Author: Simon

I am a linguist, web developer and musician. I live in Bangor in Wales and run Omniglot - the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, as well as making the Radio Omniglot Podcast.

Asunto

By Simon

A Finnish word I learnt recently is asua [ˈɑsuɑ], which means to live, reside or dwell. I could say, for example, Asun Bangorissa Walesissa (I live in Bangor in Wales).

Julkisivu loppukesästä

It comes from the Proto-Finnic *asudak, from the Proto-Uralic *ëśew- (to camp, remain), from *ëśe- (to exist, be located) [source].

Related words in Finnish include:

  • asukas = resident, inhabitant
  • asumaton = uninhabited
  • asumus = dwelling
  • asunto = home, residence, housing unit, flat, apartment
  • asuttaa = to inhabit, people, populate, settle, colonize, (re)locate

So you could say, Asukas asuu asumattomassa asunnossa (The resident lives in an uninhabited flat/apartment), but that wouldn’t make much sense.

I actually learnt the word asunto first, and when I came across asua, I guessed it meant to live or something simliar. Although Finnish vocabulary is mostly unlike any other language I know, you can find plenty of internal connections like this.

Incidentally, house in Finnish is talo [ˈtɑlo], which comes from the Proto-Finnic *taloi (farm, house). It is cognate with the Estonian talu (farm) and the Northern Sami dállu (house, farm) [source].

The word asunto [aˈsunto] also exists in Spanish and Galician. In Spanish it means matter, issue, (romantic) affair, or business, [source] while in Galician it means matter, issue or business [source].

It comes from the Latin assūmptus (received, adopted, accepted), from assūmō (I take up, receive, adopt or accept), from ad- (to) and sūmō (I take, catch, assume) [source].

Words from the same roots include assume in English, assumer (to embrace, accept, own) in French, assumere (to take on, employ, consume) in Italian, asumir (to assume, take on) in Spanish [source].

Attics

By Simon

The attic in my house is currently being converted into a usable space, so I thought I’d look into the origins of the word attic and related ones.

Attic

An attic is:

  • The space, often unfinished and with sloped walls, directly below the roof in the uppermost part of a house or other building, generally used for storage or habitation.
  • A person’s head or brain (slang)

It comes from the French attique (penthouse flat/apartment; Attic, delicate, elegant), from the Latin atticus (Attic – relating to Athenian culture or architecture), from the Ancient Greek Ἀττικός [at.ti.kós] (Attic, Athenian). Apparently the name is related to the practice of decorating the top storey of building facades in the Attic architectural style [source].

Another word for attic is loft, which used to mean air, sky or the heavens. It comes from the Middle English lofte (air, sky, loft), from the Old English loft, a version of lyft (air, atmosphere, sky), from the Proto-West-Germanic *luftu (roof, air). from the Proto-Germanic *luftuz (roof, firmament, heavens, sky, air) [source].

Words from the same roots include lift and aloft in English, lucht (air) in Dutch and Luft (air) in German.

Attics might also be known as garrets, which comes from the Middle English garett (watchtower, turret, attic), from the Old French garite (watchtower), from guarir (to protect, save, cure, heal), from the Frankish *warjan (to ward off) , from the Proto-West Germanic *warjan (to ward off, defend against), from the Proto-Germanic *warjaną (to ward off, defend against, thwart, stop) from the PIE *wer- (to heed) [source].

Words from the same roots include weir in English, weren (to hold back, keep out, defend oneself) in Dutch, wehren (to fight, defend) in German, guérir (to cure, heal) in French [source].

Are there interesting words for attics in other languages?

Moon’s Ear

By Simon

What do you call the symbol @?

at sign

I would call it at or at sign. Other names are available, and it’s used in various ways.

The oldest known appearence of @ in writing was in 1345 in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle by Constantinos Manasses. It was used as the first letter of the word Amen – @мин (@min) in the manuscript.

In Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese @ has long been used to refer to a unit of weight know as arroba, which is equal to 25 pounds. This name comes from the Arabic الربع (alrubue – quarter).

In Venitian @ was used to represent the word anfora (amphora), a unit of weight and volume equivalent to the standard amphora.

In accounting, @ means “at a rate of” or “at the price of”, for example, 5 widgets @ £5 = £25.

