Thursday, October 19, 2023

Language Of Confusion: Not Buried

Now, as I said last week, bury is from the Proto Indo European root bhergh-, to hide or protect. But there’s also another bhergh, this one meaning high and having a bunch of completely different words descended from it.
 
The first is barrow, but not like a wheel barrow which has a totally separate origin. This one means a mound, a hill, or a grave mound, and yet, I want to emphasize, it is not at all related to the hide/protect bhergh-, or burrow or borrow. While I don’t think this is the stupidest etymology I’ve seen this year, it is definitely up there. That barrow comes from the Old English beorg, a mountain, hill, or barrow from the Proto Germanic bergaz, which is from the high bhergh-, possibly because hills are high and etymology is dumb.
 
What is related to this is burg, as in a town or a city, which showed up in 1843 in American English from borough. Borough comes from the Old English burg/burh which means a city or town. It’s from the Proto Germanic burgs, which is from bhergh-, with the thought that burgs were originally hill forts and fortified elevations before they became town names. You’d think it would be from the protect burg, but no. It’s also amusing that bourgeoisie is also from burg. It showed up in 1707 meaning the people of a French town (i.e. the French middle class), with the French bourgeois from the Old French burgeis/borjois, from borc, a town or village, from the Frankish burg, from bhergh-.
 
More on the WTF side of things is burglar. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Anglo Latin burglator/burgator. It’s from the Medieval Latin burgator, from burgare, to break open or commit burglary. It’s from the classical Latin burgus, which means a borough, fortress, or castle. I guess because that’s where burglars break into?
 
Then there’s iceberg. It showed up in 1774 meaning a glacier shaped like a hill, so you probably see where this is going. It’s related to the Dutch ijsberg, where ijs is ice and berg means mountain. And is also from bhergh-. Well, this one makes sense at least. Mostly.
 
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
Dictionary of Medieval Latin

3 comments:

  1. Words are just weird. None of that really makes any sense at all.

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  2. Yeah, iceberg makes sense. Not so much the other ones.

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  3. Iceberg making sense makes up for the rest.

    ReplyDelete

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