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Lists of English words of Celtic origin; List of English words of Chinese origin; List of English words of Czech origin; List of English words of Dravidian origin (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu) List of English words of Dutch origin. List of English words of Afrikaans origin; List of South African slang words; List of place names of Dutch ...
The origin of any particular word is also known as its etymology. For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, particularly texts about the language itself, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and
The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
For many words in any language, the etymology will be uncertain, disputed, or simply unknown. In such cases, depending on the space available, an etymological dictionary will present various suggestions and perhaps make a judgement on their likelihood, and provide references to a full discussion in specialist literature.
The Online Etymology Dictionary or Etymonline, sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the origins of English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper. [1]
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately derived from the same root, generally Proto-Indo-European, as in cow and beef, both ultimately from PIE *gʷōus.
Polygenesis points to a multiple origin of human languages. According to this hypothesis, languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. [16] Modern investigation about creole languages demonstrated that with an appropriate linguistic input or pidgin, children develop a language with stable and defined grammar in one ...
Their language also contributed common words, such as how food was prepared: boil, broil, fry, roast, and stew, as well as words related to the nobility: prince, duke, marquess, viscount, baron, and their feminine equivalents. [12] Nearly 30 percent of English words (in an 80,000-word dictionary) are of French origin.