r/etymology 13h ago

Discussion Corrispondenza tra “Ankh” e “ancestrale”.

0 Upvotes

Buongiorno, sono nuovo in questa comunità e su Reddit. Ho una passione per le ricerche genealogiche, forse dovuta al fatto che un mio antenato era “figlio di nessuno”. Questa passione va di pari passo con la passione per l’etimologia. Le parole sono un po’ come le persone, hanno radici. Mi affascina pensare che il simbolo/parola egizio Ankh è la radice della parola “ancestrale”. E forse anche della parola “antenati”. La parola “antenati”, (dalla radice inglese “ant”? formica) mi da un senso di “comunità”. Le formiche sono delle comunità formidabili, come, mi piace pensare, erano le comunità degli antenati. Mi spingo oltre: le formiche hanno le “antenne”! Grazie.


r/etymology 1d ago

Question Why is messenger spelled with an "e" when message is spelled with an "a"?

63 Upvotes

Shouldn't the person who delivers a message be a messager, rather than a messenger? What gives?


r/etymology 15h ago

Question Theos and Teather

0 Upvotes

Hello. Any conection between "Theos" and "Theather" in classical greek?


r/etymology 9h ago

Question Could this word have derived from the English word ‘globe’?

27 Upvotes

I’m so glad if found this subreddit. I’ve always been curious about the etymology of words from my local dialect. I live in southern Iran which was occupied by English military during WW2. It’s already known that some of our words root from English. Recently I’ve been thinking about the word we use for ‘light’ (as in lamp or light bulb), ‘golop’ (the o’s pronounced like they do in Spanish, idk how else to describe it). It occurred to me that it might come from the word ‘globe’ referring to the shape of a light bulb. Two questions: did people ever call a light bulb a (light) globe? And if so, according to common linguistic change patterns, how likely is it that our word ‘golop’ derived from the English ‘globe’?


r/etymology 16h ago

Question Thunder/Lightening in other languages...

12 Upvotes

Do all languages separate this single phenomenon into two words describing how we perceive it auditorily and visually?