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These are cases where speakers deduce an incorrect word origin. Another folk etymology is the assumption that the New York place name Fishkill (on Fishkill Creek) means a place to kill fish. In reality, -kill is from a Dutch word meaning "creek" (found also in river names such as Schuylkill, Pennsylvania and Wallkill, New Jersey).
The word's true origin is unknown, but it existed in the Middle Scots period. [32] [33] News: The word news has been claimed to be an acronym of the four cardinal directions (north, east, west, and south). However, old spellings of the word varied widely (e.g., newesse, newis, nevis, neus, newys, niewes, newis, nues, etc.).
Linguonym (from Latin: lingua / language, and Greek: ὄνομα / name), also known as glossonym (from Ancient Greek: γλῶσσα / language) or glottonym (from Attic Greek: γλῶττα / language), is a linguistic term that designates a proper name of an individual language, or a language family. The study of language names is known as ...
Reflex is the name given to a descendant word in a daughter language, descended from an earlier language. For example, Modern English heat is the reflex of the Old English hǣtu. Rarely, this word is used in reverse, and the reflex is actually the root word rather than the descendant word.
Origins of names of cities and towns in Hong Kong; Lists of North American place name etymologies; List of place names of French origin in the United States; List of place names of Spanish origin in the United States; List of place names in the United States of Native American origin; List of Chinook Jargon placenames; Sri Lankan place name ...
For many words in any language, the etymology will be uncertain, disputed, or simply unknown. In such cases, depending on the space available, an etymological dictionary will present various suggestions and perhaps make a judgement on their likelihood, and provide references to a full discussion in specialist literature .
The Online Etymology Dictionary or Etymonline, sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the origins of English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper. [1]
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately derived from the same root, generally Proto-Indo-European, as in cow and beef, both ultimately from PIE *gʷōus.