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Once acquainted with a little etymology, the mind tends to make strange associations. Someone says shirt and we may think skirt but this is no Freudian slip - shirt and skirt are merely different ways of pronouncing the same ancient word for "a short garment". The Teutonic root word is *skurto- ("short-") from which we get Old Norse skyrta "shirt", Dutch schorte "apron" and German schürze "apron". Other examples of this sk-,
sh- equivalence abound. A shell on a nut or a scale
on a fish, they Other cutting words from this root are scalpel, sculpture and, surprisingly school. Ever wondered why we say a shoal of fish but a school of dolphin? To an etymologist they are both the same word. In medieval German schöle meant a "troop" (that is, a division of the army). A schism is a division of a religion or school of thought. Both science and skill are the application of discrimination or, to put it another way, "separating [mentally] one thing from another". Shin is also related, being a piece
of meat which is cut off the bone Now that you know about relation between sk- and sh- words one might expect skin to be related to shin and chine. Well, skin is a kind of "second-cousin once removed" as it comes from *sek-, another, related, Indo-European root which also means "to cut" . Other words derived from *sek- are sector, section, intersect, saw and sedge, a grass-like plant with three-cornered, cutting leaves. Let us consider the humble saxifrage, a small alpine plant which is credited with the ability to split the rocks it grows on. Its name means "rock-breaker" from the Latin words saxa "stone" (literally "a broken-off piece") and frangere "to break". So, etymologically interpreted, saxifrage means "breaker of broken-off pieces". Oh, skit, is that the time...!? |
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