10 Painstakingly Obvious Etymologies 

A couple of these etymologies are in my upcoming book "The Origin of Names, Words, and Everything in Between" so if you enjoyed this video and want more silly etymologies (and far less silly ones) then why not pre-order it now! bit.ly/originofnames Check Amazon in your part of the world to see if it's available there!

"if you've been outside today" we're not that kind of audience...

The word "fifty five" is the words "fifty" and "five" put together.

While learning German, I encountered the word 'Handschuhe' Hand = Hand Schuhe = Shoes Handschuhe = Gloves So gloves are literally shoes for your hand in German!

Fortnight => fourteen nights

Dude 1: "Hey we need to build up defense" Dude 2: "What? We need to build up the.. fence?" Dude 1: "Uh sure... the fence"

One I slammed myself in the face for was the Dutch word waarschijnlijk, which means probably. It's made up of waar (true) and schijnlijk (seemingly), thus it's seemingly true, so probably.

"Clock" is an onomatopoeia, the sound of a bell being rung, (just like if you clock someone upside the head, you're ringing their bell.) In the middle ages, clocks were meant to be heard, not seen, so when they came out with smaller clocks that you could pull out of your pocket to look at, it became known as a "watch".

Disease is just bad ease, as in dis-ease

I know one: a coincidence is 2 co-incidents

Like Newfoundland literally just new found land

I know it's not obvious, but my favourite etymology is clue. Originally a ball of wool, which in Greek myth Ariadne gave to Theseus to help him find his way out of the minotaur's labyrinth. Ariadne gave Theseus a clew... Ariadne gave Theseus a clue💡

What about the word mortgage? Mort - death Gauge - measuring device So since a mortgage usually takes most or all of a person's working life to pay off, it's a gauge counting down to death.

Never is a contraction of not ever "Blush" is a contraction of "blood rush"... ..."Studying" is a contraction of "student dying"

The adverb *"only"* is simply the *adjective for "one"* , *exactly* like *in French* where *"unique"* is the *adjective for "un"* or "une". *So, to say "the one and only" is actually redundant!*

Breakfast in Spanish is called "Desayuno". The word for fasting is "ayunar". So it literally means "un-fast".

none = not one Nein (german, No) = Nicht ein (Not one)

I'm not a native speaker, so I have no clue whether this is something native speakers find obvious, but I find the connection between 'busy' and 'business' very fascinating. If you run a business, that means you have some busy-ness. However, I can't back it up, I'm kind of lazy to do the research. :)

A bank holiday in the United States is when the stock market crashes lol

The (ancient) greek word βοηθεώ (to help) is a combination of the words βοάω (to scream) and θείω or θέω (to run). So it means something like rushing to where someone is screaming.

Greetings from Finland. Dragon = lohikäärme, lohi + käärme = salmon + snake, painfully obvious that a dragon is a salmonsnake, isn't it?

Missed a great opportunity after "bank holiday" to point out "holiday" comes from "holy day," as the first holidays were religious celebrations.

In German we have a couple of those.. for example: a lighter is a Feuerzeug. Feuer = Fire / Zeug = Stuff/Thing Feuerzeug = fire stuff a plane is a Flugzeug. Flug = flight = flight stuff toy is Spielzeug Spiel = play = play stuff and my favourite: Candy is Schleckzeug (only in Switzerland) whcih translates to.. wait for it.. LICKING STUFF

In Spanish we have 2 words for umbrella: *SOMBRILLA* and *PARAGUAS* Paraguas: If you separate the word it becomes "para-aguas" Wich literally means "water stoper" (that stops water) Sombrilla: the suffix "illa" in spanish means small or little and sombr(a) means shadow, so it literally means "little shadow" ¡Oh my beautiful language!

In Danish (and perhaps Norwegian) the word "edderkop", meaning "spider", literally translates to "poison" + "vessel", so "vessel of poison".

That was quite fun and different! I liked it! Xxx

Goodbye in spanish is "Adiós" which means "a Dios"="to God"

There's a word for window in my german dialect, which is very close to the english word, but the etymology is just obvious here: "windogen" (spelled like window + genn), wind-ogen actuallly means wind-eyes...

