5 pairs of animal words with surprising connections.


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CC Images:
Weasel by Kevin Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mu...
Hog by Tiia Monto https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Hyena by Nirmal Dulal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ie...
Hungry Hungry Hippos by Dave Fischer https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Hippopotamus by Diego Delso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hi...



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Transcript:

Today in “Surprisingly Connected Etymologies”, we’re taking a look at some animal-related word origins.

An ass (as in a donkey) and an easel don’t seem all that similar at first glance, but in fact they both come from Latin asinus “ass”, its ultimate etymology unknown but perhaps, along with Greek onos “ass”, borrowed from a language from Asia Minor such as Sumerian ansu “ass”. The word ass probably came into English through a Celtic route, but easel passed through a Germanic route borrowed from Dutch ezel. The metaphor of a beast of burden as a wooden frame for holding something can also be seen in words such as sawhorse and clothes horse.

In other ungulate news, what’s the connection between buckaroos and vaccines? Cows! Buckaroo comes through Spanish vaquero “cowboy” from Latin vacca “cow”, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wak- “cow”. Vaccination was so named when Edward Jenner produced a vaccine for smallpox from the closely related cowpox.

And continuing both the ungulate and disease connections, bison and weasels are pretty different animals, but etymologically they’re probably related. Both animal names seem to come from the same root, *weis- “to flow”, also source of the word virus from Latin virus “slime, poison”, that in this case refers to the musky smell these two animals give off.

And staying in the farmyard for a minute, a hog and a hyena may not seem all that similar to you, but apparently they did to the Greeks. Hog comes through the British Celtic *hukk-, from the Celtic expressive form *sukko-, from the Proto-Indo-European root *su-, which itself may have simply been imitative of the sound of a pig. In addition to giving us words such as swine and sow, this root comes into Greek as hus “swine” also giving us the word hyena. I guess the Greeks could make a hyena out of a sow’s ear!

Finally, in the game Hungry Hungry Hippos, we see hippopotamuses with quite an appetite, and etymologically this makes sense. Hippopotamus comes ultimately from Greek, made up of the elements hippos “horse” and potamos “river”. Potamos, meaning literally “rushing water”, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *pet- “to rush, to fly”, which comes into Latin as petere “to go, seek out”, which when combined with the prefix ad- “to” produces appetere “to desire, strive for”, and after passing through French this gives us the English word appetite. That Proto-Indo-European root also comes into the Germanic branch of languages, eventually giving us the word feather, but I don’t think you’ll find any feathered hippopotamuses!

Thanks for watching! This is one in a series of occasional short videos about connected etymologies; to see more, you can also follow the Endless Knot on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.