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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
While seeking what I could find on today’s word, ‘amok’, I realised that it was connected with what is obviously the true derivation of the name America. Forget that explorer guy, Amerigo Whoever; that was never convincing anyway. No, the word stems from the warrior tribes that early explorers met on landing across the pond. Remember that they believed they were in the East Indies. Well, the Malayalim Amar-khan means "a warrior" (from amar, "fight").
So there we are, it was natural for the Europeans to describe these warriors assuming them to be the same as the ones they had met in the far-east; “We made a treaty with the Amar-khans”, they would have said. Amar-khan became American, hence America. A case of the adjective being in use before the noun!
Maybe I should make the National Geographic people aware of this?
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Not only adjective before noun but adjectival noun before plain adjective.
They looking for you in Weekly Themes, BTW, dxb.
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