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Etymology
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For lovers of the origins of words and phrases, with a side of history if the occasion fits.
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Did you know pool, as in billiards, pooling money/stakes/resources, car pool, gene pool, etc. are all etymologically related to French poule, as in chicken and poultry? 🐓🐓🐓
Pool: A game similar to billiards, 1848, originally (1690s) the name of a card game played for collective stakes, from pool "collective stakes of players in a game," which is from French poule "stakes, booty, plunder," literally "hen," from Old French poille "hen, young fowl," of Latin pullus "young animal," especially "young fowl," from PIE root pau- "few, little."
The original meaning is believed to be from the Medieval French game of chicken, jeu de la poule, in which people threw things at a chicken and the player who hit it first won the game, and perhaps a collective pot of money. The notion behind the word, then, is "playing for money."
From Mark Forsyth's The Etymologicon: "The term got transferred to other things. At card games, the pot of money in the middle of the table came to be known as the poule. English gamblers picked the term up and brought it back with them in the 17th century. They changed the spelling to pool, but they still had a pool of money in the middle of the table."
The connection of "hen" and "stakes" is also present in Spanish polla and Walloon paie (I didn't take the time to research these, but just included it if anyone's interested).
By 1868 pool came to mean "combination of a number of persons, each staking a sum of money on the success of a horse in a race, a contest in a game, etc., the money to be divided among the successful bettors," thus also "collective stakes" in betting. The sense of "common reservoir of resources" is from 1917.
By the way – not to be confused with the other pool as in "small body of standing water" (swimming pool, tide pool, rock pool). The etymologies are totally different. :)
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It turns out the true etymology of ferret is a bit elusive. It's thought to be derived from Latin ferre "to bear" (ex: fertile "able to bear"), related to Greek phor "to bear." Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bher "to bear, carry" (see Greek words like euphoria "to bear wellness," metaphor "to bear across or beyond," phosphorus "light-bearer").
So in that sense, the ferret was used to hunt and bring out rabbits and rats; hence to ferret out.
Ferret is also suggested to be derived from Latin fur "thief" and furritus meaning "little thief," a likely reference to the ferret tendency to secret away small items. Furtive is of the same etymology; literally “thief-like.” From Old French via the l/r shift, we have felon, felonius, felony.
While looking up "ferret," I was amused that a group of ferrets is called a business, so essentially a business of little thieves.
I'll also leave this Bojack Horseman joke here.😆
Source: John T. Shipley's The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (1984)
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Companion is one who accompanies or associates with another.
Companion derives from Old French compagnon, from Late Latin companio. It is based on Latin com- ‘together with’ + panis ‘bread.’ Thus companion is literally ‘one who breaks bread with another.’
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2699519
Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past.
The ancient Greek word nostimon is an etymological ancestor of nostalgia. It was first used in Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus tells us: "But I desire and I long every day to go home and to look upon the day of my return." Odysseus experiences profound homesickness for Greece and longs for his “day of return” — or nostimon emar.
In the late 1600s, Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer noticed a pattern in his patients who were living far from home. Those who were obsessed with returning to their estranged locations became physically, sometimes fatally, sick. Symptoms included bouts of weeping, palpitations, insomnia, slow fever, and anorexia. To reflect this phenomena, he coined the medical term “nostalgia” in 1688, which he created by combining the Greek words nostos (homecoming) and alga (pain).
By the 19th century, nostalgia was regarded as a psychiatric disorder, namely a form of melancholia and depression.
Today, nostalgia sheds its medical connotations and expands upon its original meaning of homesickness. It is widely regarded to have taken on a more positive meaning, expanding beyond homesickness to include a sentimental longing for past people, places, events, or various objects.
