Tag: TechStories

Unveiling Surprising Etymological Connections | April 11 2025, 17:22

The seventh day of etymological excavation. Possibly the last—but who knows. The script still churns through dictionaries, and I continue to be amazed at how words distant in meaning can be close in origin.

Let’s start with something vivid. The words “peacock” and “crimson” are etymological relatives. “Peacock” entered Russian through German Pfäulein ← Pfau ← Latin pavō — “peacock.” And “crimson” is the color of a poppy in French ponceau, derived from paon (“peacock”), which also comes from pavō. Thus, “crimson” is essentially “peacock” color. Who would have thought.

“Apothecary” and “boutique” are etymological cousins. “Apothecary” comes from the Greek ἀποθήκη (“storehouse”). “Boutique” through Occitan and French, also from Greek, through Latin. One is about medicines, the other about dresses. But both are about “a place where something is stored and sold,” and both share the same ancestor.

“Lasso” and “lapel” are two words with opposite aesthetics, but share a common Latin ancestor laqueus — “noose, loop.” “Lasso” came through Spanish lazo → French lasso — pure cowboy stuff. “Lapel” came through the German Lätzchen, also pulling a thread from laqueus.

“Church” (kostel) and “chateau” might sound like the first is about Vilnius, the second about Bordeaux. In reality—both words come from the Latin castellum (“fortress”). “Church” came through Polish kościół — a church as a fortified building. “Chateau” — French castle, from the same source. Knights and priests—in the same etymological boat.

“Blackmail” and “chanson” have different meanings, but a common past. Both words trace back to Latin canō — “I sing.” “Chanson” directly means song. “Blackmail” through the French chantage, literally “singing” in the sense of “public disclosure” of something—i.e., compromising material. Didn’t know that, there’s a connection.

“Hyphen” and “motto” come from the Latin dīvidō (“to divide”), through different languages. “Hyphen” — “divider,” borrowed through German Divis. “Motto” — “slogan,” came from French devise. Both originally about division, but one divides words, the other—meanings.

“Sole” and “soil” are etymological twins. Both words come from Old Slavic подъшьва — “base, bottom.” One is in footwear, the other underfoot. Basically, the same: what you stand on. Come to think of it—logical.

“Hussar” and “course” are unexpected comrades in etymology. “Hussar” through Serbian gusar (“brigand”), from Latin cursus — “run, course.” Thus first: “fugitive,” then: “raider,” then: “hussar.” “Course” directly from cursus. All from the Latin verb currō — “to run.” Knights, universities, the currency market—all running.

The words “know,” “note,” “noble,” “cognition,” “notorious,” “gnosis,” etc., all in one form or another trace back to the Proto-Indo-European root ǵneh₃- — “to know, to recognize.”

“Cow” and “beef” are also twins: one from the Germanic root through Old English, the other from Latin bos through French boeuf. Historically from gʷṓws.

Decided to look for words ending in “age,” but not French. Found a dozen, but only “инструктаж” (“briefing”) passed the check. No instructage, of course, in French. More French morphology than French meaning.

Thank you for reading these posts all seven days. I think we can continue periodically, as more material accumulates.

Remember, all this was extracted through the automatic processing of an etymological dictionary. The script found words that were maximally distant in meaning but shared a common ancestor, plus filtered somewhat frequent words. Unfortunately, the dictionary is not perfect in marking and very much was omitted, but the result could be unhurriedly and not without pleasure processed.

Read more good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring Surprising Etymological Connections | April 10 2025, 20:20

The sixth day of etymological curiosities, #RaufLikesEtymology. My script is still running, which parses dictionaries and finds unexpected pairs and groups of words with a common origin but different destinies. Today features an entire series of such etymological doublets and even triplets.

Canvas (canvas), cannabis (cannabis), and hemp (industrial cannabis) are relatives. All three stem from the ancient word κάνναβις (kánnabis) — “cannabis,” possibly of Scythian or Thracian origin. Cannabis came directly from Latin, denoting the plant. Canvas came through French canevas — it’s a fabric, initially made from hemp fibers. Hemp came through Germanic languages (Old English henep), all with the same root (henep<-hanapiz<-cannabis).

Cannibal, Caribbean, and Carib — another intriguing triplet.

