Language Of Confusion: Flats, Part I

Another multi-parter. This one should be all new words. I think. Maybe.
 
As the title suggests, we’re looking at the word flat, and the many, many words it’s related to. Some will make sense! Most won’t though. Flat itself showed up in the fourteenth century meaning stretched out—flat as in an apartment didn’t show up until 1801, from the Scottish flat, a story of a house. But that is related to the other flat, just in a kind of roundabout way. Stretched flat is from the Old Norse flatr, from the Proto Germanic flata-, from the Proto Indo European plat-, to spread. The other flat is from the Old English flett, a house or dwelling, which is from the Proto Germanic flatja-, also from plat-. So they started from the same word, diverged through different languages, then became the same word all over again.
 
Plat- is the ancestor of just so many words, flatter included. Well, probably. It showed up in the thirteenth century as flateren/flaterien, from the Old French flater, which could mean to deceive, or to caress, or to throw to the ground, and that’s thought to be from the Proto Germanic flata-. There are some theories as to how flat could have morphed into meaning flatter, like the caress thing being associated with a flat hand or to throw yourself onto the flat of the ground. Wouldn’t it be funny if flatter isn’t related at all? I mean, it’s happened before!
 
Next, flounder. Um, like the fish, not to flounder, which might not be related to the fish at all. As the noun, flounder showed up in the fourteenth century from the Anglo French floundre, from the Old North French flondre, from the Old Norse flydhra. That’s traced to the Proto Germanic flunthrjo, which is a “nasalized” version of plat-. Basically, they started saying plat- funny and named the fish after that.
 
Now we’ll look at flan, the food, really, I told you it would get weird. Flan showed up in 1846, relatively late, from the French flan, which is thought to be derived from the Frankish flado. It’s descended from the Proto Germanic flathon, flat cake, and that just has to be from plat-. So flan is a flat cake, but they dropped the T and added an N.
 
Next week: more weirdness!
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Fordham University

Language Of Confusion: Fish, Part I

Well, Alex asked, and honestly, I was probably going to look at these sooner rather than later. Might as well do it now. I’m going to stick with the most common names because there are a lot of them.

Fish

The word that started this mess comes from the Old English fisc, fish, and in spite of the C there, it’s actually pronounced the same. The verb fish actually has a slightly different origin word, as its Old English form is fiscian. I guess they liked making things confusing so they dropped the last syllable. Both words come from the Proto Germanic fiskaz, which might be from the Proto Indo European pisk-, fish, which is definitely the origin for Pisces. But I love how they’re not actually sure it’s where fish comes from.

Grouper

Unfortunately, there’s not much known about this word. It showed up in the late seventeenth century from the Portuguese garupa, but where they got it is unknown (it’s possibly South American in origin). However one thing is for certain: it’s not related to group. At all.

Flounder

Flounder showed up in the fourteenth century meaning the fish—the other definition, to flounder, showed up in the sixteenth century, and while it may be from the fish, it’s not definitely known, and obviously the fish came first. The fish comes from the Anglo French floundre, from the Old North French flondre, Old Norse flydhra, and Proto Germanic flunthrjo. That’s from the Proto Indo European plat-, the origin word for flat. A flounder is a flat fish!

Tuna

Tuna is a fairly recent word, having shown up in 1881 from the American Spanish (specifically California) tuna. That’s from the Spanish atun, tuna, which is actually taken from the Arabic tun, which is then from the classical Latin thunnus, which also means tuna. That word certainly went a long route to English. If you’re wondering what we called tuna before… it was tunny. Yeah. That word showed up in the sixteenth century, thought to be from the Middle French thon and Old Provençal ton, which is also from thunnus.

Salmon

Salmon showed up in the early thirteenth century from the Anglo French samoun, Old French salmun, and classical Latin salmonem, salmon. Which, for the record, pronounced the L. Some people think that’s from the verb salire, to jump, and other people think the word is Celtic in origin. Salmon also replaced the previous Old English word for the fish, laex, which is the origin for lox, which is also still used sometimes when referring to it.

I have to say, these were weirder than I expected. I can’t wait to see what next week brings.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University

Indiana University Bloomington