Origins of words

I'm quite into paleontology (ancient study of life). Most of the taxonomic definitions are derived from Greek. A good example is the classification of dinosaurs (ancient lizard). Dinosaurs are commonly classified by their feet. So, a Tyrannosaurus Rex (terrible lizard king) is a therapod (beast foot) and an Apatosaurus is a sauropod (lizard foot) and something like a duck billed dinosaur (Iguanodon) would be an ornithopod (bird foot).

Off the top of my head some examples are :

Afrovenator - African runner
Velociraptor - Speedy thief
Carcharodontosaurus - Shark toothed lizard
Gastrolith - Stomach stone (gastroliths were stones deliberately ingested by plant eating dinosaurs to aid digestion)
Ichthyosaur - Fish lizard (aquatic animals from the Mesozoic)

I could go on, but I'm probably boring most of you now. :(
 
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Lysander said:
I stand [partially] corrected, the first two you cited are Latin, the next three are Greek.
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No problem. Greek and Latin form the roots of most of our language today. But in certain areas of science, like paleontology, Greek is often favoured over Latin. I don't know why, but it just is.
 
Sliver said:
Greek and Latin form the roots of most of our language today.
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Indeed, I studied both for many years. Many people don't know when they are using a word from a dead language. The most surprised I've been with regard to this concept in modern usage was when I heard 'guru' being used widespread, which is a Sanskrit word for a teacher.
 
Fulax said:
In English, we often have different words for animals and for the meat we get from them - e.g. pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/mutton. This in contrast to other European languages - for example, the Dutch for pork is 'varkensvlees', which just means pig meat (varken is pig, vlees is meat). In English, the word for the animal comes from Old English, while the word for the meat comes from French. The reason for this is that for 300 years after the Norman invasion, the ruling classes (the only ones who could afford to eat meat regularly) spoke French, and the people who took care of the animals were the native English speakers.
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It is also why other old English words (We all know what they are!) which are also short and to the point are regarded to this day as vulgar and not appropriate for polite (IE Ruling class French) Society! ;)
 
Sliver said:
No problem. Greek and Latin form the roots of most of our language today. But in certain areas of science, like paleontology, Greek is often favoured over Latin. I don't know why, but it just is.
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My guess would be that it's at least partially related to the origins of those areas of knowledge being Greek. Even after Rome became dominant, Greek was still widely used as an international language and was associated with advanced education. That association lingered until recently enough (into the 19th century) to affect modern terms for some things.

As an aside, I'm not sure about Greek and Latin forming the roots of most of modern English. A lot, certainly, but I think less than half.
 
The word overclocker is derived from ancient times when men would clock their wives in the ovaries for cooking them an unsatisfactory meal.

Amidoingitright?
 
Sliver said:
No problem. Greek and Latin form the roots of most of our language today. But in certain areas of science, like paleontology, Greek is often favoured over Latin. I don't know why, but it just is.
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Most of the roots of English is Anglo-Saxon - compare how many common words are broadly similar to German. The Greek and Latin parts are confined mostly to technical terms. There's also a lot of French, but that's mostly in art and the military. The Vikings left us a lot of place names, plus a few other words. But as I said, the basic everyday stuff is evolved from Anglo-Saxon. That was the last invasion which completely displaced the indigenous population.
 
Meridian said:
Most of the roots of English is Anglo-Saxon - compare how many common words are broadly similar to German. The Greek and Latin parts are confined mostly to technical terms. There's also a lot of French, but that's mostly in art and the military. The Vikings left us a lot of place names, plus a few other words. But as I said, the basic everyday stuff is evolved from Anglo-Saxon. That was the last invasion which completely displaced the indigenous population.
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Actually, it didn't. The Normans took over the role as the ruling classes but they didn't significantly displace the indigenous population Any more than the British in India did.

(Not in the way that current waves of immigration are doing so in many parts of the country today. Today's "Invasion" is a very different thing!)

To this day, much of the "Aristocracy" and much of the large scale privately owned land is still traceable to families that have Norman ancestry. And the legacy of the Norman conquest lives on even after a thousand years as the "Us and Them" nature of the class system. (Though the influence that they can bring to bear is less significant than it once was)

(It also lives on in our legal system. In particular the way the rule of Law is routinely used to generate a revenue stream for the treasury. a concept that was introduced by the Normans )

(There are only two classes, the Rulers and the Ruled!)
 
Meridian said:
Most of the roots of English is Anglo-Saxon - compare how many common words are broadly similar to German. The Greek and Latin parts are confined mostly to technical terms. There's also a lot of French, but that's mostly in art and the military. The Vikings left us a lot of place names, plus a few other words. But as I said, the basic everyday stuff is evolved from Anglo-Saxon. That was the last invasion which completely displaced the indigenous population.
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Anglo-Frisian (Ingvaeonic) is the base for Old English, which is synonymous with Anglo-Saxon and its related group of sub-dialects. Modern English arose out of several disparate language bases..Anglo-Saxon was just one of them, however there are heavy influences from Old Norman and the d'Oil languages and Ecclesiastical Latin. The 15th Century onward saw a major shift in the English language with far greater influences from Latin and Greek.

English is not a monolithic language and neither are its antecedents and Old English (anglo-saxon) has largely been supplanted in Modern English.
 
Meridian said:
Most of the roots of English is Anglo-Saxon - compare how many common words are broadly similar to German. The Greek and Latin parts are confined mostly to technical terms. There's also a lot of French, but that's mostly in art and the military. The Vikings left us a lot of place names, plus a few other words. But as I said, the basic everyday stuff is evolved from Anglo-Saxon. That was the last invasion which completely displaced the indigenous population.
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Yeah you're right. I misspoke by saying MOST. I should have said a lot. ;)
 
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