The word cannibal is a corrupted form of Cariba, as Columbus and his crew called the local tribes. They were thought to be cannibals. Caribbean — a geographical name of the same root. Carib — an ethnonym, the self-name of the people. Thus, “cannibal, “Caribbean, and “Caribs are words from one etymological family, just with different reputations.

Deutsch and Dutch (as the Japanese call Germany) are etymological twins, all stemming from one Proto-Germanic root þeudō — “people.” Deutsch is “German” in German, literally “people’s language.” Dutch formerly referred to any Germanic people, now strictly the Dutch.

Doitsu — a Japanese loanword from German, introduced through exchange in the 19th century. But in general, each neighboring country calls Germany differently in their languages because Germany as a single state appeared relatively recently (in 1871), and before that, it was a mosaic of separate principalities, duchies, free cities, and other political entities. Hence, different names have become entrenched in various languages — most often not for all of Germany, but for a particular tribe, region, or ethnic group. The French call it Allemagne — from Alemanni, Italians — Germania, but in casual conversation might also say tedesco (German), from the same root as Deutsch, Latvians — Vācija, from an ancient Baltic word meaning “foreign or “foreigner, Finns and Estonians — Saksa and Saksamaa, from the Saxons — one of the Germanic tribes, Poles — Niemcy, from the Slavic němьcь, meaning “mute — those who don’t speak “our way,” are unintelligible. The same root is also in Old Slavic.

However, the Japanese say Doitsu — an adaptation of German Deutsch through Dutch intermediation, as the first Europeans to actively trade with Japan were indeed the Dutch.

Species and spice — both from the Latin speciēs, meaning “appearance, form. Species retained its scientific meaning — “species. Spice came through Old French espice, initially meaning “rare goods, and then narrowed down to “spices.” So spices are also “forms, just aromatic ones.

Corpus, corpse, corps — all from the Latin corpus (“body). But “Corpse” — a dead body, came through Old French cors, and “Corps” — an army corps, pronounced as “core, stuck with the French pronunciation, and “Corpus” — a legal or scientific “assembly of bodies, used in the academy.

Map and mop — etymological twins. Both originate from Latin mappa — “cloth, napkin. Simply, one through Old French became “map (because maps were drawn on fabric), and the other — “mop (by the direct use of the fabric).

Read more such goodness by clicking here —> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring the Intriguing Origins of Words | April 09 2025, 03:51

Well, shall we continue with the fascinating etymology? I’ve been writing scripts for processing an etymological dictionary, and I’m finding all sorts of interesting stuff.

It turns out that the word “ciao” comes from the word “slave”. It derives from the Venetian expression s-ciào vostro or s-ciào su, which literally means “(I am) your slave”. The Venetian word for “slave” — s-ciào [ˈstʃao] or s-ciàvo — comes from the medieval Latin sclavus, which, in turn, was borrowed from medieval Greek Σκλάβος (“sklavos”), itself related to the ethnonym “Slavs”, as most of the slaves during that time came from the Balkans.

Also, it was a revelation to me that the words Kubernetes, governor, and cybernetics are etymologically related. They all derive from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) — “helmsman, one who steers a ship”. Consequently, governor came through Latin and Romance languages, cybernetics as a scientific loan through French, and Kubernetes as a direct calque from Ancient Greek, via Latin transliteration.

The words fuel and focus originate from the same Latin word focus (“hearth”). Focus was actually coined by Johannes Kepler, who used it as a geometric term for ellipses: “the point where rays converge”.

The words Madeira, mata, mater, matrix, matter, and mother are related and all trace back to the same Proto-Indo-European root *méh₂tēr — “mother”.

The words madam and madonna come from the Latin mea domina — “my lady”.

It’s hard to imagine, but the words merry (cheerful) and brief (short) originate from the same Proto-Indo-European root *mréǵʰus, which means “short”.

The words lobby and leaf also have a common origin — both stem from the ancient Germanic *laubą or its derivatives, related to foliage, leafy shelters, and coverings. In old buildings, laubia/lobby was a covered gallery or arbor, literally a shelter made of leaves. Thus, “lobby originally meant “leafy shelter” or “leafy arbor”.

