Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. By extension, the term "the etymology (of a word)" means the origin of the particular word.
For a language with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods of their history and when they entered the languages in question. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information to be available.
By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family.
Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, currently much etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.
Etymology is the study of history of words. Etymology or etymologies may also refer to:
Etymology is an audio source library recorded in 1995 by Skeleton Crew. It was released by Rarefaction in 1997 in the United States on audio CD and CD-ROM for Macintosh and Windows 95 PCs. The sound files (16-bit AIFF stereo, sampled at 44.1 kHz) are royalty free, and Rarefaction stated that they are free for use in "musical or multimedia project[s]".
Skeleton Crew was a United States experimental rock and jazz group formed in 1982. They originally consisted of English guitarist Fred Frith and American cellist Tom Cora, with American harpist and keyboardist Zeena Parkins joining later. Although the group disbanded in 1986, Frith and Cora collaborated again in The Netherlands in 1995 as Skeleton Crew to record Etymology.
Frith later used Cora's cello samples on Etymology in "Traffic Continues II: Gusto", an extended piece Frith composed for Ensemble Modern on their 2000 album, Traffic Continues. Cora had died in 1998, and Frith dedicated "Traffic Continues II: Gusto" to Cora.