I find often times that the etymology of the word in the "A.Word.A.Day" email informs me of the roots of a given word, and then lists other words supposed to share the same root, which don't seem to be very related at all.

For example, today's word, "diktat."


I can see clearly that words such as "verdict" and even "indicate" contain the root "deik," but a word like "judge?" Or "revenge?" Where is the "deik" in those words?

I find myself wishing that Anu would spot these difficult-to-see correlations and maybe help me out somehow; perhaps by pointing out where the similarity lies.

Does anyone else here ever think that or is it just me?

Mitch

Welcome Mitch!

I belive that judge one it is possible the way that they pronounce judgement on people - they dictate the law...may be wrong though...same with revenge - they a dictating something to someone else (ie "you do that to me, I do that to you") but I have problems sometimes with some of the words from Indo-European roots...

Thanks, bexter -

I think you're looking at the concepts, or meanings of the words, not the actual words. It's my understanding that when they give the etymology of a word, and list other words that share the same root, they mean that the word itself contains that root, not that the meanings of the word are similar.

I'm beginning to concede that the word "judge" has a "dg" in it, and that's about the closest sound to "deik" that I can imagine. It's just difficult many times to see or hear the similarities in words that are supposed to have the same root in them.

Thanks for your reply!

Judge: From Middle English, jugen < Anglo-Norman juger < Latin iudicare < iudex, iudic-.

Revenge: From Middle English revengen < Old French revengier < re+vengier, 'to take revenger' < Latin vindicare, 'to avenge', < vindex, vindic-, 'avenger'.

You can "show" a judgement, or "show" a revenge just as you an "show" a dictact. Maybe that is the connection. Just taking a wild shot here. I'm no expert.
Eta (no not you): incidently "dekh" is the word in Hindi for "look" also has connection to "show".

Avy, please see Faldo's response above. you need to dig deeper into the roots of some of these cognates to see the relationships; they often aren't obvious in the end results.

Rather than Welcome, seeing when you joined the site,
I'd just say Hello, good to see you again. And I
have to concur with your initial premise, it is sometimes
very hard to understand. But I don't have the background
to trace these words as some of these guys above have,
so it is very interesting to see the replies.

Okay. I was just yappin.

For example, whore and charity come from the same PIE root.

OK, I'll bite - what is it??? And how do they relate?

Buy you a AHD and YCLIU.

YCLIU

1. go to OneLook.com
2. enter 'whore'
3. go to the 1st entry, which is the AHD
4. see WORD HISTORY therein

That "One Look.com" is really quite a resource. I sure
wish they had things at the fingertips like this back
when I was teaching. Research would have been a breeze.
Thanks.

I can imagine what that would cost on a retired teacher's
income. The site here from one look is great: I just
have to learn to use it more.

I keep a button for it at the top of my browser, use it all the time.

whore, charity, kamasutra

mitchpowell, I'd recommend the inexpensive American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins if you're interested in learning more about this sort of thing.

I don't think Hindi dekhanā is related to Latin dicere. The reflexes of Proto-Indo-European *deik- in Hindi are deś and desī.

It seems Hindi dekhanā is related to Sanskrit dṛś "to see", from the PIE root *derḱ- which means a dekko is related to tarragon.

Yes I see that too, but do you need to be spoon-feed? I like to do my own research, that way I get more out of it.