Thread: "Folk" Etymologies of Russian Words like ЛЮБОВЬ(ЛЮДИ БОГА ВЕДАЮТ)- what do you think?

Originally Posted by MarkRWayne

Throbert, excellent post. You know more about the etymology of English and Russian words than I do

Believe me I didn't know all the details off the top of my head! I can remember that my high school Latin teacher was always telling us to beware of ложные друзья like "to occupy" and occupare, and he once gave us the example of "altare does not come from altus" to show that these false cognates can occur even within the same language. But I had to look up -- just now, when I was writing my post -- what the real etymology was.

And for my part, I had no idea that Arabic al-maas was related to Greek adamos -- I assumed that maas was native to Arabic. But it makes sense now that I think about it, because medieval Arabs translated such an enormous number of ancient Greek manuscripts, and it would hardly be surprising if some medieval scribe mistook the Greek negative prefix a- ("not") for the Arabic article al.

P.S. The Latin occupare can indeed mean "to occupy", but only in the specific sense of "annexation by military siege". So it's a false-friend in other senses.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

And for my part, I had no idea that Arabic al-maas was related to Greek adamos -- I assumed that maas was native to Arabic. But it makes sense now that I think about it, because medieval Arabs translated such an enormous number of ancient Greek manuscripts, and it would hardly be surprising if some medieval scribe mistook the Greek negative prefix a- ("not") for the Arabic article al.

I actually didn't know this either (and it could be wrong) - I found it on Wiktionary. That is where I usually go for quick etymology references, since it usually draws from reputable sources like Vasmer.