Word origins

[MSTK]

I guess nobody else thinks that the pen/pencil thing is interesting

 

[Verbose]

Well what I meant was, is there a word in the language we call English today which was spoken in the British Isles 2000 years ago? I think that's more interesting to find than a word which was once spoken by Anglo-Saxons (since most words are Anglo-Saxon or Latin in origin, it would be MORE interesting to find one that had survived 4000 years of colonisation and language bastardisation).

If you are looking for a language with a continous history in the British Isles for 4000 years (or some such), then there is one. Welsh. Developed from the Cletic Brython spoken by the inhabitants for centuries already when the Romans arrived.
Question is if any of it passed inte the Germanic language of the Angles and Saxons who started arriving sometime after 300 AD.

 

[Verbose]

I've got this linguistic thing I like to tease British people with.
Does anybody know the origin of the words "posh" and "blighty"?

So far no one I've tried them on has had a clue.

(I'm sure someone around here knows. Otherwise I'll post what I've read about them.)

 

[MSTK]

I don't even know what those words mean...

 

[Mapache]

The word dog is actually a very interesting one because it's totally different in most languages :

German : Hund

There is english hound and german Dogge.

Romanic languages dogs derive of canis.

But definitely interesting. Dog and its equivalent translation are frequently used in daily language.

 

[Mise]

If you are looking for a language with a continous history in the British Isles for 4000 years (or some such), then there is one. Welsh. Developed from the Cletic Brython spoken by the inhabitants for centuries already when the Romans arrived.
Question is if any of it passed inte the Germanic language of the Angles and Saxons who started arriving sometime after 300 AD.

Yeah that's what I suspected The irony is, I hated being forced to learn Welsh in school because I thought it was dead Ahh well... Diolch yn fawr I guess.

Does anybody know the origin of the words "posh" and "blighty"?

One of my primary school teachers said that "posh" was an acronym for "post outward starboard home", which is where posh people stayed on ships from Britain to India and back, to avoid being in the sun. I don't believe him though

 

[Illustrious]

I've got this linguistic thing I like to tease British people with.
Does anybody know the origin of the words "posh" and "blighty"?

So far no one I've tried them on has had a clue.

(I'm sure someone around here knows. Otherwise I'll post what I've read about them.)

Posh is another of those difficult ones. The "port out, starboard home" explanation which Mise mentions is generally discredited by etymologists, not least because there is no evidence that any shipping company ever offered tickets on such a basis. Michael Quinion's recent book on folk etymology even uses it as a title - in the book, he makes the fairly sensible suggestion that any proposed etymology (pre-1950) which depends on an acronym is almost certainly false. The correct answer is: nobody knows.

Blighty, however, is very straightforward. Hindi bilayati meaning "foreign place", corrupted by the Brits. This one is testified from as far back as Hobson-Jobson in 1886, and is of a pattern with other borrow-words from India.

 

[Caranamrta]

Sanskrit must be a common anscestor.

Actually, the Sanskrit word for dog is "sva-" (said as shvah, "a" being said as in the "u" in the word "up" - English phonetics, aargh!).

 

[Verbose]

Mise an Illustrious!
I suspected there would be people here who knew.
I'm very fond of all those words that the British Empire dragged home to roost. (Shampoo, pyjama, "doolally".)

Posh is another of those difficult ones. The "port out, starboard home" explanation which Mise mentions is generally discredited by etymologists, not least because there is no evidence that any shipping company ever offered tickets on such a basis. Michael Quinion's recent book on folk etymology even uses it as a title - in the book, he makes the fairly sensible suggestion that any proposed etymology (pre-1950) which depends on an acronym is almost certainly false. The correct answer is: nobody knows.

That may be, but I'm not sure that the lack of a shipping company offering tickets in this fashion discredits the etymology. All that is necessary is that you have a group of people making the tripping on a somewhat regular basis.
That there was and from what I understand ("Plain Tales from the Raj") there were people back in the days of the Raj who used "posh" in exactly this sense. Of course it may have been around even before they started to use it and thought up this imperial etymology.

 

[ferenginar]

I have heard that prior to William the Conqueror, "anglo saxons" or "Brits", whatever they were at the time had a generic name for fruit, not separate names such as apple, pear etc.

