heard that in German it's called "Löwenzahn" which I think literally means "lion's tooth". Then I thought, does "dandelion" mean "lion's tooth" in French? Can any French speaker confirm that and what's the name of that flower in French?
Google translate tells me that 'tooth' means "dent" and lion's tooth would be 'dent de lion' and it can be pronounced roughly the same as "dandelion" in english. You're probably right, then. According to google translate, of course, but I don't think you're far from right.
I'm pretty sure dandelion comes from french: "dent de lion", but I'm pretty sure the name of the flower in French is "pissenlit"
The flower Daisy means in German Gänseblümchen which means Goose = Gans little flower= Blümchen
boring sex btw is called Blümchensex
In spanish thte flower is called diente de león (lion tooth)
It’s funny how as a nonnative English speaker these origins seems obvious to me.
I think that is because we use dictionary to translate and understand new words, and a lot of them are translated literally
For example “Secretary” is translated to Arabic as “Secret keeper”
I think it's mainly because English is the bagend(cul de sac= Bag ass) of Europe so naturally it picked up his voc from many cultures.
All the days of the week (so long as you are familiar with Norse and Roman mythology)
Monday - moon day
Tuesday - Tyr's day
Wednesday - Woden's day
Thursday - Thor's day
Friday - Frey's day
Saturday - Saturn's day
Sunday - sun day
I am not a native english speaker, but I have a question about the "defence" etimology. In portuguese, we say "defesa" and all portuguese dictionaries say that "defesa" comes from the latin "defensa", with a "S". That's because the letter "C" in latin had both the /k/ and/g/ sounds, not the /s/. So, I thought that the english spelling of "defence" was just a typo, because the root of the word is latin and it doesn't make sense to use a "C" with a "S" sound with a latin rooted word.
In American English they spell it with an S (because they tried to simplify British English spelling in the 18th century) but all of the other words related (fence, offence, etc) use Cs. English 'C's can be both a K and S in the Latin sense and it has to do with the way the Latin part of English clashed with the German part (English is a Germanic language, Portuguese is a Romance language).
Blame the French
Some people think "defence" comes from "fence" and therefore "defense" in American English is an aberration. However it's the opposite, "fence" comes from "defence", which comes from "defense" from French/Latin. So Americans kind of fixed the spelling without touching "fence" which should have probably be changed to "fense" (which of course now it looks weird with an S).
Trekkie 135: Isn't it "offense" in American English?
Trekkie 135: In portuguese the C has the same phonetic structure, K and S. What I meant is the same thing as Alberto: the original spelling came from latin, with a S. It has changed over time. What the video gets wrong is that it is not Defence that came from Fence, but the other way around. There is no wrong or right spelling: it has just evolved over the last centuries.
Funny portuguese fact: extension in portuguese is "extensão". To extend is "estender", with a S, not a X.
Exatamente
I hope part 2 of this term :-0
In german "Pullover" is the word for jumper or jersey. It took me 17 years to realise that "Pullover" is just the combination of "pull" and "over".
I pretty much figured most of these out as you said them, but I figured out fence/defence because it was the thumbnail. It is quite fun to think about where we get words from and if you study languages you can see where we get a lot of them from.
Like we get the name for the Rose flower from the word for the colour pink in several of the Latin languages (rosa in Spanish and rosé in french).
So, breakfast, right…
I always wondered why German words "morgen" (tomorrow) and "Morgen" (morning) so similar are. Well, they both look pretty much like their English translations between which I never such a similarity noticed had.
Also, I always wondered why are Russian words "завтра" (zavtra, tomorrow) and "завтрак" (zavtrak, breakfast) so similar. Their meanings have like nothing at common.
Fun fact side note: it was very common during school classes to hear the following dialogue (in case someone learns Russian may be interesting):
Учитель: Когда принесёшь домашнее задание?
Ученик: Завтра.
Учитель: Хватит меня завтраками кормить!
Teacher: When are you gonna bring your homework?
Student: Tomorrow.
Teacher: Stop feeding breakfasts to me!
In context of which "breakfasts" sounds like "tomorrows", so intention is to say something like "Stop saying tomorrow" but because "tomorrow" here sounds exactly like "breakfast", the verb also jokingly becomes "feeding".
But I always failed to get why is that so.
Until a year ago I've heard that the word "вчера" (vchera, yesterday) comes from the word "вечер" (vecher, evening). Which kinda makes sense, yesterday is what was going on until the last evening. That was painstakingly by itself because I never used to notice the similarity between these. At that moment I kept thinking: wait, so what about tomorrow? Wait… it's exactly the same…
"Завтра" (zavtra, tomorrow) must be coming from the word "утро" (utro, morning). Because за-втра (za-vtra, to-morrow) is what you have за-утро (za-utro, after-morning).
And breakfast is also exactly what you have after you get up in the morning, so it's за-втра-к (at-morning-thing). It's like a coincidence and not simultaneously.
And that must be also the reason why Germans call "morgen" (tomorrow) just "Morgen" (morning). Although I never even considered before that you can call a day after it's closest part to you.
Tomorrow literally means to morn, and morn is a shortening of morgen, and morgen + ing = morning. It is in around Middle English that the g in morgen softened into a w (example: bow from boga)
In Spanish mañana also means tomorrow and morning
Angus Wu and sorge became sorrow.
German and English are related :)
Yes, you're absolutely right. It's the same in English, though our spelling has changed while the German just had one be capitalized. Tomorrow (to-morrow) was a way of saying "on the morrow" or "on the following morning" (with 'morning' itself just being the occurrence of the morn, or sunrise - evening is the same with even). Today (to-day) is "on this day". This is true across several language. In Latin, hodie (today) is on/in/by this day (ho die).
The "this" has remained in other measures of time. We say this week, not toweek, and this month, not tomonth, though technically either would be "right".
Arc-en-ciel (french) means rainbow in english but word by word its: Ark-in-the-sky.
Ephraïm Boateng Rainbow in English is literally a bow shape created by rain 🤷♂️
In Dutch it's regenboog which means exactly the same as rain-bow.
Portuguese: Arco-íris
Bow Of Iris (Greek mitology)
My favorite video thus far!
In Finnish the word for world is "maailma", which is comprised from "maa" (earth, ground, soil, land) and "ilma" (air, sky).