Yet another word stupidity: vinegar

[cjsmith]

French "vinegar" = vinaigre.
French "wine" = vin.
French "sour" = aigre.

What happens to wine when it goes bad? WHY DID I NOT SEE HOW THEY MADE THAT WORD? It's not like I don't know every one of these words in French, and it's not like I've never in my life heard anything about wine.

I picked up this little gem while reading my chemistry textbook last night. (They're discussing acetic acid. Acetum: Latin, soured.)

The more stuff like this I notice, the more I think I need to turn in my interested-in-languages card. Obviously I ignore the topic almost completely.

Comments

Re: Northern European epithets

[fyellin.livejournal.com]

My bad. I failed to distinguish between Ms. Wallraff's thoughts (first paragraph) and my conclusions (second paragraph).

I realize that the following is a gross generalization, but my guess is that many people go through the following steps when first encountering the word "niggard[ly]".

Step 1) Gosh what's that person doing using that horrible word!

Step 2) Oh, gee, etymologically, those two words have nothing in common.

which unfortunately gets followed by

Step 3) I'll show I'm as bright and well read as the writer/speaker in Step 1 by using the word too.

YMMV.

Re: Northern European epithets

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, I get it now! I think you're saying that most people who are using it are using it to show off their knowledge. And yeah, I wouldn't at all be surprised if that were the case.