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submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Old English attests the word as docga. My hypothesis is that it's dōc "bastard, mongrel" + -ga [diminutive suffix], roughly like calling it "the little mutt". The vowel shortening would've been happened already back then, otherwise the modern form would be *doog /du:g/.

Note that Latin/Romance attests similar phenomena (depreciative word for animal becoming the default word + diminutives being ingrained into the main word). And typically when you see weird stuff going on in a language you'll see it happening in other languages too.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

I love how the author went out of his way not to mention dogging

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Or "what's up, dawg?"

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

If I were to have guessed I would have said squid came from both squalo meaning shark and squamata for reptiles like snakes. A squid is like a snake shark, so squa-ish. Add some shift in sounds over the centuries and it becomes squid.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

A squid is like a snake shark

How dare you!

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

That sounds unlikely.

Both squalus "shark, whale" and squamatus scaled are from Latin; typically this sort of phenomenon affects the native vocab, not erudite borrowings. And this sort of word merging is rather uncommon. Plus Old English /a/ ended as /æ/ in modern English, not as /ɪ/ (sound changes are typically regular).

Wiktionary tentatively connects it with "squirt", that sounds a bit more likely.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Who on earth calls their feet "dogs"? I've also never heard of "putting on the dog", but that's probably just because. 🐶

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Calling feet dogs is outdated, but used to be pretty common, especially saying "my dogs are tired." They even reference it in old cartoons. A character will take off their shoes and their feet will turn into barking dogs.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

AH yes - I thought it must be an American thing.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

In Swiss German, slippers are called "finches", so there's that.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Only heard feet referred to as dogs in american tv, never in real life, the phrase "my dogs are barking" messing the person'sfeet were sore, bloody odd if you ask me

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah - I reckon it must be an American thing.

[-] candyman337 1 points 1 month ago

We've lost the original word for bear because it was taboo to say, bear is a nickname for bears that meant "brown one" or something like that. Kind of like "he who must not be named" in Harry Potter.

this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
121 points (96.9% liked)

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