Why don’t we try encountering Latin words “in their natural habitat”? This habitat being Pliny’s Naturalis Historiae.
Well, I only looked at a couple of sentences; it was denser-going than I expected
Liber XIII
Ad reliqua transeamus animalia et primum terrestria.
Let us pass to the rest of the animals, and first those that live on land.
Word
Type
Root
Root Meaning
cf. English
ad
pre
to
reliqua
n
the rest
transeamus
v
transeo
to traverse
transit
animalia
n
animal
animal
et
con
and
primum
adj
primus
first
primal
terrestria
adj
terrestris
terrestrial
Maximum est elephans proximumque humanis sensibus, quippe intellectus illis sermonis patrii et imperiorum obedientia, officiorum quae didicere memoria, amoris et gloriae voluptas, immo vero quae etiam in homine rara, probitas, prudentia, aequitas, religio quoque sederum solisque ac lunae veneratio.
The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys oders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon.
intellectus illis sermonis patrii is literally ‘understanding [is] on them of the paternal language’, illis being dativus possessivus and patrii the adjective patrius -a -um ‘of the homeland’.
The genders and numbers in that first sentence are a bit confusing, too. Pliny starts out with maximum and proximum in the neuter, because he’s thinking of animal, but Cicero would have written maximus and proximus (or maxumus and proxumus) in the masculine because of elephans. The same happens later with delphinus est celerrimum omnium animalium. This not the most classical Latin. Then he changes into the plural and uses illis because he’s thinking of elephants as the species as a whole.
These pages from Robert Morrison’s 1815 publication 字典 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts, Vol. I.—Part I. seem to be the first ever formal naming of the kangxi radicals in English, as this was the first Chinese – English dictionary.
Perhaps it was even Morrison who coined the term radical, in this book.
(As a side note, observe the use of archaic shew for show in the page title.)
you are entering the world of etymology.
In Dutch a mouse is called “een muis”.
Following link is a etymological dictionary for English words.
One of my favourites is a decoy.
[decoy (v.)
1650s, “to allure or entice;” 1670s, “to lure (someone or something) into a trap or snare, entrap by allurements,” from decoy (n.).
1610s, “a swindler;” 1650s, “anything intended to lead (someone) into a snare;” 1660s, “a lure employed in enticing game into a snare or within range of a weapon;” perhaps from Dutch kooi"cage," used of a pond surrounded by nets, into which wildfowl were lured for capture, from West Germanic *kaiwa, from Latin cavea “cage” (from cavus “a hollow” (from PIE root *keue- “to swell,” also “vault, hole”).
The first element is possibly the Dutch definite article de, mistaken in English as part of the word. If this is right, the later sense in English is the etymological one. But decoy, of unknown origin, was the name of a card game popular c. 1550-1650, and this may have influenced the form of the word.
This refers to the Dutch word “eendenkooi” (a small pond with a long cone-shaped wickerwork tunnel, used to catch wild ducks).
In English this was transformed into a decoy (een dekooi).
As a native speaker, I would have guessed at a surface etymology de-coy, an inflection of coy, which has one meaning “pretending shyness or modesty”. This would be similar in form to Latinate verbs like demonstrate or debase, and the decoy verb could have then spread to become a noun.
I read something interesting on Wikipedia last night, about the development of a certain indigenous Caribbean language:
A few decades prior to the arrival of the first conquistadores, people who spoke a Cariban language expanded into the Lesser Antilles and killed or displaced and also mixed with the Arawak peoples who already inhabited the islands. The resulting language—Kalhíphona or Island Carib—was Carib in name but largely Arawak in substance. This happened because Carib men took Arawak wives, who then passed their language on to the children. For a time, Arawak was spoken by women and children and Carib by adult men, but as each generation of Carib-Arawak boys reached adulthood, they acquired less Carib until only basic vocabulary and a few grammatical elements were left.
However, this whole claim is uncited, and the main page about Island Carib presents a more uncertain and controversial picture, with the possiblity that there never even was an invasion but rather a peaceful assimilation of the Arawaks into Carib identity.
This is similar to a story told by Herodotus 6.138 about the Pelasgians on the island of Lemnos:
The Pelasgians are a non-Greek people who inhabited Greece before the Greeks. Eventually, the Pelasgians from Athens were driven away by the Greek Athenians and settled Lemnos.
The Pelasgians who inhabited Lemnos at that time and wanted to take revenge on the Athenians, knew the Athenian festivals very well and laid an ambush with fifty-oar galleys to attack the Athenian women on their way to celebrate the festival of Artemis in Brauron. They captured them and brought them to Lemnos and made them their side-wives.
When these women became mothers of many children, they taught them the Attic language and an Athenian lifestyle. These children did not want to mingle with the children from Pelasgian women; and when one of them got beaten by one of these, they (the Greek children) all rushed to help and avenge each other. So, the children thought it was right to rule over the Pelasgian children.
When the Pelasgian men figured that out, they held council and decided on something horrible: If these children already have in mind to help each other against the children from their rightful wives and already try to rule over them now, what are they going to do once they’re grown up? So they decided to kill the children of the Attic women. This they did, and they killed the mothers too.
Note that many countries in Europe / Western Asia / Northern Africa already have names in Latin. The Netherlands is called Batavia for example, Russia is Ruthenia, France is Gallia, Switzerland is Helvetia, etc.