![\"Arfordir\"](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/arfordir.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes when I see new words in English or other languages I can immediately break them down into their component parts and work out their roots, but other times I just accept words as whole entities without trying to work out their derivation. <\/p>\n
One such word in Welsh is arfordir<\/strong>, which I hadn’t tried to analyse before. Last weekend, however, I was explaining some Welsh words to a friend who recently moved to Cardiff and who wants to learn Welsh, so I was in the right frame of mind, and the probable etymology of that word jumped out at me – ar<\/em> (on, by) + m\u00f4r<\/em> (sea) + tir<\/em> (land), so it’s “land by the sea” or the coast. This is correct, according to the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another etymology I discovered today is the word competitor<\/strong>, which comes from the Middle French comp\u00e9titeur<\/em> (rival, competitor), from the Latin compet\u012btor<\/em> (rival, competitor, adversary, opponent; plaintiff), from con<\/em> (with) and pet\u012btor<\/em> (seeker, striver, applicant, candidate, claimant, plaintiff, suitor, wooer).<\/p>\n Pet\u012btor<\/em> comes from petere<\/em> (to make, seek, aim at, desire, beg, beseech), from the Proto-Indo-European *peth\u2082-<\/em> (to fall, fly), which is also the root of the English word petition, and the Spanish word pedir<\/em> (to ask for) [source<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes when I see new words in English or other languages I can immediately break them down into their component parts and work out their roots, but other times I just accept words as whole entities without trying to work out their derivation. One such word in Welsh is arfordir, which I hadn’t tried to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,45,64,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-proto-indo-european","category-spanish","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}