Common origins or roots also link names like Yuri and George, Étienne and Stephen/Steven, William and Guillermo, Zeus and Jupiter, Zhenya and Yana, Joel and Elijah, Hansel and John, as well as Agnes, Nancy, and Inez, Diego and Jacob, Dorothy and Theodore, and Isabel, Elizabeth, and Lisa, Iskander and Alexander, Patroclus and Cleopatra. Many of these essentially denote the same thing, just modified differently across cultures.

Read more of such good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring Linguistic Connections with #RaufLikesEtymology | April 08 2025, 16:22

I continue with etymological curiosities. This is my third consecutive post, #RaufLikesEtymology. It all started when I stumbled upon an etymological dictionary and began processing it programmatically, extracting all sorts of things.

It turns out that the words “жёлтый” (“yellow”), “зелёный” (“green”), and “золото” (“gold”) share a common Indo-European root related to brightness and luster — *gьltъ, which in English, for instance, became the basis for both gold and yellow. In German, “gelb” (yellow) comes from there too. In Russia, “желтый” has been known since the 13th century as a nickname, and as an adjective in written sources only since the 14th century.

It turned out that “известь” (“lime”) and “асбест” (“asbestos”) come from the same word, the Greek ἄσβεστος.

It turns out that the words шифр (“cipher”), цифра (“digit”), and zero all come from the same word — the Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr, “nothing, zero”), which itself is a calque from Sanskrit शून्य (śūnya, “emptiness, nothing”).

Pushkin wrote in “Poltava”: “In the night’s darkness they, like thieves… // Craft the ciphers of universals…” “Universals” in the Ukrainian language of those days were called Hetman’s edicts, and “цифр” back then meant what we now call a cipher — “secret writing”.

Interestingly, the word “кантон” (Switzerland consists of 26 cantons) – originates from Chinese, from Guangdong.

It turned out that grotto and crypt — come from the same word, Latin grupta/crypta. Well, about Saturday and sabbath everyone knows (that they are one word by origin).

The Russian word “колесо (wheel) and the Indian “чакра (chakra) are linked by origin — both come from the same ancient root in Proto-Indo-European — *kʷékʷlos — “circle”, “wheel”, “rotating”. “Колесо came through the Slavic branch, while “чакра — through the Indian (Vedic-Sanskrit) branch.

The words cloak (“cloak”) and clock (“clock”) derive from medieval Latin clocca — “bell”, but entered English differently. Cloak arrived in the 13th century through French cloque, which meant both “cloak” and “bell” — due to the shape of the garment. Clock appeared later through Dutch clocke, denoting a church bell that marks the time; subsequently, it came to mean “clock”. The word bell (“bell”) already existed in English as a designation for a metallic ringing object, so there was no need to introduce another word for this.

The apricot has had a very interesting journey. Here, look at the attached picture. Borrowed in the early 18th century from Dutch, which itself had borrowed from Romance languages (for example, French abricot). It’s interesting to trace this word further: it turns out that in French, it came from Arabic, and in Arabic from Latin. Latin praecox meant “early-ripening”. Thus, praecox became abricot.

My little script churned out about 2 thousand examples from wiktionary. I pick the most interesting ones, but I think there’s enough material for about five more posts like this 🙂 Plus, I have more ideas on how to process to uncover even more interesting things.

Read more good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring Words with Distant Meanings Through Their Common Roots | April 07 2025, 16:32

I wrote a script that finds pairs of words connected by a common origin but have evolved to differ significantly in modern meaning.

I actually came up with this project an hour and a half ago, between meetings I threw together something using Python and ChatGPT, and here are the first results. Importantly, these results come not from ChatGPT, but from the script working with dictionaries.

For example, grammar – glamour. The word glamour originates from the Scottish pronunciation of the word grammar (meaning “knowledge,” especially magical). The early association of grammar with secret knowledge transformed into “glamour” as “magical enchantment.”

It turns out that Jack is a diminutive form of John, evolved through Jankin.

It turns out that espresso and sprain share a common root—the Latin exprimere, meaning “to press out, extract.”

debut and butt. They share a common root: Old French but—”goal.” Debut: from French débuter—”to start a game,” literally “to make the first strike at the goal.” Butt: in the sense of “target” (e.g. the butt of a joke), also from but—”goal, target.”

Technical details: What does the script do?

1. First, it downloads a vast array of data from the English Wiktionary (Kaikki) and a large language model FastText, which knows the “meaning” of words in the form of vectors.

