So everyone was doing all these informative postings-ish.
So I was all like, maybe I should be all conformist and shit, and make like everyone else and do a conformist poster about something completely random.
I was a little unsure on what to pick so I did random article on Wikipedia, ending with several articles about obscure Nigerian folk duos, the scottish institute of science and 4 pre-war English films. Anyway, I got onto this article about ants. I read the 3 lines, (it was a stub) and it contained the word "endemic".
Endemic means something is ecologically defined as being unique to a defined geographical location, like those snakes from the earlier post.
This then got me thinking about the word, "endemic" similar to the word, "pandemic", yet almost opposite in meaning. I realised thanks to Wikipedia's related article that the version like the word "pandemic" actually is a different meaning of the word "endemic". The non-ecological one means; when an infection is maintained in the population without the need for external inputs. This word comes from the greek, en- meaning in and -demos meaning people. The en- is similar to the french as well while the demos is like democracy or demographic.
So then I thought, well what does pandemic come from, i looked it up and it came also from the greek, pan- meaning all and again demos meaning people. I then got back to wondering so where does the other endemic come from, the ecological one.
In my few minutes of research through an online etymological dictionary, it comes from a similar place, en- still meaning in and -demos, meaning place, so in a certain place.
I thought that was kinda cool, so I continued my research, looking at the word, endonym, which comes from endo- meaning within and -nym meaning name, it is name within. It refers to the name you call yourself. This is best shown through countries. In English, we call Germany, Germany, and Australia, Australia but in German, Germany is Deutschland (German-land) and Australia is Australien. Deutschland and Australia are endonyms, they are what the people within a community call themselves. The opposites of this, (Germany, Australien) are called exonyms, (exo- meaning out and -nym meaning name).
I was then thinking of words like Entomology, which comes from entomos meaning cut in pieces or segmented and -logia, the study of.
-logy is such a common suffix now, like in etymology, psychology, neurology. All with their prefixes and suffixes.
I guess I started writing this post as an ironic take on the collaboration of knowledge, we are doing and our state as teenagers, yet I fell into my own trap as I got carried away by the interesting topics there are.
On another note, words we use in english are comical in german, kinder surprise, child surprise; kindergarten, child garden; kitsch, cheap/taudry/dodgy; Neandertal, from neander valley; glockenspiel, bell play; and finally, abseil, coming from sich abseilen, meaning to rope oneself down.
I just realised, I needed to post a picture to relate it to the title. It's so cute.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
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3 comments:
that bunny looks like the one i had for breakfast
:( bunny is too cute to eat.
I do this sort of thing... a lot... (etymologies)
etymonline.com by any chance?
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