The study of the origin, basic meaning, and development of individual words as well as of their relationship to words in different languages of the same origin. In ancient times the search for the original semantic motivation of a word was essentially...
Process of word formation based on a reinterpretation of meaning and a reformation of an archaic, foreign word modeled after a similarsounding known word with a similar meaning. Through this diachronic linguistic process, incomprehensible words are...
n. (pl. etyma An ancestral form from which a later form is directly derived. English father has the Old English etymon fæder, which in turn has the PIE etymon *petēr. Cf....
Etymology is the study of the history of words — when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. In languages with a long written history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how...
