#Etymology thought I had yesterday: is the #Finnish word #kota related to the English word #cottage? Apparently the latter comes from Old Norse if you go back far enough, and it wouldn’t be surprising to find Norse borrowed it through Saami, or vice versa.
Recent searches
Search options
#etymology
8 posts6 participants0 posts today
fog – origin uncertain; Danish fog (“spray, shower, drift, storm”), related to Icelandic fok (“spray, any light thing tossed by the wind, snowdrift”), Icelandic fjúka (“to blow, drive”), from Proto-Germanic feukaną (“to whisk, blow”), from Proto-Indo-European pug- (“billow, bulge, drift”), from pew-, pow- (“to blow, drift, billow”), in which case related to German fauchen (“to hiss, spit, spray”).
![Eine Reihe Bagger im nebeligen Laternenschein auf einem Werksgelände. [Nikkor Z 24–120mm f/4.0 S auf Nikon Z5]](https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/595/477/127/730/903/original/115d69f2517321d0.jpeg "Eine Reihe Bagger im nebeligen Laternenschein auf einem Werksgelände. [Nikkor Z 24–120mm f/4.0 S auf Nikon Z5]")
Continued thread
Today in my preparation I learned/realized the name Hortense is derived from the German, „Hortensien“, and French, « Hortensia » , both of which come from the Latin, “hortus”, or “garden”, and both of which mean “hydrangea”. 
I am amazed at the root of this name’s source and I love it. #Etymology is great. Yay, #language!
The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is HABEAS CORPUS/PROHIBIT/MIDRIFF #wotd #HabeasCorpus #prohibit #midriff
So, yesterday I wrote about my working route planner for Denmark that refuses to drive on roads named after men.
This is based on work I have been doing on OpenStreetMap. I have added information for about 30-40,000 individual Danish roads (about 120-150,000 ways in OSM) linking to Wikidata topics. Afterwards I have put up a frontend to search for street names and topics.
My site is in Danish, but the idea still gets through:
https://navne.findvej.dk/
The German word for a gay man, *Schwul*, is attested since the 1840s in Berlin. It goes back to an adjective *schwül* that referred to weather and meant 'sultry, close, oppressive, muggy'. This was a kind of joke on the euphemism *warmer Bruder*, 'warm brother'. *Schwul* is cognate with Eng. *sweltering* and Sw. *sval*.
Wiktionaryschwul - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
We have quite many self-sown Aquilegias/Columbines in our garden, mostly purple. This one is a particularly beautiful colour, I think. And it really looks like a group of doves (columbae, hence the name), huddled in a circle, beak to beak.
Happy #SherlockHolmesDay! One of our earliest videos was all about Holmes – and his connections to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGJ1fdAdn5w
**The four-letter word lust**
https://blog.oup.com/2025/05/the-four-letter-word-lust/.
#Words #Etymology #English #Language #Linguistics @linguistics
OUPblog · The four-letter word lustYears ago, I wrote about our four-letter words, and the comments were, as could be expected, numerous. Incidentally, the origin of those words is nether too interesting nor (in at least one case) too complicated. Lust is not l*** or l**t, and one can speak about it, without hurting anyone’s sensibilities.
Happy #DinosaurDay! Time to dig back into our past videos, for the early history of fossil hunting and paleontology’s roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9yNwRBlKtU
Happy #FlowerDay! Here are some lovely etymological blooms to help celebrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Dpzgcm9jY
The #ConnectedAtBirth #etymology of the week is GRIFT/GRUB/CRAWL #wotd #grift #grub #crawl
"Tulip" is a failed Western attempt to say "turban" in Turkish. Such flowers were worn in your turban.
Happy #LoveATreeDay! Have an arboreal etymology to celebrate! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl-WunKwjrY
Cool #etymology: "dwarf" goes back 5000 years to a PIE word that referred to a kind of underground supernatural being. So calling a short person a dwarf is like calling them troll, goblin or elf.