Pages

▼

Sunday, June 21, 2009

The Limits of Etymological Dictionaries

For those of you who do not find the subject absolutely fascinating (like I do), you can skip this post. Can You Trust Your (Etymological) Dictionary? The Oxford Etymologist June 10, 2009 By Anatoly Liberman Liberman discusses the difficulty often encountered in tracing origins of words, and explores two examples, the English words "boy" and "girl."
at

1 comment:

  1. UnknownAugust 25, 2009 at 5:44 PM

    ...boy, buoy, b/poyoy(mayan)=skunk,
    comes from the pie word, poyaua(N)=
    to color up, to illuminate something(like a mother, or pregnant girl).
    girl is from the pie word,
    coloa(Nauatl), which is the word,
    color(E)itself, from which the
    english words, coil/curl(E)=
    c/gurl(letra)=girl(E), cool.
    the mongolian word for pawn=
    hu(M)= h/ph/pu=po-(yaua/N), which
    has the meaning, boy/puppy, and
    here in, puppy, one sees the poo
    (pun). by the way, jan, the
    great khan genghis's flag has
    the sun/noyon(M)=nouianyo(N)=
    universal=sun=king(chess), and,
    nohoi(M)=guard dog=nouian(N)=
    everywhere=me(r)ze(M)=mastiff
    (queen/chess)=meztli(N)=leg,limb,
    moon.

    ReplyDelete