2. Then it analyzes the etymology (origin) of words, finding their common “ancestors”—ancient words (etymons) from which the modern ones derive.

3. It then selects only those words that are full dictionary entries in Wiktionary and are commonly found in modern English (filtering out very rare or archaic words).

4. Then it measures the “distance” between meanings using word vectors (word embeddings) from FastText. By comparing these vectors, the script calculates how far the meanings of words with a common root have diverged. Low similarity in vectors indicates a significant difference in meaning.

5. It then finds “distant relatives”: Ultimately, the script searches for and displays pairs of common words that were once “relatives” but today their meanings are as distant from each other as possible.

The script still generates quite a lot of “noise,” but I have a clear idea of how to clean it up.

Read more of such goodness by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

The Unsung Contributors of Early Microsoft: The Lives of Monte Davidoff and Bob O’Rear | April 05 2025, 16:22

It’s intriguing how different people’s destinies unfold. Gates’ blog has published the source code for the original Altair Basic. Besides the well-known Gates (worth >$100 billion) and Allen (he passed away, but was around $20 billion), there appears the name Monte Davidoff, about whom very little is known.

Monte wrote all the “mathematics” with floating point for Microsoft Basic. It only lasted until version 4.0, after which, about a decade later, the IEEE 754 standard came along, and things changed slightly.

Since 2000, he has owned his consulting company, and its website (built in PHP) seems not to have changed since 2000 (though he did update the year to 2025 in the footer).

There are no photos of him online, almost no information about what he does, but there are two interviews, one in text, and another on Floppy days as a podcast. Apparently, he just quietly “tends to his own stove”.

Among the employees of the first Microsoft team—remember, the iconic photo?—there is Bob O’Rear, who held the position of chief mathematician. He played a key role in developing MS-DOS for the IBM PC. O’Rear left the company in 1993 and returned to Texas, where he took up cattle ranching on his own farm.

Global Names for the Same Melody | April 05 2025, 14:01

To my surprise, I discovered that our “Dog Waltz” is widely referred to here as “Shave and a haircut,” although in reality, Shave and a haircut is very well known as “knock! knockity-knock-knock… KNOCK-KNOCK!”.

I started digging. In Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway, it’s known as the “Flea Waltz” (Flohwalzer). In Bulgaria, it’s called “Cat March” (Bulg. Котешки марш), in Finland — “Cat Polka” (Fin. Kissanpolkka), in Korea — “Cat Dance” (Kor. 고양이 춤 Koyangi Chum), in Japan — “I Stepped on a Cat” (Jpn. 猫踏んじゃった Neko-funjatta), in Mexico — “Little Monkeys” (Spa. Los Changuitos), in Hungary — “Donkey March” (Hun. Szamárinduló), in Majorca — “Polka of Fools” (Spa. Polca de los Tontos), in China — “March of Thieves” (Chi. simpl. 小偷进行曲, pinyin. Xiǎotōu jìnxíngqǔ), in Spain — “The Chocolate Pot” (Spa. La Chocolatera), in France and Poland — “Cutlets (Chops)” (Fr. Côtelettes, Pol. Kotlety), in Switzerland — “Cutlet Waltz” (Ger. Kotelett-Walzer), in Denmark — “Meatballs Escape Over the Fence” (Dan. Frikadellens flugt over plankeværket), in Sweden — “Kalle Johansson” (Swe. Kalle Johansson), and so forth.

The piece is in 4/4 time, by the way. So it is something like a polka or galop. However, in the movie “Gentlemen of Fortune,” it is just the triple meter version found here and here.

Revolutionary Surface Scanning Device Transforms Text and Texture into 3D Images | March 31 2025, 14:53

I’ve devised a new device that might become part of a future phone, or before that, a niche industrial and scientific tool. It works like this: you place it on any surface, say a paper with text, move it like a mouse, and end up with a 3D scan of the surface displayed on your screen. If there’s text, for example, it can be recognized, even if it’s inside an envelope. However, there probably are better industrial applications for such a device.

