Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words. It tells us when words entered a language, where they came from and how they have changed over time. Basically etymology explains what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

Let's take a look at the word teach and its etymology:

Abbreviations used:

O.E. = Old English, the English language as written and spoken c.450-c.1100.

P.Gmc. = Proto-Germanic, hypothetical prehistoric ancestor of all Germanic languages, including English.

O.H.G = Old High German, the ancestor of the modern literary German language, spoken in the upland regions of Germany;

German language as written and spoken from the earliest period to c.1100.

Ger. = German, West Germanic language spoken in Germany, Austria, parts of Switzerland, technically "New High German."

Goth. = Gothic, the East Germanic language of the Goths, extinct since 16c., but because of early missionary work among them we have Gothic texts 200 years earlier than those in any other Gmc. language, which are crucial to reconstructing Proto-Germanic.

PIE = Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical reconstructed ancestral language of the Indo-European family. The time scale is much debated, but the most recent date proposed for it is about 5,500 years ago.

Etymology makes use of philology and comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages of which we no longer have written records.

Languages are analyzed using the comparative method, a tecnique that helps linguists to make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found which can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family.

Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, nowadays much etymological research is done in language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.

A Lighter Look at Etymology

The word etymology with its greek ending in –ology suggests the study or science of something (just think biology, geology, phonology, etc.). Etumos in Greek means (= genuine; true). Etymology therefore is a word that stands to indicate the study of how words come about and how they evolve.

A few examples:

(from ancient Greek)

hippos = horse potamus = river hippopotamus = river horse

tele = long distance phone = voice; speak telephone = speak from far away

micro = small scope = look Microscope = looking at small things

Of course not all words are derived from ancient Greek. English words also come from French, Latin, Arabic, etc.

(from Arabic)

This term evolved from the Arabic al zahr (= dice). In Western Europe the term came to be associated with a number of games using dice, which were learned during the Crusades whilst in the Holy Land. The term eventually took on the connotation of danger because games using dice were associated with the risky business of gambling and con artists using corrupted dice.

(from medieval Italian)

This word comes from the mediaeval Italian mal (= bad) and aria (= air), describing the miasma from the swamps around Rome. This 'bad air' was believed to be the cause of the fever that often developed in those who spent time around the swamps. In fact, malaria is an infectious disease caused by the bite of an infected anopheles mosquito.