A good video as always. One mistake, though. Minutes and seconds were not originally smaller segments of time, as in an hour, but rather smaller divisions of lines of latitude and longitude. The “minutes” and “seconds” etymology is correct, however. These were added to clocks later when they became more accurate and could be used for navigation. Please keep these videos coming.

In Turkish, shoe is Ayakkabı which is literally Ayak(Feet) Kap(Case)

It wasn't until I was 22 that I realized that the afternoon was after noon.

Protestant Pro test ant

A "movie" is called a movie because the pictures move.

Fun fact, "breakfast" isn't a name for a "thing", it's a verb. Other languages use it as such. In German you can totally say "Wir frühstücken am Morgen" which means "We're breakfasting in the morning." The other common contraction of words we use is "Goodbye", which is short for "God be with you"... or in middle-English "God be with ye".

Flashback to last video, _The Northwest Territories are territories in the Northwest of Canada_

A walkie-talkie is called a walkie-talkie because you can walk and talk with it.

Does the Ministry of Defence use fence outside their office?

Fun fact: The Bobcat's binomial name is Lynx rufus, with lynx coming from the Proto-Indo-European for "light", and rufus meaning "red".

i distinctly remember figuring out one day when i was a kid that newspapers are ... paper with the news on them ...

Atone means to fix something you did wrong, not to agree. It does still come from "at one" though, since when you fix something, you often put it back into one piece.

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, MUSHROOM, MUSHROOM.

Fun little bonus etymology for "secretary," the suffix "ar" is often used to mean "a collection" i.e. library="a collection of books." So from this, a secretary is not just someone you can trust with your secrets, but is literally a "collector of secrets"

I think you mean painfully obvious...?

Window comes from the old norse terms for wind eye (vindr auga, contracted to vindauga), as they were auga (aka openings) in buildings where the vindr could blow through (remember, no window glass back then)

Breakfast in Icelandic is Morgunmatur which translates to Morning Food. Similar things apply with the other meals like Dinner being Kvöldmatur or Night Food and Lunch being Hádegismatur or High Day Food. P.S. #BadgerPride ;)

Soy milk is basically a milk who introduces itself in Spanish. Soy milk.

Defense comes from the Latin 'defensa' from the verb 'defendo' from 'de' ('from, away from, out of') and 'fendo' ('hit, thrust'). So it basically means to stop a hit.

In Spanish, you don't usually say something equivalent to "I'm sorry", you say "disculpame". This is the word "disculpar" in the command form with the object being "me". If you break "disculpa" in two you get "dis-" and "culpa". "Culpa" means "fault" and "dis-" is a prefix used to negate a word, so "disculpame" could be said to mean "reverse my fault" which is why it gets translated as "forgive me".

in Spanish, 'to rest' is "descansar" which literally means "un - tiring" from des (un) and cansar (to get tired)

I always found "engineer" hard to spell... Until I realised that, in the same way a banker works in a bank, someone who takes care of an engine is an "engine-er". The Latin root is "ingenium", which also gave "ingenious". (PS: I'm a software engineer)

German has a lot of these words which are 2 combined words. Some are pretty obvious Like Schlafsack -sleep bag (sleeping bag) , Schokoladenmilch(chocolate milk) but others like Schildkröte -shield toad(turtle), Löwenzahn which means lion teeth (dandelion from French dents de lion which also means lion teeth) Kühlschrank -cool case (fridge) are pretty weird . German is a Petry logical language that the main reason why people say that.😅 This combing system gave us also Rindfleischettiketierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz... Dutch works with the same concept, kaaswinkelwagen - Cheese Shop Shopping cart koelkast(same explanation as the German one) but it is not as bad as in German 😂

In Finnish the word for world is "maailma", which is comprised from "maa" (earth, ground, soil, land) and "ilma" (air, sky).

There's nothing I can think of. No thing at all.

