• people (or rather legs of people) • smooth, flat surfaces • vehicles other than fixed-wing aircraft • small round objects and certain movements of your eyeballs • things that are flat, round, and six to ten centimeters in diameter • things that are very wide or typically have a handle

European place names with Proto-Indo-European *móri: "sea, body of water" (from upcoming, not-quite-finished #MerMay word family 😆)

Nice! I knew the urchin-riccio connection, but didn't know about connection of caprice to riccio

"As if learning English weren’t enough, we have to get familiar with the two little pet languages it drags around on leashes to do science for it. But Latin makes things sound more scientific and official." 😄 _What We Are Seeking_, Cameron Reed

The Armenian word for a damson (plum) is դամոն <damon>. No relation.

Apparently a couple years ago I made a chart of the crazy things that have become of *pénkʷe. I just stumbled across it cleaning up:

Proto-World?? Hard-wired sound symbolism?? 🤯 Bantu *mààmá Basque "ama" Mon-Khmer *meeʔ Old Japanese "母" <omo> Luwo "mama" Quechua "mama" Sumerian "𒂼" <AMA> Yeniseian *ʔama Na-Dené *ama Dravidian *amma Afro-Asiatic *ʔam Austronesian *əma Sino-Tibetan *mow Tai *meːᴮ Indo-European *méhₐ-

Can't focus on a family this week, just bouncing around adding words. Some words I've added: canopy/canapé needle, nerve, sinew, neuron, nematode saoirse, sage, savor

Can't focus on a family this week, just bouncing around adding words. Some words I've added: canopy/canapé needle, nerve, sinew, neuron, nematode saoirse, sage, savor

It's a great time to stop buying kindle books and move your library before azw3 is phased out on May 20!

Sir David Attenborough, 100 years today!

The most consistent divide in US politics is the Confederacy www.aidanem.com/us-president...

Aha! WorldHippoDay introduced the bug in footnote attachments. I tried to get clever and attach a footnote to all cases of the word "Philippines", rather than a specific one; which broke all future footnote attachments.

Argh! I was tracking down a problem with my html generation, and now it's claiming that "iguana" comes from Meroitic 😲

5/5, el Cinco de Mayo The consonants of Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe have done some some crazy things. Such as in the lineage of Mexican Spanish: *p-kʷ > *kʷ-kʷ > k-kʷ > ts-k > s-k There's also a fascinating possible connection to Germanic "fist" and "finger" (in 🧵) www.aidanem.com/word-family-...

Learned about the "cooties"/"ukulele" doublet from stumbling on this old skeet! Also another seeming SEA areal word

12yo laughing hysterically exploring the subtle differences in "live" vs "alive": a live bobcat ✅ the bobcat is alive ✅ the bobcat is live 😲 a live wire ✅ the wire is live ✅ the wire is alive 😲

Walpurgisnacht

Indo-Iranian *káyćas~gáyćas: "hair, curls, locks, bristle" is frustratingly close but not close enough to "hair" words from *kes- (or, slightly less so, "hair" words from ḱer-)

In "cherry", first the Latin neuter plural "ceresia" was re-interpreted as a feminine singular. Then when English borrowed it from the French descendent of that re-interpretation, the singular was re-interpreted back into a plural! (moving stuff from the old place)

A steamdeck fell out of the panniers on a biker going by. Tracked them down to the nearest coffee shop and talked to them about sign linguistics 😄

Confession: while I was asleep I was conflating Ame-no-Uzume and Amaterasu Ōkami

Dream last night: I was at my hometown library (later renovations not in evidence), and I was explaining comparative Indo-European mythology to a librarian who was sometimes also @tkingfisher.com

Nearest book, page 42, second sentence "The sign has since moved to the area of the upper chest where the fingertips of the bent mitten hands make contact." "ANIMAL", _A Historical and Etymological Dictionary of American Sign Language_, Emily Shaw and Yves Delaporte

(Hearing) people have different ways of counting on their fingers in France vs America, which is visible in the etymologies of American Sign Language's descent from Old French Sign (VLSF). ASL sometimes matches the American system, sometimes the French, and sometimes neither: #DeafHistoryMonth

