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Etymology

Etymology (/ˌɛtɪˈmɒləi/, ET-im-OL-ə-jee[1]) is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes.[2][3] It is a subfield of historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to construct a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings that a morpheme, phoneme, word, or sign has carried across time.

For other uses, see Etymology (disambiguation).

For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family.


Even though etymological research originated from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.

research. Changes in the form and meaning of the word can be traced with the aid of older texts, if such are available.

Philological

Making use of data. The form or meaning of the word might show variations between dialects, which may yield clues about its earlier history.

dialectological

The . By a systematic comparison of related languages, etymologists may often be able to detect which words derive from their common ancestor language and which were instead later borrowed from another language.

comparative method

The study of . Etymologists must often make hypotheses about changes in the meaning of particular words. Such hypotheses are tested against the general knowledge of semantic shifts. For example, the assumption of a particular change of meaning may be substantiated by showing that the same type of change has occurred in other languages as well.

semantic change

Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are:

Types of word origins[edit]

Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption of "loanwords" from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such as "click" or "grunt").


While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change, it is not readily obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning "to mark with blood").


Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word bead originally meant "prayer". It acquired its modern meaning through the practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads.

(c. 6th–5th centuries BCE)

Yaska

(c. 520–460 BCE)

Pāṇini

(6th-4th centuries BCE)

Kātyāyana

(2nd century BCE)

Patañjali

(1899–1983), Hungarian-born Romanian-Canadian linguist, etymologist

Ernest Klein

(born 1959), Indo-Europeanist, Slavist, Albanologist, lexicographer, and etymologist

Marko Snoj

(born 1937), linguist, medievalist, etymologist, poet, translator of poetry and literary critic

Anatoly Liberman

(born c. 1943)

Michael Quinion

Alfred Bammesberger. English Etymology. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984.

Philip Durkin. "Etymology", in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn. Ed. Keith Brown. Vol. 4. Oxford: Elsevier, 2006, pp. 260–7.

Philip Durkin. The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.

William B. Lockwood. An Informal Introduction to English Etymology. Montreux, London: Minerva Press, 1995.

Yakov Malkiel. Etymology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Alan S. C. Ross. Etymology, with a special reference to English. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Essential Books; London: Deutsch, 1958.

Michael Samuels. Linguistic Evolution: With Special Reference to English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Bo Svensén. "Etymology", chap. 19 of A Handbook of Lexicography: The Theory and Practice of Dictionary-Making. Cambridge/NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Walther von Wartburg. Problems and Methods in Linguistics, rev. edn. with the collaboration of Stephen Ullmann. Trans. Joyce M. H. Reid. Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

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Etymology

List of etymologies of words in 90+ languages

Online Etymology Dictionary