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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I was on another thread and got deep into learning about the history of certain words and thought I'd post here. What word history origins / facts do you know?

I'll start with two that I recently came across:

  • "‘Wer’ (meaning ‘man’) came from Old High German with the Anglo Saxons 1,500 years ago, and was part of Old English. It then became ‘were’ in Middle English and remains as part of werewolf (‘man wolf’) in modern English." (Source: BillTongg@lemmy.world)

  • "Sculptors in antique Rome could fix mistakes they made by mixing marble dust with wax. If a sculptor was especially gifted and made no mistakes that needed fixing, they would market their art as “sin cera”, which means “without wax”, which is where the word “sincere” comes from." (Source: Pooptimist@lemmy.world)

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[-] introvertcatto 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Also there was word wif, meaning female or woman, word wifmann is today woman literally meaning female-human, because mann simply meant human, weremann was man today literally male human

Add e after wif you get wife

[-] _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This one's wild

this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
39 points (100.0% liked)

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