1.

Etymology is the study of history of words, their origins, and how their form
and meaning have changed over time. (By an extension, the term-"the
etymology of [a word]" means the origin of the particular word.)
2. Where is the word "etymology" derived from?
The word etymology is derived from the Greek word , etymologia, itself from
etymon, meaning "true sense" and the suffix "-logia", denoting "the study of".
3. What is "etymon"?
Etymon is also used in English to refer to the source word of a given word. For
example, Latin candidus, which means "white", is the etymon of English candid.
4. Name of Methods to study the origins of words ( 4 methods)
- Philological research - Making use of dialectological data
- The comparative method
- The study of semantic change:(Etymologists must often make hypotheses about
changes in the meaning of particular words. )
5. What's the Difference Between a Definition and an Etymology?
• A definition tells us what a word means and how it's used in our own time.
• An etymology tells us where a word came from (often, but not always, from
another language) and what it used to mean, word origin, historical development.
6. Name Tvpes of word origins( 3 types)
- Language change ( I.e., variation overtime in a language's phonological,
morphological, semantic, syntactic and other features)
- the most important of which are borrowing (i.e., the adoption of "loanwords"
from other languages);
- Word formation: such as derivation and compounding:
- Onomatopoeia and Sound symbolism, (i.e., the creation of imitative words such
as "click").
- sound change: set& sit
- semantic change: L.e., bead originally
7. List the 10 ways in which new words are created.
1. By Creating from Scratch
2. By Adoption or Borrowing
3. By Adding Prefixes and Suffixes
4. By Truncation or Clipping
5. By Fusing or Compounding Existing Words
6. By Changing the meaning of Existing Words
7. By Errors
8. By Back- Formation
9. By Imitation of Sound
10. By Transfer of Proper Nouns
8. What are the significances of studying word histories
• Understanding how words have developed can teach us a great deal about our
cultural history.
+In addition, studying the histories of familiar words can help us deduce the
meanings of unfamiliar words, thereby enriching our vocabularies.
• Finally, word stories are often both entertaining and thought provoking. In short,
words are fun.
9. From which languages does English derive from?
English derives from Old English (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon), a West
Germanic variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from many
languages.
The Old English roots may be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and
German, particularly seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun, and ten/ zehn
Some of which are borrowed from French. This led to many paired words of
French and English origin. For example, beef is related, through borrowing, to
modern French bæuf, veal to veau, pork to porc.
Although many of the words in the English lexicon come from Romance
languages, most of the common words used in English are of Germanic
origin( Words that refer to farm animals :For example, swine/ Schwein, cow/Kuh,
calf/ Kalb, and sheep/Schaf)
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they brought their Norman
language with them.
10. Describe how foreign words are assimilated to English language and
provide at least 3 examples to illustrate it.
* English has proved accommodating to words from many languages. Scientific
terminology relies heavily on words of Latin and Greek origin, but there are a great
many non-scientific examples. Spanish has contributed many words, particularly in
the southwestern United States.
• Examples : buckaroo, , rodeo, savvy, and states' names such as Colorado and
Florida. diva and prima donna from Italian.; orange, lingo, and coconut from
Portuguese; safari, sofa, and zero from Arabic ;honcho, sushi from Japanese
* Few loan words come from other languages native to the British Isles : coracle,
flannel, gull from Welsh; galore and whisky from Scottish; trousers, and Tory from
Irish; canny from Scots
11.By Creating from Scratch ( at least 3 examples): words that arrived in
an suddenly, mysteriously and inexplicable way
* Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English
language are just created from scratch, and often have little or no etymological
pedigree.
A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known
word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old
English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries.
Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly inexplicable
way (e.g. jaw, tantrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, slum, log, fuss, prod, hunch., slang,
puzzle, slouch, suf, bash, pour , etc).
12.By Adoption or Borrowing(and at least 3 examples)
• Loanwords, or borrowings, are words which are adopted into a native language
from a different source language.
English had already adopted words from an estimated 50 other languages, and the
vast majority of English words today are actually foreign borrowings of one sort or
another.
• EX: the word garbage came to English originally from Latin, but only arrived via
Old Italian, an Italian dialect and then Norman French).
* e.g. both coy and quiet come from the Latin word quietus; sordid and swarthy
both come from the Latin sordere; salary and sausage both originate with the Latin
word sal: grammar and glamour are both descended from the same Greek word
gramma; Banh mi, pho from Viet Nam.
Many English words have also been adopted by other countries.
13.By Adding Prefixes and Suffixes (3 examples): Derivation
The ability to add affixes, whether prefixes (e.g. com-, con-, de-. ex-, inter-, pre-,
pro- ,re-, sub-, un -, etc) and suffixes (e.g. -al, -ence. -er, -ment, -ness, -ship, -tion, -
ate, - ed, -ize, -able, ful, -ous, -ive, - ly, y, etc) makes English extremely flexible.
This process is a simple way to completely alter or subtly revise the meanings of
existing words, to create other parts of speech out of words (e.g. verbs from nouns,
adverbs form adjectives, etc), or to create completely new words from new roots.
An extreme example is the word incomprehensibility, which is based on the simple
root -hen- (original from Indo-European root word ghend- meaning to grasp or
seize) with no less than 5 aflixes: in- (not). com- (with), pre-(before), -ible
(capable) and- ity (being).
To make matters worse, some apparently negative forms do not even negate fthe
meanings of their roots (e.g. flammable and inflammable, habitable and
inhabitable. ravel and unravel).
