Word Origins And How We Know Them:Etymology for Everyone by Anatoly Liberman

Author:Anatoly Liberman [Liberman, Anatoly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2005-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

• The knowledge of things around us cannot be derived from words (or names, as Plato called them), but the sidelight from etymology occasionally illuminates the past. If ship is really cognate with Latin scīpio (staff, pole), this fact confirms our notion of the most primitive sailing vessels. However, in research, the process starts at the opposite end: to arrive at a plausible etymology of ship, we must have an idea about primitive ship building. Etymology is not about the word’s “true meaning,” because any meaning acceptable to a given community is “true.” Its goal is to break through the conventional nature of the linguistic sign. When success crowns this endeavor, cuckoo emerges as an onomatopoeia, balance as “two weighing scales,” and lord as “the guardian of bread.”

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