Quote Originally Posted by MarkRWayne View Post
I don't think Sibiryak is trolling - that would be a lot of effort to put into a troll post
To make my meaning more clear, I didn't intend to say that the entire post was a troll -- I was reacting to Sibiriak's apparent suggestion that the Internet slang «ник» has the smallest bit of connection to the -ник in "тайник"! (After all, the correct etymology is not a matter of much mystery or controversy --the Runet term was borrowed directly from the already-existing English computer slang "nick," which was in use on dial-up forums like Compuserve and AOL even in the late 1980s, before there was a World Wide Web. The computer slang "nick," in turn, was a shortening of "nickname," which has roots all the way back to Old English.)

Admittedly, I also found it a bit strange that a native Russian speaker would "break" the word тайник into тай/ник (i.e. instead of тайн/ик or possibly тай/н/ик ). And even if one divides it as тай/ник, the first part has a rather obvious connection to the verb таить -- a pan-Slavic term which has denoted the concept of "secrecy" since ancient times. So if you're a native speaker of a Slavic language, there's no need to go looking for "evidence" that тай- really means "место, местность", as Sibiriak suggested. (On the other hand, there is some evidence that this Slavic root meaning "secret, mysterious, hidden" is linked with an ancient Hindustani root meaning вор, "thief".)

It reminded me just a bit of a quotation from Mr. Mrs. Garrison on South Park: "Darwin's godless theory of so-called evolution states that a long time ago, a fish had butt-sex with a squirrel and gave birth to a retarded fish-squirrel, and the retarded baby fish-squirrel grew up and had sex with a monkey. Which means that you kids are the retarded offspring of gay monkeys who had butt sex with mutant fish-squirrels."

P.S. Mind you, EVERYTHING sooner or later reminds me of a quotation from South Park.