Wortherkunft
6 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- 'Sugar' travelled from India via Persia and Arabia to Europe.
Sanskrit 'śarkarā' meant gravel or grit. Along trade routes the word became Persian 'shakar', Arabic 'sukkar', medieval …
- 'The word really means …' is usually a fallacy.
The etymological fallacy: believing a word's origin fixes its true meaning. 'Decimate' meant killing every tenth Roman …
- About 4,000 Spanish words are actually Arabic.
Nearly 800 years of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula (711 to 1492) left around 4,000 words in Spanish. A tell-tale …
- How to find any word's origin in 2 minutes.
Open wiktionary.org, type the word and scroll to the 'Etymology' section. There you'll find the chain: English 'window' …
- No European country has as many names as Germany.
'Deutschland' comes from Old High German 'diutisc', 'of the people'. English says Germany after Latin Germania, French …
- Spaniards say 'God willing' every day – in Arabic.
Spanish 'ojalá' (hopefully) is a worn-down form of Arabic 'law šāʾ Allāh' or 'in šāʾ Allāh': 'if God wills'. It became …