This was inspired by
Pradeep,
who mentioned the word junction
in one of his posts and got me going down a rabbit hole. And it’s another long multi-part series,
because I never learn.
Junction showed up in
1711,
a specific year, that’s how recent it was. Of course, back then it meant “act
of joining”, and it wasn’t until 1836 that it came to mean two things coming
together—in fact, it was first used that way in American English to refer to
railroad tracks, and it spread from there. The word comes from the
classical Latin iunctionem,
connection or joining,
from the verb
iungere,
to join.
The reason for the iu at the beginning is because it refers to the Y sound,
which used to be symbolized by the letter J before Italian used it to mean the
soft J sound. Then the pronunciation of the word changed to fit the spelling,
because
that makes total sense.
Iungere there comes from the
Proto Indo European root
yeug-,
to join,
which is the origin for so many words that have something to do with joining.
Injunction is pretty obvious, though interestingly it showed up in the
early fifteenth century, so before
junction. It comes from the
Late Latin iniunctionem, a
command, from the classical Latin
iniungere,
to impose.
The in- means on- and comes from the Proto Indo European root
en,
and with iungere, to join, making injunction “to join on” or more figuratively
to join together. Somehow that makes less sense than I expected, and I promise, my expectations were not high.
Also obviously related is
juncture, which showed up in the
late fourteenth century and first meant a place where two things are joined, before also meaning the
act of joining together and then a point in time (as in, “at this juncture”,
which is really confusing if you think about it). It comes from the classical
Latin
iunctura,
combination or joining,
which is of course from iungere. Makes more sense than the last ones.
Next, joint, both the part of a
body and the adjective version. It showed up in the
fourteenth century as the place where two bones meet, from the
Old French joint, which is
from the classical Latin
iunctus,
connected.
The adjuctive showed up a bit later, in the early fifteenth century meaning
united or sharing (and possibly where the slang term for pot came from). It
comes from the Old French
jointiz, which is from joint, so no huge leaps
here. Disjointed showed up in the
late sixteenth century,
first metaphorically as a synonym for incoherent and then literally separating
joints. It comes from the Old French
desjoint, from the classical Latin
disiungere,
to disengage,
a mix of dis-,
lack of or not, and
iungere. Disjointed is NOT joined together. How sensible.
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
Orbis
Latinus