• Some affix additions are surprisingly recent. Officialdom and boredom joined the
ancient word kingdom as recently as the 20th Century, and apolitical as the
negation of political appear 1952.
14.By Truncation or Clipping
Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words (exam gym, lab, bus,
van , vet, fridge, bra, wig, curio, pram, taxi, canter, phone and burger
Perhaps less obvious is the derivation of words like mob (from the Latin phrase
mobile vulgus, meaning a fickle crowd), goodbye (a shortening of God -be- with-
you) and Ihello (a shortened form of the Old English for "whole be thou").
There are many other examples where multiple words or phrases have been
contracted into single words (e.g. daisy was once a flower called day's eye; lord
originally loaf-ward; fortnight was fourteen-night).
Acronyms are another example of this technique. (e.g. USA, IMF,
OPEC,ASEAN, ... etc) remain as just a series of initial letters, some have been
formed into words (e.g. radar from radio detection and ranging); quasar from
quasi-stell ar radio source; scuba from self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus; etc).
15.By Fusing or Compounding Existing Words ( to make a new word from
this method)
English allows the formation of compound words by fusing together shorter words
(e.g, airport, séašhore, fireplace, footwear, wristwatch, landmark, flowerpot, etc),
The concatenation of words in English may even allow for different meanings
depending on the order of combination (c.g. houseboat/boathouse, basketwork!
workbasket, casebook/bookease, etc).
The root words may be run together with no separation (as in the examples above),
or they may be hyphenated (e.g. self-discipline, part-time, mother-in-law) or even
left as separate words (e.g. fire hydrant, commander in chief)
Sometimes words or phonemes are blended rather than combined whole, forming a
"portmanteau word" with two meanings packed into one word, or with a meaning
intermediate between the two constituent words (e.g. brunch, which blends
breakfast and lunch; motel: motor and hotel ; smog: smoke and fog; telethon:
telephone and marathon.
16. By Changing the Meaning of Existing Words
• The drift of word meanings over time often arises, often but not always due to
catachresis (the misuse, either deliberate or accidental, of words ).
Over half of all words adopted into English from Latin have changed their
meaning in some way over time.
For example. smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful; ; bully originally
meant darling or sweetheart: sad meant full, satiated or satisfied. , gay from merry
to homosexual (and, in some circles in more recent years, to stupid or bad).
Some words have changed their meanings many times. Nice originally meant
stupid or foolish; then including elegant,modest, sligh t, thin, shy, and dainty).
modern meaning of pleasant and agreeable in the late 18th Century.
• silly originally meant blessed or happy, and then passed through intermediate
meanings of pious, innocent, harmless,before finally ending up as foolish or stupid.
Some words have become much more specific than their original meanings. For
instance, starve originally just mean to die, but is now much more specific; girl
was once a young person of either sex: and meat originally covered all kinds of
food (as in the phrase "meat and drink").
17. By Errors
* According to the "Oxford English Dictionary". there are at least 350 words in
English dictionaries that owe their existence purely to typographical errors or other
misrenderings.
There are many more words, often in quite common use, that have arisen over time
due the original shamefast. penthouse mishearings (e.g, shamefaced from to from
pentice, sweetheart from sweetard)
• Many misused words (as opposed to newly-coined words) (e.g. alternate to mean
alternative, flaunt to mean flout, historic to mean historical,)
18 .By Back-Formation (At least 3 examples)
Some words are "back-formed ", where a new word is formed by removing an
affix.
A good example is the old word pease, which was mistakenly assumed to be a
plural, and thus led to a new "singular" word, pea., asset was back-formed from the
singular noun assets (originally from the Anglo-Norman asetz ).
A new word for a different part of speech is derived form an older form (e.g. laze
from lazy, rover, edit from editor, insert from insertion, project from projection)
beg from beggar, greed from greedy. rove from
19. By Imitation of Sounds
Words may be formed by the deliberate imitation of sounds they describe
(onomatopoeia) âm thanh.
Sometimes, the imitation may have originally occurred in a source language, and
only later borrowed into English, and by its very nature sound imitation tends to
result in similar cognates in several languages.
* Examples include boo, bow-wow, tweet, boom, tinkle, rattle, buzz, click, hiss,
bang, plop, cuckoo, quack, beep, etc, but there are many many more. Some words,
like squirm for example, are not strictly onomatopoeic but are nevertheless
imitative to some extent (e.g like a worn)
20. By Transfer of Proper Nouns
A surprising number of words have been created by the transfer of the proper
names of people, places and things into words which then become part of the
generalized vocabulary of the language.( as eponyms)
* Examples include maverick (after the American cattleman, Samuel Augustus
Maverick); saxophone (after the Belgian musical-instrument maker, Adolphe Sax);
quisling (after the pro-Nazi Norwegian leader, Vidkun Quisling); sandwich (after
the fourth Earl of Sandwich); quixotic (after the romantic. impractical hero of a
Cervantes novel);
* Many terms for political, philosophical or religious doctrines are based on the
names of their founders or chief exponents (e.g. Marxism, stoic, Platonic,
Christianity, etc).
Many scientific terms and units of measurement are named after their inventors
(e.g. ampere, angstrom, joule, watt, etc).
Increasingly, in the 20th Century, specific brand names have become generalized
descriptions (e.g. hoover, , xerox, aspirin, google, etc).