Time: Surprisingly Connected Etymologies
Channel: Alliterative
Date: 2022-04-05

Some time-related words and their etymological connections.

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Transcript:

Today in “Surprisingly Connected Etymologies”, we’re marking time!

Hopefully enough time has passed that we’re finally starting to get the pandemic under control (with a lot of help from vaccines, masks, and other safety measures), but of course time will tell. Pandemic is formed from the Greek prefix pan- “all” and the Greek word demos “people”, also found in the word democracy, literally “people-rule”. Demos had the original sense of “district”, coming from the Proto-Indo-European root *da- “to divide”, which also lies behind Old English tima  “time, period” and Modern English time, which originally meant “a segment of time” before broadening to mean “time” more generally.

What’s your favourite day of the week? Well etymologically speaking perhaps it should be every day! Though the etymology of both words is debated, day, from Old English dæg, might ultimately come from Proto-Indo-European *dhegwh- “to burn, warm”, so in other words literally meaning “time when the sun is hot”. Since PIE *dh (and voiced aspirates in general) became Latin f, this root might also lie behind Latin  “to regard favourably, be well disposed” and favor “good will, support”, which passed through Old French to give us English favour, and thus would be related to Latin fovere, which means “to heat” but also “to cherish”, from which we also get English foment.

Diary and journal on the face of it seem like synonyms that are not etymologically connected. However, they both descend from Latin dies “day” (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dyeu- “to shine” and surprisingly not from the same root as English day). Diary comes from the Latin form diarium “daily allowance, journal”, first appearing in English in the 16th century. Journal comes from the Latin form diurnalis “daily”, coming into English through Old French jornel “a day, time, a day’s travel or work” in the 14th century, originally referring to a book of daily church services. Similarly, journey was originally a day’s travel.

A year and an hour are quite different lengths of time, but etymologically they’re one and the same. They both come from Proto-Indo-European *yer- with a somewhat imprecise meaning of “season” or “year”. This led to Old English gear “year” as well as Greek hora originally “season” or just “period of time”, but eventually one twelfth of a day from sunrise to sunset. It wasn’t until after the word passed through Latin and Old French that it gained the more precise measurement of 60 minutes. Horoscope comes from the same root meaning literally “observer of time”.

It’s getting close to conference season for academics like me, and many of us will be heading off to attend seminars about various topics, and if we’re lucky we might even hear some seminal research. Seminal and seminar come from the Latin word semen “seed”. It’s basically an agricultural metaphor: seminal work is at the seed stage; to disseminate information is to scatter it like seeds; Latin seminarium “plant nursery” gained figurative educational senses in seminary and seminar. All these words go back to the Proto-Indo-European root *se- “to sow”, which through the Germanic branch also gives us the words sow and seed. This root also produced the Latin verb serere “to sow” and from it the noun satio “a sowing, a planting”, which became Old French seison and English season. As its form changed so too did its sense, shifting from “the act of sowing” to “the time of sowing” and then broadened to mean “time of year” in general. The verb to season, as with spices, comes from the notion of a fruit seasoning or ripening and thus becoming more flavourful as it ripens. So wish me luck in my conference going, and hope that I’m not too much at risk from that pandemic!

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.