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Etymology
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Etymology is the study of the origins of words. The vocabularies of modern languages come from a variety of different sources: some have evolved from older words, others have been borrowed from foreign languages, and some have been named from people, developed from initialisms, or even have been deliberately invented by a certain author. Etymology sections in entries of the English-language Wiktionary provide factual information about the way a word has entered the language and usually some sense of its semantic development. They may ... include an illustrative sample of ‘cognate’ words in related languages. Etymology sections should not be too verbose; usually a simple list of previous forms is all that is required. Some words may also call for some illustrative comments.
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Etymology is a branch of linguistics which focuses on word origins and the evolution of languages as they are used. Every word in a language has a complex history, and etymology aims to understand that history so that the word can be better understood. In addition, looking at the etymology of words within a language helps linguists understand the language as a whole, along with other languages in the same language family.
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Etymology finds its principal application in the tracing back of words through an entire group of allied languages to a hypothetical original form. The older etymologies made inaccurate but plausible guesses along these lines; many etymologies that are perfectly sound... seem at first sight implausible to those who are not acquainted with phonetic laws and the principles of word formation. Etymology may be confined to a specific group of languages or dialects. Thus, it is possible to refer to Romance etymology (in which words in the Romance languages are traced back for the most part to folk-Latin originals), and to Germanic, Celtic, and Indo-Iranian etymologies, among others. All these are combined in Indo-European, or Indo-Germanic, etymology, which is the most thoroughly systematized and serves as a model for the rest.
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Etymology: From Greek rhabdomanteia based on rhabdos "rod" + manteia "divination." The Proto-Indo-European root is *werb- or *werbh- "to turn, bend" that ... developed into "warp" and "wrap." Other variants of this stem underlie "rhapsody" from Greek rhapsôidia based on rhapsis "stitching together" (from rhaptein "to sew") + oide "song, ode" + ia, a noun suffix. The suffix -mancy comes from Late Latin -mantia inherited from Greek manteia "divination." This relates today's word with an earlier Word of the Day, gastromancy "divination by means of stomach rumblings." They can cause a bit of wiggling, too.
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Etymology has been largely neglected since the beginning of this century. Professor Yakov Malkiel here sets out to rescue it from its fate. He enquires into the style, structure, presuppositions, and purposes of etymological enquiries over the last two centuries, and sets them against the practice of etymology in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He ... examines the complex and changing interrelationship between etymology and general linguistics in recent times, with the intention of revitalising etymological research. Professor Malkiel is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished practitioners of the discipline, and brings to this work a remarkable breadth and depth of scholarship. Wide-ranging and imaginative, Etymology will be welcomed by all historical linguists and Romance linguists.
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Etymology is not to be confused with entymology, which is of vastly more use. While an [E]ntymologist will be able to tell you how to avoid killer bees, an etymologist will be all to happy to tell you the long and interesting history of killer and bee in the English language.
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Etymology