Technically: it uses a high-frequency ultrasonic sensor array (100–300 MHz) capable of distinguishing paper microreliefs and ink with up to 20-micron resolution—similar to what’s currently done in fingerprint scanners. A typical Qualcomm 3D Sonic Gen 2 piezo scanner measures 8×8 mm. The sensors have a resolution of up to 500 dpi. Motion data is collected from an IMU and an optical encoder (like in a mouse), to accurately stitch scan fragments into a unified image. It will work in darkness, with poor contrast, on semi-transparent paper, with zero dependence on lighting. It can detect hidden writings, fingerprints, or cleaned areas. Essentially, it will perform an in-depth analysis, down to detecting traces of pencil pressure.

Mysteries of Fungi: From House Invaders to Mind Controllers | March 30 2025, 13:45

A very meaningful, diverse, and captivatingly interesting episode—with Vishnevsky about mushrooms.

Three stories to whet your appetite. The first one is about the house fungus (Serpula lacrymans). It usually starts with a shed, a bathhouse, bridges, or a foundation, especially if it’s partially over water. The house fungus releases tough black mycelial cords (1-2 mm), which spread throughout the house within just a few days. Across the floors, walls, and floors—it’s like something out of sinister sci-fi movies. These cords reach any source of wood. The fungus begins to break down lignin and other components of the wood, and one of the by-products of this process is water. That is, the fungus only needs water at the beginning, and then, once it finds wood, it extracts water on its own, feeding and hydrating itself. Therefore, it is practically impossible to get rid of it. It is tenacious, fast-growing, and extremely destructive. It is capable of turning up to 50% of the wood volume it settles on to dust within a year. That’s why sleepers and footbridges at stations are made not from wood, but from concrete, even where wood is cheaper and despite the fact that wooden sleepers are superior in other properties to concrete ones.

The second story is about “witch’s circles.” Surely you’ve noticed that mushrooms often grow in rings on lawns or at the edges of forests, sometimes tens of meters in diameter. It turns out that the mycelium from the point where it originated transforms into a “donut,” which grows because the inner parts of this donut die off since it has already consumed everything there, while the outer parts continue to expand because there’s still something there. And thus, the mushrooms—the fruiting bodies—grow along this donut. Since the rate of spread is more or less the same, it appears as a perfect circle. Of course, unless it runs into something along the way.

The third is about cordyceps, which infects simple crawling organisms and controls them. Apart from being an interesting fungus on its own, the most expensive mushroom in the world is also a cordyceps (the Chinese variety). But now, about the one that parasitizes ants—you’ve probably heard of it.

It all starts with the fungus penetrating an ant’s body and gradually taking control over its nervous system. When the time comes, cordyceps “tells the ant that it is time to leave its native anthill. If it resists, the fungus employs chemistry: it not only biochemically influences the behavior, but literally “owns the ant. Moreover, it does so not bluntly, but very intricately—with precision to the details.

It entwines the muscles and nerve nodes, blocking any alternate movement. The ant begins to move along a specific trajectory—it climbs a plant, selects a suitable leaf, often one that hangs right above the anthill. It climbs to the underside of the leaf to prevent the sun from drying out its body and the future fungus. Then it moves strictly along the central vein of the leaf—as if along a highway.

When it reaches the middle of this vein, the fungus gives two last commands: 1) Clench the veins with its limbs as tightly as possible and 2) Bite through the vein with its jaws, securing itself definitively.

After this—rapid mycelial growth, the ant dies. From its head, now hanging downwards, begins to sprout the fruiting body of the fungus—a thin “needle, directed straight down over the anthill. When it matures, spores start to pour out of it, like from a shower, directly onto the ants passing below. Everything is calculated perfectly.

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand the “combat chemistry of Cordyceps. It seemed something incredibly complex must be at work. But as it turns out—on the contrary. Everything is simple: relatively primitive hydrocarbons are acting, structurally very similar to… gasoline.

If you take, for example, a bucket of gasoline, come to a forest anthill (especially a large one of red forest ants), stir it up a bit—you will see how the ants start to massively leave the dwelling, climb up the tree, cling to the bark, freezing in strange poses. Then they are released. But with Cordyceps, it’s the same, just with an additive: its hydrocarbons are slightly more complex, and “releasing” is no longer possible.

This is the bug in the ant’s firmware. It’s not some kind of remote control, not a command center. Just a chemical, and the ant “knows what to do. These aren’t random actions, but strictly defined, programmed within it reactions. Under certain substances, it behaves in a strictly defined way.

I recommend listening to it, Vishnevsky is very cool in this topic and it seems inexhaustible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQyUHsBaa4