Etymology
Etymology is the study of the origin and historical development of words, including their meanings and forms. It explores the evolution of words through tracing their roots, often across different languages and time periods. By examining etymology, linguists gain insights into the connections between languages and the cultural and historical influences that have shaped them.
5 Key excerpts on "Etymology"
eBook - ePubAncient and Medieval Greek Etymology
Theory and Practice I
- Arnaud Zucker, Claire Le Feuvre, Arnaud Zucker, Claire Le Feuvre(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
...Ancient Etymology can be defined, following the ancient rhetoricians and lexicographers, as the search for the (supposed) original truth of words. Etymological or etymologizing practices reveal or motivate uses, rites, narratives, and “reflect the (semio-)logical strategies deployed by speakers to organize their lexical knowledge” (Béguelin 2002, 5). Etymology is “also an organizing instrument. Sometimes it operates on the form and sometimes on the meaning of words, grouping by form words that are associated by meaning, or grouping by their meaning words that are similar in form” (Orr 1954, 132). This is the reason why the theoretical and practical dimensions of this serious game are closely intertwined, and why both aspects are combined and considered in this book. Of course, the relationship it establishes between the words is not always genetically correct even if always culturally relevant, since it is essentially based on intuition—reflective intuition. By favoring the basic principles of phonetics, i.e. sounds (phonemes) and their evolution, modern Etymology validates relationships that are often oblivious to users: for instance, it tells us that the aorist θέσσασθαι “to pray for” and the verb ποθέω “to long for” are related, but no Greek speaker was ever aware of that. This genetic relationship cannot surface as a synchronic relationship in the consciousness of speakers. And ancient Greek Etymology is about synchronic relationships. In the Greek conception, all words imply more than they mean or echo. In a game of mirrors each word refers to others it contains, sometimes in a residual way, because each word has been conceived and formed from other pre-existing words that collectively express its meaning. We tend to view the relationship between words in a language too intellectually and in a narrow-minded way, whereas a language is anything but rigid and controlled...
eBook - ePubRootedness
The Ramifications of a Metaphor
- Christy Wampole(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...Emphasizing the accident, the error, and other deviations, Foucault nuances the meanings of various origin-related words used by Nietzsche, such as Ursprung, Entstehung, Herkunft, Abkunft, and Geburt, in order to show that descent, not origin, is the primary interest of genealogy. Etymology, often understood as the genealogical research of a word, could be recast through Foucault’s analysis not as an attempt to locate an unfindable beginning but to analyze the concatenation of a word’s lexical lives. Of most interest are the relationships between bifurcating strands. The original, primordial syllable is of little consequence. However, Foucault’s emphasis on descent rather than origin has been historically ignored by most etymologists, particularly those who see high political stakes in their search for the primeval beginning. An Etymology is a story, a Bildungsroman of the word. Because the names of things are bound to life itself (the Word of God, Adam’s engendering and naming of Eve, etc.), an Etymology could be described as the biography of a word. Nancy Struever calls etymologies “stories describing ur -events of naming,” 55 and she calls etymologists “narrators” (112). Derek Attridge poses the question: “What are etymologies if not stories? What is the model for the history of the word if not the biographical narrative?” 56 Howard Bloch has noted the tendency since the Middle Ages toward a genealogical logic applied to linguistic fields like Etymology...
eBook - ePubLanguage
Its Nature and Development
- Otto Jespersen(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Object of Etymology.What is the object of etymological science? "To determine the true signification of a word," answers one of the masters of etymological research (Walde,Lat. et. Wörterb.xi). But surely in most cases that can be achieved without the help of Etymology. We know the true sense of hundreds of words about the Etymology of which we are in complete ignorance, and we should know exactly what the wordgrogmeans, even if the tradition of its origin had been accidentally lost. Many people still believe that an account of the origin of a name throws some light on the essence of the thing it stands for; when they want to define say 'religion' or 'civilization,' they start by stating the (real or supposed) origin of the name—but surely that is superstition, though the first trainers of the name 'Etymology' (from Gr.etumon'true') must have had the same idea in their heads. Etymology tells us nothing about the things, nor even about the present meaning of a word, but only about the way in which a word has come into existence. At best, it tells us not whatistrue, but whathas beentrue.The overestimation of Etymology is largely attributable to the "conviction that there can be nothing in language that had not an intelligible purpose, that there is nothing that is now irregular that was not at first regular, nothing irrational that was not originally rational"(Max Müller)—a conviction which is still found to underlie many utterances about linguistic matters, but which readers of the present volume will have seen is erroneous in many ways. On the whole, Max Müller naïvely gives expression to what is unconsciously at the back of much that is said and believed about language; thus, when he says (L 1. 44): "I must ask you at present to take it for granted that everything in language had originally a meaning...
- Heming Yong, Jing Peng(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It has also given English lexicography the cutting edge in both theoretical and practical explorations. English lexicography boasts a history of over 1,200 years, counting approximately from the appearance of The Leiden Glossary, but it has its deep roots in the Latin language and the making of Latin glossaries and dictionaries as well as Old English and the making of Old English glossaries and wordbooks. 1.1 The origin and development of the English language – from Old English to Middle English English, which has its deepest roots in Anglo-Frisian dialects spoken by the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe from the mid-5th to the 7th centuries, was developed from Old English and spread far and wide with the gradual shaping of the sun-never-setting British empire, initially through territorial expansion and colonization, and in modern times through reinforcement and consolidation of Britain and America’s international importance in political, economic, cultural and military arenas. As a modern international language, English has reached out to different parts of the world, unprecedented and unparalleled in the scope of its use, in the areas of its penetration, in the profoundness of its impacts and in the number of speakers. Present-day English boasts 375 million speakers who use it as the first language, second to Chinese and Spanish when viewed from the number of native speakers and only next to Chinese when the number of non-native speakers is taken into account...
eBook - ePub- Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Key findings include: • Language changes over time as a result of both external and internal factors. • Through the comparative method and regular sound changes, we can determine family relationships among languages. • Areas of study include morphological change, syntactic change, semantic change, and sound change. Historical linguistics also sheds light on other subjects. When we study language change we often study older literature, early writing and spelling systems and connections between them, how languages become endangered and sometimes die or are revitalized, and we also learn a great deal about cultural practices, religious beliefs, and other aspects of human behavior that might otherwise remain buried forever. We also can also trace back in history the origins of contemporary language attitudes and prejudices. In the United States, many people consider language change to be evidence that English is somehow deteriorating. You have probably heard people say things like ‘texting is ruining the language,’ or ‘swearing denigrates language,’ and other similar pronouncements. Some feel that prescriptive rules, which first emerged in England in the seventeenth century, should be strictly adhered to in order to ‘maintain’ a language in its purest or best form, but as we can easily see by studying language change, change is not only inevitable, but contributes to the dynamic, rich, and creative nature of the language. “When people see how language is always changing, they are less likely to think that language is changing for the worse. Like, texting language demonstrates the ways that texters are actually really savvy about their language use and subtle meaning distinctions...