And of course Greek ἔργον <érgon> doesn't just mean "work", but is formally identical to the English word "work"! érgon ← *wérgon ← *wérǵom → *werką → weorc → work

Decided I had to have the complete etymology of "les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés" PIE *h₂el-: "beyond, other" → "les": "the" Semitic *ḳ-r-j: "town, city" → "cordonniers": "shoemakers" PIE *h₁es- "to be" → "sont": "are" (suppletive with *bʰuH- and *steh₂-) 1/3

Why does Μέμνων have to be from *men-: "to stay" instead of *men-: "to think"? Agamemnon and Megamind could have been piecewise doublets 🙃

The Welsh word for "police officer" (lit. "peace-servant") contains the roots for both "sit" and "stand" 😁

Tive que fazer isso.

When I turn on audio in my car, it always defaults to playing “Aaron Burr, sir” as first alphabetically. It usually takes me just long enough to switch to what I want to play that the effect is “1776, … {unrelated audio}” Today it was “1776, … Part V: the Old Babylonian Period: 1792-1550 BCE”

Homophones "mall" and "maul" don't seem to share much meaning, but they are in fact cognate; both from Latin "malleus": "hammer".

Keanu Reeves is another celebrity most people don't realize has a Hawaiʻian name, it's Ke Anu: "The Cool". Hawaiʻian language nominative determinism? 😄 (his father is from Hawaiʻi, of mixed Hawaiʻian, European, and Chinese ancestry)

Some English words from Iranian *Hā́ps > julep, atoll *Hāwyákam > caviar *kamarāH > camera, chamber, cummerbund *kā́rah > caravan, caravanserai *xšaθríyah > chess, check (all meanings), checkers *Hásɸah, *Hástiš > alfalfa *pā́dah > giraffe, pajamas *jlaHt?- > azure, lapis lazuli *ȷ́ʰr̥Hanyam > arsenic

All words for “rose” are come from Iranian; all words for “lily” come from Egyptian 😄

The European rabbit is only native to the Iberian peninsula. "Hispānia"/"Spain" is traditionally thought to be named for them in Phoenician: ʾy špn (equivalent to Hebrew אי שפן): "hyrax island" after the animal native to the Levant that the rabbits reminded them of

In the ancient Doric calendar (including the form used in the Anitkythera Mechanism), the seventh month is the month of Ἀρτεμίσιος <Artemísios>: "Artemis's (month)"—this overlaps with our month of April. So arguably, April is the month of Artemis (II) 🙃

Story time! The star Betelgeuse gets its name from Arabic يد الجوزاء <Yad al-Jawzāʾ>: "Hand of Orion" (kind of, see below). In the 1200s this was misread as بد الجوزاء <Bad al-Jawzāʾ>, and was transliterated into Latin as "Bedalgeuze." 🧵 1/10

Pulling out and connecting weird lil details until they provide an interesting picture is more interesting than a top-level summary that's the average of what everyone has ever said

It's too bad Persian <dašt> doesn't mean "right (not left)" anymore, as it did in Middle Persian, or you could get something like <dast dašt> for "right hand". Though <dast rast> is good too.

If you need this as a sticker or a shirt or whatever, you can get it at RedBubble www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Wo...

#PrideInWords www.aidanem.com/tag/pride-in... Etymology of LGBTQ

"Celery" may seem like a very boring word, but there are some interesting stories there! We get "celery" from Greek σέλινον <sélinon>: "celery", which appears as 𐀮𐀪𐀜 <se-ri-no> in Bronze Age Greek, over 3000 years ago

Checked the database stats, and apparently I've added 50 new languages (with attested words) to my data so far this year, putting me at 599! Clearly I need to add one more. . . .

"Celery" may seem like a very boring word, but there are some interesting stories there! We get "celery" from Greek σέλινον <sélinon>: "celery", which appears as 𐀮𐀪𐀜 <se-ri-no> in Bronze Age Greek, over 3000 years ago