/culture/ - arts & literature

A lot of people think "helicopter" is made of the word parts "heli" and "copter", which is why we use those word parts for "helipad" and "quadcopter". But helicopter is actually a combination of the Greek words helikos (ἕλῐκος/hay-LEE-kohs) meaning spiral and pteron (πτερόν, ter-ron) meaning wing. So a helicopter should technically be pronounced hay-LEE-coh-ter, with a silent p. Helipad should then become helicopad, and quadcopter should become quadropter.

Except not really, because when enough people break up a word wrong for long enough, it becomes correct. Just like how "burger" is a word part based on hamburger, when the word part should be "Hamburg". So a cheeseburger should be a Hamburg cheeser. But no. That's cringe.

The word harem comes from the Arabic harem which is the Arabic word for harem

The name Naomi is actually Hebrew and not Japanese. Give it back Japan! *bombs another hospital*

>>1770
Doesnt it come from India by way of Chinese (tai-fun)?

>>1771
>quadcopter should become quadropter
but that's missing the "spiral" part of the word, which is still present on a quadcopter. Quadro-pter would just be "four wings" which makes it sound like something that flies like a plane or bird.
Quadcopter works just fine as a contraction of "quad-helicopter"

Now, quadbike is a worse offender. "Four-two-wheels". Really? And it doesn't even have 8 wheels.

I am not sure if I already talked about this one here, but it is one of my favorites.
The word for pistacchio comes from greek pistakion, which in turn from persian pistag. The persian word also went through arabic as "al-fustuq" and reached Spain where it turned into "alfóncigo", while at the same time the greek pistakion through italian pistacchio turned into the word "pistache."
Thus, in spanish, there are two very different words for the same idea, and with the same etymological origin.
>>1771
reminds me of the "ornithopters" in dune, which they only mention by name and never describe. But the name is enough for a reader to make a mental image of them.

The proto-indo-european word "ḱr̥sós" went and descended down two separate paths to become both "horse" and "car"