A couple years ago, I was walking through the grocery store with a friend of mine when I had a horrifying thought about the etymology of a ... certain word beginning with the letter F used to denote homosexuals; I knew from elsewhere that this word was originally used to refer to firewood, and elsewhere in the world it is used to refer to a wide variety of other burnable substamces. So, I asked myself, why is this word that is almost exclusively used to refer to burnable things also used to refer to homosexuals? Then it hit me, maybe we use a word for burnables to also refer to homosexuals because they used to be burned. A feeling of dread settled in my gut, and I moved on. For the longest time, it was an interesting idea that I otherwise had no evidence for. Or at least that was the case until a few months ago, when I was scrolling through Wikipedia's article on Italian profanity, and I came across this; Finocchio. This is a word used to refer to "male homosexuals," and this is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject: "A suggestive and very popular hypothesis suggests it may derive from the age of the Holy Inquisition in the Papal State, when fennel seeds would be thrown on homosexuals executed by burning at the stake --- in order to mitigate the stench of burned flesh. However, there is no proof that this is the case." So, I theorized this certain F word derived from the burning of homosexuals, and in the Italian language there is very similar word that is thought to have a very similar origin. I maintain to this day that, if all of these facts are indeed coincidence, then it is indeed an extraordinary coincidence. And that's all I have to say about that.

*Spanish:* alarma(alarm)= al arma : to the weapon.

The one I can think of off the top of my head is the Norwegian word "sykehus" for hospital. It literally translates to "sick house."

"Howdy" comes from "How do you do?"

Unveil is quite literally un-veil. Like removing the veil from a bride for example Undermine is also a dead metaphor for mining under someone’s point like undercutting someone’s route of mining in the ground

"Breakfast" in Brazilian Portuguese is "café da manhã", which means "morning coffee". :P

I just discovered this channel and I’ve only watched 25 seconds of this video and I had to hit pause and comment. This is the kind of channel I’ve been waiting for, but didn’t know I wanted and didn’t think to look up a dedicated RU-vid channel about etymology. It never occurred to me that other people might be as fascinated with words and names as I am. I only watch 25 seconds, but I am hooked and I will certainly absorb the entire library because it’s far more palatable than reading a Google search..👍👍👍👍👍

In Finnish there's the swear word "jumalauta", which would be roughly equivalent to "goddamnit" in English. I haven't confirmed it, but I've heard claims that it's just a contraction of "Jumala auta" (lit. "God help").

In german "Pullover" is the word for jumper or jersey. It took me 17 years to realise that "Pullover" is just the combination of "pull" and "over".

OH MY GOD, breakfast etymology is exactly the same from spanish "desayuno"!

On holidays, think about when you get off. Christmas. Easter. Sundays. Holy days. holydays. Holidays. That's what I'd guess

You should have made it more clear that it's "fence" that comes from "defence" and not the other way around; "defence" coming from French "défense" (from Latin "defensa"). Ok, some obvious etymologies. English : "hamburger"... a meal from Hamburg French : "belle à croquer"... usually, "croquer" means "to munch" or "to crunch", so it confuses some French speakers, because it looks like it means "beautiful to crunch" (or "so beautiful you want to crunch her") but actually, here it's in the sense "to sketch", so it literally means "beautiful to sketch"... or for a more accurate translation "so beautiful you want to sketch her". Generally, French people know that second meaning of "croquer", but it's funny that a lot don't even think that it might be used in this sense in this expression. German : Ok, actually, German is an amazing language for this. "Glühbirne" => "glowing pear"... a lightbulb; "Nacktschnecke" => "naked snail"... a slug; "Schildkröte" => "shield-toad"... a turtle But I guess those are so obvious to German people, they don't even facepalm, they probably just go "well...yeah"

2:42 in… and watching this video is like watching a person mirror my constant contemplations out loud. This is now officially my favorite RU-vid channel and I can say definitively that I can empathize with.”name explain” than any other person I’ve ever met in my entire life.

Is Russian there is a world "очевидно" (obvious). It is literally means "you can see it with your own eyes". With "оче" - old Russian world for eye and "видеть" is "to see".