These days it most commonly appears in email addresses, a usage that dates back to 1971, when it was introduced by Ray Tomlinson of BBN Technologies. Online it may be omitted or replaced when listing email addresses to trip up spam programs trawling for email adresses. That’s why I give my email as feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com, or as an image. This practise is known as address munging. A better way to trip up the spam bots is apparently feedback@omniglot.com.

Some names for @ in English include: ampersat, asperand, at, atmark, at symbol, commercial at, amphora and strudel.

Ampersat comes from the phrase “and per se at”, which means “and by itself @”, and was how it was originally referred to in English.

Some interesting names for @ in other languages include:

  • Afrikaans: aapstert (monkey tail)
  • Armenian: շնիկ (shnik – puppy)
  • Belarusian: сьлімак (sʹlimak – helix, snail)
  • Chinese: 小老鼠 (xiǎo lǎoshǔ – little mouse)
  • Danish & Swedish: snabel-a (elephant’s trunk A)
  • Finnish: kissanhäntä (cat’s tail), miuku mauku (miaow-meow)
  • Greek: παπάκι (papáki – duckling)
  • Kazakh: айқұлақ (aıqulaq – moon’s ear)
  • Korean: 골뱅이 (golbaeng-i – whelk)
  • Polish: małpa (monkey, ape)
  • Welsh: malwoden (snail)

Do you know any other interesting names for this symbol?

Sources and further information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_sign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_munging

Oof! What a Hash!

By Simon

What do you call the symbol #?

I would call it a hash or hashtag, but quite a few other names are available, including number, number sign, number mark, pound sign, hash sign, hash mark, crosshatch, crunch, fence, flash, garden fence, garden gate, gate, grid, hak, hex, mesh, octothorp, oof, pig-pen, punch mark, rake, scratch, scratch mark, tic-tac-toe and unequal.

l-b ligature

It is thought that it comes from the symbol ℔, a ligature of l and b which stands for the Latin libra pondo (pound weight). Over time it became simplified until it morphed into #. The image is a stylized version of this symbol [source].

# is described as “number” in a treatise on bookkeeping from 1853. It was included the Remington Standard typewriter keyboard from about 1886, and was used in teleprinter codes. In 1968 it was included on touch-tone telephone keypads, and started to be used more extensively in the early 1980s. It was used to label groups and topics on internet relay chat (IRC) from about 1988. This lead Chris Messina, an American blogger and consultant, to propose its use to tag topics on Twitter in 2007. He became known as the inventor of the hashtag [source].

The name octothorp, which was apparently invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1968. Variants include octothorpe, octathorp and octatherp. The name combines octo- (eight) from Latin, with the English thorp (hamlet, village), as it looks like a village surrounded by eight fields. Other stories about the origins of this name are available.

Sources and further information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign
https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2017/08/octothorpe-history/
https://www.dictionary.com/e/octothorpe/

Croissants and Cereal

By Simon

What links the words croissant and cereal, apart from them often being eaten for breakfast?

Croissant

A croissant is a flaky roll or pastry in a form of a crescent. Although they’re associated with France, they’re based on the Viennese kipferl, a crescent-shaped pastry dating back to at least the 13th century. They became popular in France after August Zang, an Austrian artillery officer, set up a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1839 which sold Viennese pastries, including the kipferl. Other bakers copied this and created the croissant [source].

The word croissant comes from French, and is the present participle of the verb croître (to increase, grow), from the Old French creistre (to grow), from the Latin crēscō (I grow, from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱer- (to grow, become bigger) [source].

The word cereal comes from the same roots, via the French céréale (cereal), the Latin Cerealis (of or relating to Ceres), from Ceres (Roman goddess of agriculture), from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱer- (to grow, become bigger) [source].

Other words from the same roots include create, creature, crecent, crew, increase and sincere [source].

Sincere? That comes from the Middle French sincere (sincere), from the Latin sincerus (genuine), from the Proto-Indo-European roots *sem- (together) and *ḱer- (to grow). So you could say that being sincere involves growing together, perhaps. [source].

It doesn’t come from the Latin sine (without) and cera (wax). That is a popular folk etymology. One story is that dishonest Roman and Greek sculptors covered flaws in their work with wax. A sculpture “without wax” was therefore an honest or sincere one. Another story is that Greek sculptors made fake marble statues out of wax to offer as tribute to their Roman conquerors [source].