My favourite etymology would be Testify, which comes from the Roman custom of swearing on ones testis.

 

[Illustrious]

My favourite etymology would be Testify, which comes from the Roman custom of swearing on ones testis.

Here we go again NO IT DOESN'T!!! This is without doubt a classic piece of folk etymology which gets the whole thing the wrong way round in order to paint a quaint picture*.

The more likely, but alas more prosaic, position, as set out by the professional etymologists, is as follows:

The usage of the latin word "testis" meaning "witness"** predates the usage meaning "contents of scrotum". The word got applied to the globuli because they were the "witnesses", or evidence, of someone's legal status as a man (bear in mind this was a culture where only free males had full legal status...)

* I am of course prepared to change my view if anyone can point out an authentic Roman legal document certifying this alleged practice.

**The ultimate etymology is from an old Indo-European root word meaning "three" - this gives us the idea of the witness as an impartial "third party" independent of the plaintiff and defendant.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The word dog is actually a very interesting one because it's totally different in most languages :

Albanian : qeni
Arabic: كَلب (kalb)
Basque : txakur
Bulgarian : куче (kuče)
Cherokee : gitli gili
Chinese : 狗 (gou)
Czech : pes
Finnish : koira
French : chien
German : Hund
Greek : σκύλος (skilos)
Hebrew : כֶּלֶב m (keh-lev)
Hindi : कुत्ता (kuta)
Hungarian : kutya
Indonesian : anjing
Irish (Celtic) : madra
Italian : cane
Japanese : 犬 (いぬ, inu)
Korean : 개 (gae)
Lithuanian : šuo
Maltese : dib
Polish : pies
Portuguese : cão
Russian : собака (sobaka)
Scottish : cu
Spanish : perro
Turkish : köpek
Vietnamese : chó


The only roots which seems the same is several languages is the Germanic "Hund" and the Slavic "Pes". It's also funny that on the list above the Hungarian way to name a dog looks so close the Hindi way to name it !

Well, French chien, Portuguese cão and Italian cane are all fairly obviously reflexes of Latin cane(m) (nominative (canis).

Since by Scottish is apparently meant Scots Gaelic, I'm willing to bet cu is related to Lithuanian šuo and to another Greek word for dog, namely kuon (Latinized compound form cyno- as in cynodont, cynocephal).

 

[The Last Conformist]

Romanic languages dogs derive of canis.

Didn't see this before I posted my reply to Marla.

While canis is the Latin word for "dog", the Romance words are not derived from this nominative (quotation) form, but from the accusative.

 

[kryszcztov]

@ bigfatron : According to what you say, and according to other people here, England wasn't a united nation as such at the time of William the Conqueror. I'm not well into English history, but I'm almost sure that France can be considered as older than England in any way. Remember that the Capetian dynasty ruled from 989 to 1848 (except during the Revolution and the Empire, and except the latest sub-dynasties (cousins, etc...)). 1,000 years ago we called ourselves the French, whereas you were the Brits or Anglo-Saxons...

As for the doggy affair, the French word for "canine" (the tooth) is "canine", it comes from Latin "canis" of course. Q : When was "canine" imported to England ?

 

[The Last Conformist]

England was certainly a united country before 1066 - hadn't it been, Guillaume couldn't have claimed to be the legitimate heir to its throne.

 

[joacqin]

Even so it was pretty much a mess of warring warlords. The Island had been under more or less constant invasion since the withdrawal of the Romans.

 

[The Last Conformist]

There's a difference 'tween the island and England. The later was a unified kingdom under Edward the Confessor, whose death caused a succession struggle between Harold Godwinson, Harald Hardrada and Guillaume. They weren't fighting to subdue a mess of warring chiefdoms - they were fighting for the throne of an established kingdom.

 

[Yom]

Well:
* assassin is derived from hashhishyyin - those who would imbimbe the drug and listen to the old man on the mountain to go kill others with poison.

Right word origin, wrong definition. Assassin came from the word Hashashyin, the name of a Muslim cult in Afghanistan around the 13th and 14th centuries A.D. who would kill anyone who got in their way. This is how the term Assassin came about today.

 

[insurgent]

Influenza (or: "the flu"). The name comes from the ancient belief that the disease was caused by the influence (Italian: influenza) of the stars.