One of my favorites is the Romance word for "liver", like Spanish hígado, Italian fegato, French foie. It comes from the Latin word "ficatum", which was part of the phrase "iecur ficatum" which means "figged liver". This was the Roman name for the dish we now call foie gras. Over time, the part that meant 'liver' (iecur) dropped out, and through metonymy, the part that meant 'figged' (ficatum) came to mean 'liver'. It then evolved into all the Romance language words for liver. So Romance speakers are actually saying "figged' when they talk about livers. As to why the Romans called the dish 'figged liver', the explanation I heard was that figs were the preferred food for force-feeding the ducks and geese that would yield the foie gras.

Woolen - ‘of wool’ Leaden (heavy/dull/slow) - ‘of lead’ Linen - ‘of lines’ Linen and Lines have the same route. I facepalmed when I found this recently.

I just learned today that in Spanish, for the bumper on a car "parachoque" = "for crash"

And of course from defence/fence we also get fencing. As in the sword-based combat, not putting up fences. Because, before it was a sport or even a specialized form dueling combat, that sort of swordsmanship was primary as a form of armed self-defence.

In spanish breakfast translates to "desayuno" which has an identical etimology, des- has a similiar meaning to break, and -ayuno is, like in english a time spent without eating. It amazes me how these two words sound so different yet they are so similiar.

All the days of the week (so long as you are familiar with Norse and Roman mythology) Monday - moon day Tuesday - Tyr's day Wednesday - Woden's day Thursday - Thor's day Friday - Frey's day Saturday - Saturn's day Sunday - sun day

That the Å in Åland is the word Å or Creek in English, as it is the Land of Creeks, even though we are just an collections of islands.

Finnish word: kynä(pen) Taking feathers off a bird is, kyniminen. And people used to write with feathers. Kyni kana, saat kynän (=take the feathers off a chiken to get a pen

I'm not sure how obvious this is but I may have realized what's the etymology for "dandelion". At one point I heard that in German it's called "Löwenzahn" which I think literally means "lion's tooth". Then I thought, does "dandelion" mean "lion's tooth" in French? Can any French speaker confirm that and what's the name of that flower in French?

It’s funny how as a nonnative English speaker these origins seems obvious to me. I think that is because we use dictionary to translate and understand new words, and a lot of them are translated literally For example “Secretary” is translated to Arabic as “Secret keeper”

"Orange" actually came from two sources. The fruit and the colour come from spanish "naranja" which (probably with the fruit) propagated from sanskrit to persian to arabic to spanish. In French it became "Orange" and this has to do with the other source, "Arausio", the Latin name for a city that later became named "Orange" as well. The city/region became the origin of the noble family now reigning the Netherlands (Oranje-Nassau), called "Oranien" in German. Orange (the city) is in southern France and within France, oranges grow best in the south where the winters aren't as cold, this might have helped with the two names becoming the same. (Not sure if you already made a video about this ...)

I've built a lot of defences in video games, never drew that conclusion before. So many pixilated fences erected... so many more brought down.

So, breakfast, right… I always wondered why German words "morgen" (tomorrow) and "Morgen" (morning) so similar are. Well, they both look pretty much like their English translations between which I never such a similarity noticed had. Also, I always wondered why are Russian words "завтра" (zavtra, tomorrow) and "завтрак" (zavtrak, breakfast) so similar. Their meanings have like nothing at common. Fun fact side note: it was very common during school classes to hear the following dialogue (in case someone learns Russian may be interesting): Учитель: Когда принесёшь домашнее задание? Ученик: Завтра. Учитель: Хватит меня завтраками кормить! Teacher: When are you gonna bring your homework? Student: Tomorrow. Teacher: Stop feeding breakfasts to me! In context of which "breakfasts" sounds like "tomorrows", so intention is to say something like "Stop saying tomorrow" but because "tomorrow" here sounds exactly like "breakfast", the verb also jokingly becomes "feeding". But I always failed to get why is that so. Until a year ago I've heard that the word "вчера" (vchera, yesterday) comes from the word "вечер" (vecher, evening). Which kinda makes sense, yesterday is what was going on until the last evening. That was painstakingly by itself because I never used to notice the similarity between these. At that moment I kept thinking: wait, so what about tomorrow? Wait… it's exactly the same… "Завтра" (zavtra, tomorrow) must be coming from the word "утро" (utro, morning). Because за-втра (za-vtra, to-morrow) is what you have за-утро (za-utro, after-morning). And breakfast is also exactly what you have after you get up in the morning, so it's за-втра-к (at-morning-thing). It's like a coincidence and not simultaneously. And that must be also the reason why Germans call "morgen" (tomorrow) just "Morgen" (morning). Although I never even considered before that you can call a day after it's closest part to you.

