Proto-Indo-European *h₂endʰ-: "to bloom" is represented almost entirely by Greek ἄνθος ánthos, but there's just enough smattering across other branches to demonstrate that it's not something the Greeks picked up after they split from the rest of IE.
anthology, chrysanthemum, Ianthe
Latin Mercury is fairly mysterious. Mercury as a god of commerce seems obviously related to merx: "merchandise, commodity", and in Faliscan and possibly Oscan votive tablets, a cognate to merx (or rather its dative mercii as expected in context) appears as a divine name: Mercui, Mirikui. But in Latin …
read moreOne neat discovery in this family is that English has words from three different compoundings of *h₃ekʷ- with *h₂énti: "opposite, near, in front" three different times: compounded in Proto-Indo-European *h₂énti-h₃kʷós goes through Latin antiquus to give antique and antic; compounded again in Late Latin as *anteocularis it goes through …
read moreI met a baby Elowen last week. After initially wondering if it was another example of -wen, I found that it was actually the singulative suffix -en on Cornish elow: "elms"—the equivalent of Welsh llwyfen: "elm", llwyf: "elms".
*h₁elmos: "wych elm (Ulmus glabra)" shows up with identical meaning …
read moreI was very excited to realize tawus and peacock were related!
albino, auburn, daub, oaf, elf, Alfred, Oberon, Elbe, Arpad, Alps
In which we go from Latin ūrō: "I burn" to English bust: "upper torso", with very little semantic or phonological similarity.
Latin ūrō: "I burn" picks up an extra b- in many inflected forms based on re-analysis of amb-ūrō, leading to Latin bustum: "place for fires".
Then semantically Latin …
read moreA Mediterranean/Caucasian substrate word approximately like *wion: "violet (flower)", was borrowed into Hellenic, Iranian, and Italic.
Greek Ionia is probably not related, since the Mycenaean shows 𐀂𐀊𐀺𐀚 i-ja-wo-ne for "Ionians" with digamma in a different position than the *wion expected for "violet" , and Egyptian 𓇌𓅱𓈖𓏭𓉻𓂝𓏛 ywnj-ꜥꜣ supports that …
read moreruby, roan, red, rowan, russet, robust, corroborate, julep, rose
Rob Roy, Rufus, Eritrea, Rousseau, Russell, Paso Robles, Rosetta Stone
While *linom: "flax" and *līnom: "flax" obviously must be connected in some way, the difference in vowel length cannot be reconciled by any regular changes.
All versions with the long vowel are plausibly attributable to derivation from Latin līnum. All the short vowel versions could theoretically be from Greek …
read moreThere's a very cool fact: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and others are all the species of plant, namely Brassica oleracea, selectively bred for different parts of the plant. (https://www.google.com/search?q=brassica+oleracea+selection)
Only recently did I realized that many …
read moreProto-Indo-European has *gʷṓws: "cow, cattle" and possible *woḱéh₂: "(female) cow".
And some other likely descendants of (the same?) Central Asian substrate words for "cattle": Sino-Tibetan *ŋwa: "cattle, ox", West Semitic *baḳar-: "cattle, ox"
cow, butter, botany, beef, vaccine
I'm in the process of expanding this family, after merging the original Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃-: "flower" with Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵʰ-: "to swell" (originally under title word a href="/word-family-budget.html"Budget/a)—and putting both under Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-: "to blow, to swell up".
In which dryad and druid are basically the same word, trust and tryst, trees and truce. Plus horse racing history.
tree, true, true, endure, druid, dryad, larch, derby, tray, tray
root, orchard, radio, radish, eradicate
bleach, blank, black, blue, beluga, flame, Baltic, pool
June's theme is linguistic influence early Iron Age Celtic. The rest of the month will focus on words that were borrowed from Gaulish into Latin (more things like the aside in today's families that the very iconic Latin word gladius being borrowed from Gaulish …
read moremother, material, Manchester, mammal
We start religion words with *dyḗwos ph₂tḗr, Old Father Shining-Sky himself.
Interestingly English "day" is not from this root, despite similarity to many IE words for "day", e.g. Latin diēs, etc. Germanic *d corresponds to Latin f (PIE *dʰ); Latin d corresponds to Germanic *t …
read moretulips and lilies from Egyptian
*ḱer(h₁)-: "to grow, to make grow, to increase" is mostly in the western IE languages; *ḱer-: "to braid, to weave, rope" is mostly in the east, with only Greek and Armenian having both forms. I would suspect the western *ḱerh₁-: "to make grow" form is a derived root …
read morethrow, dreidel, tribade, attrition, thresh, tour, turn, tournament, thread, detergent
hippopotamus, equestrian, zebra, alfalfa, Azores