etymology

inquiry into and accounts of sources and development of words. In modern linguistics, a distinction is drawn between the diachronic study of language (etymology), and its synchronic study (structural analysis) (see SYNCHRONIC AND DIACHRONIC). Etymology 's concern is with the origins and changes in meaning of particular words, and also with the historical ancestry of groups or ‘families’ of languages, e.g. Indo-European, Amerindian, etc.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Etymology

the branch of linguistics that investigates the origins of words, their original structures, and their semantic relationships.

The term “etymology” was introduced more than 2,000 years ago by the classical philosophers. In the broad sense, etymology is the reconstruction of the phonetic and derivational elements of a word. In addition to demonstrating relationships between sounds and identifying identical morphemes, it accounts for the selection of morpheme combinations in specific derivational patterns. The term “etymology” is also applied to an account of the derivation of a word.

Characterized by a multiplicity of possible solutions, etymological study makes extensive use of hypothesis and seldom arrives at definitive results. Etymology is a special case of the explanatory sciences, whose constructs, unlike those of the descriptive sciences, are markedly hypothetical in nature.

The basis for etymological research is provided by comparative-historical linguistics. Consequently, etymology has proved most successful in dealing with the languages that have undergone the most extensive comparative-historical study—for example, the Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages. Cases of secondary etymological interpretation or the linking of words that do not come from the same source are called folk, or false, etymologies.

REFERENCES

Pisani, V. Etimologiia. Moscow, 1956. (Translated from Italian.)
Toporov, V. N. “O nekotorykh teoreticheskikh osnovaniiakh etimologicheskogo analiza.” Voprosy iazykoznaniia, 1960, no. 3.
Trubachev, O. N. “Zadacha etimologicheskikh issledovanii v oblasti slavianskikh iazykov.” Kratkie soobshcheniia lnstituta slavianovedeniia AN SSSR, 1961, issues 33–34.
Etymologic Edited by R. Schmitt. Darmstadt, 1977.

O. N. TRUBACHEV

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References in periodicals archive

Here again, an association with British *losc- 'burn' provides an etymology (Breeze 2003).

Ptolemy's Taexali, Caelis, Loxa and Eitis

Etymology of Urdu terms http://www.urduencyclopedia.org/ urdudictionary/Urdu Dictionary (2011)Urdu Encyclopedia.

Common Vocabulary in Urdu and Turkish Language: A Case of Historical Onomasiology

However, the Khanty verb shows an irregular palatalized stop and an irregular vowel, so it is uncertain whether it belongs in this etymology. The equation of the Saami, Komi and Hungarian verbs is phonologcially fully regular, though.

Studies in Uralic etymology III: Mari etymologies

54) are known by the requisite three people in North Yell but I felt frustrated at the lack of information about words like these, and in the case of ooster I would also question the suggested etymology.

Shetland Words: A Dictionary of the Shetland Dialect

(3.) See also, inter alia, the naming of Moses in Exodus 2:10, where Pharaoh's daughter explains: "Because I drew him out of the water." The narrator based this popular etymology, curiously attributed to an Egyptian, on the Hebrew root MSH, "draw from water," rather than on the Egyptian word mes or mesu for son (cf.

On the roots of teaching and learning

Chapter 17 is a survey of the history of European etymology, assessing the contribution of figures such as Menage, Kilian, and Skeat.

Word Origins ... and How We Know Them

He argues that the etymology of the word arsenokoites is significant for its meaning in the New Testament but that the traditional understanding is also supported by the context in which it is used.

From Russia, in hope

Words, Words, Words is especially recommended to the attention of students of etymology and as well anyone else with an interest in the humor and diversity of the world's dominant language for business, international government, science, and global culture.

Words, Words, Words

Etymology: Sodom, ancient city destroyed by God for its wickedness in Gen 19: a place notorious for vice or corruption.

Editor's note to our readers re change in policy

Each row seems to function like a definition that offers idiomatic expressions while tracing the etymology of Bik Van der Pol's own interventions.

Bik Van der Pol: Rec

Each entry begins with the entry's etymology after which is a description and, where fitting, a history of its topographical position, history and architecture and an explanation of any nickname.

Brewer's Britain & Ireland