Wow, I just discovered your channel, and being passionate about languages and their history, needless to say I am over the moon. Great work, thanks a lot !

Yessss! I teach ESL and I am definitely going to show my students this video. xoxo

I can only imagine your colleagues at the computer game store on that fateful day... "You're wondering why the bank is closed... on a bank holiday???"

In Poland we say "płacić" which means basically "to pay". The origin comes from the past before money was in use. Back then the most common thing that people were using to trade were "płaty płótna" which were pieces of plain weave. So people were using PŁATY płótna to trade or to PŁACIĆ. Amazing video plus greetings from Poland.

What's fascinating is how the word breakfast in French is "déjeuner" which means the same exact thing.

I am not a native english speaker, but I have a question about the "defence" etimology. In portuguese, we say "defesa" and all portuguese dictionaries say that "defesa" comes from the latin "defensa", with a "S". That's because the letter "C" in latin had both the /k/ and/g/ sounds, not the /s/. So, I thought that the english spelling of "defence" was just a typo, because the root of the word is latin and it doesn't make sense to use a "C" with a "S" sound with a latin rooted word.

In Australia we call holidays "public holidays", but we have one public holiday a year (depending on your state) which is called a "bank holiday", which is only for banks and bank employees

Turnpike - to turn a pike (spear) in order to let a person through once they paid. Goodbye - slightly less obvious, but it's a contraction of "God be with ye (you)". Midnight - middle of the night. Sunday - day of the sun. In Russian, vorobey (sparrow) = vora bey (beat the thief). Vtornik (Tuesday) obviously comes from vtoroy (second). Parikmaher (Barber) = parik (wig) + maher (german for "maker") - wigmaker.

One obvious entomology is "undermine" It comes from the way an enemy who could not get over our through a castle wall, would dig under the wall with the hope to make it fall. So they would mine under a wall to cause collapse of defense... Mine under 😉 I only got that about a month ago watching a Netflix series on castles.

Arc-en-ciel (french) means rainbow in english but word by word its: Ark-in-the-sky.

If Defense comes from putting up THE FFENCE, does that mean that the word OFFENCE comes from taking OFF FENCE (taking the fence off/down)?

The word fence (early 14C) originally meant to defend. It was almost 150 years before fence meant 'fence". The word defense is around a hundred years older than fence(meaning defend). Which means 'fence' meaning defend came from 'defense' while 'fence', meaning barrier came from 'fence' meaning defend.

Last year during the middle of winter I was standing at a bus stop near my home. I was looking at the trees and while many of the trees had no leaves the evergreens were still showing off their green color. I talk to myself wow they really do stay green through the winter and then it hit me they are ever-green. I can't believe it took me my whole life to figure that out.

From my native language, Dutch, the word sinaasappel (orange, the fruit) is an apple from Sina (China). I especially love the set of words stemming from 'weorthan' (to become, Dutch: worden), which developed to become weird (see what I did there?) as well as worth, versus and maybe even weather.

Except for one thing: painstaking(ly) isn't synonymous with painful(ly). Painstaking(ly) belongs with words like careful, diligent, laborious, conscientious, thorough, etc.

Gród = Fortified settlement Ogród = Garden Ogrodzenie = Surrounding fence

Threshold is also one of them I faceplanted when I learned the etymology lol. It's a peice of wood that held the thresh, or straw flooring, in the home lol.

This was fun and different! Loved it!

The Swedish word "middag" (which today means "dinner" but meant "lunch" a few decades ago) derives from "mitt" (middle) and dag (day). Midsommar (midsummer) has the same origin. Kvällsmat (if you call lunch "middag" then you call dinner "kvällsmat", some people don't say "middag" at all and just say lunch and "kvällsmat) is just a combination of "kväll" and "mat" (evening and food)

In Portuguese breakfast is "Café da Manhã", which literally means morning coffe.