July 02, 2006

Online Etymology Dictionary
posted by At Swim Two Birds 17 years ago
  • Cool. Thanks!
  • Been using this since what, 2002? Quite useful.
  • Nifty! (1868, perhaps theatrical slang, first attested in a poem by Bret Harte, who said it was a shortened, altered form of magnificat)
  • monkey: 1530, likely from an unrecorded M.L.G. *moneke or M.Du. *monnekijn, a colloquial word for "monkey," originally a dim. of some Romanic word, cf. Fr. monne (16c.), O.It. monna, Sp. mona. In a 1498 Low Ger. version of the popular medieval beast story "Roman de Renart" ("Reynard the Fox"), Moneke is the name given to the son of Martin the Ape. The O.Fr. form of the name is Monequin (recorded as Monnekin in a 14c. version from Hainault), which could be a dim. of some personal name, or it could be from the general Romanic word, which may be ult. from Arabic maimun "monkey," lit. "auspicious," a euphemistic usage because the sight of apes was held by the Arabs to be unlucky. The word would have been influenced in It. by folk-etymology from monna "woman," a contraction of ma donna "my lady." Monkey has been used affectionately for "child" since 1605. Found it. Lost it. Now you have given it back to me. **kisses for 2 birds
  • Two of our favorite words... Double: c.1225, from O.Fr. duble, from L. duplus "twofold," from duo "two" + -plus "fold." Post: [...] The verb meaning "to affix (a paper, etc.) to a post" (in a public place) is first recorded 1650. It rocks anyway. I've got it as a shortcut bookmark in firefox so I can just goto "e word".
  • Knew we'd had a post on this one before. Hunted but failed to find it because I used Etymology and didn't think to try Etymological. Seems no simple way to get Search to work every time.
  • Oooh! *bookmarks*
  • Bees, if you hadn't double posted it, I wouldn't have been able to (re)bookmark it. Lost the bookmarks--oh, teh humanity!