What's the most exotic English loan-word you know that we use every day?

[greekspeak]

I have two

Cotton: The word appears to ultimately come from Sumerian

Guitar: It is a loan word from Spanish, which borrowed the word "kithara" from Greek. A kithara was a kind of stringed instrument.

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. One used here frequently is "avatar", which comes from Sanskrit...

and "person" is from Etruscan via Latin.

[Moochy]

5. Etruscan

Ive always been intrigued by Etruria's invisible contributions to Western Civilization. It seems like much of the magical and ritual language of Romes diviners and soothsayers was deeply influenced by the rituals of the Etruscans.

Does anyone have any good web resources on Etruria?

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. Wikipedia is a good place to start...

their article on Etruscan civilisation has a number of external links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscans

And the Open Directory is also a good resource: http://dmoz.org/Society/History/By_Time_Period/Ancient/Etruscans/

[Moochy]

8. Thanks!!

Thanks for the link, I should always start with the wiki :)

[billyskank]

6. Avatar refers to an incarnation of the Lord Vishnu

of which there are ten. The last, Kalki, is yet to come, and He kills all the demons which prepares the universe for another golden age and the beginning of another universal cycle.

[sakabatou]

2. Typhoon

Comes from the Japanese word for storm I think.

[MisterP]

13. Merriam-Webster gives it from Typhon, through the Arabic. Typhon was both

a "violent storm" and the monster Zeus trapped under Mt. Aetna, which is why it erupts. My avatar calls Typhon "great-grandpappy."
http://www.m-w.com/ has a lot of fun etymologies!

[norml]

3. Barge Bark Ivory and Ammonia from Egyptian. Also Paper / Papyrus

April January and Saturn from Etruscan.

[sleipnir]

4. Assclown...from the late 90's American popculture.

n/t

[Old_Fart]

9. Trojan

:hide:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

10. juggernaut

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. Bosom, pajamas, pants, shampoo, babel, ziggurat, abyss, mammon,

muslin, abbet, abbey

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

12. Exotic meaning from a non-Romance language? What about chocolate,

which is a word that has its roots in an Aztec word?

"1604, from Nahuatl xocolatl, from xococ 'bitter' + atl 'water.' Brought to Spain for first time 1520. John Hannon (financed by Dr. James Baker) started the first chocolate factory in the U.S. in Dorchester, 1780; Baker later founded Baker's Chocolate. Chocolate chip is from 1940.

'To a Coffee-house, to drink jocolatte, very good' ."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=c&p=12

Etymology of a word means to trace its origins.

[Redstone]

14. Guitar may have actually some from Sanskrit or Hindi,

if you note the similarity to the word "sitar."

Redstone

[greekspeak]

16. The words are probably related at some point

But the linguists who have taught me Greek assured me that the word for guitar came from the Greek kithara. This proabably would have been pronounced kit-ha-ra, which is much like the word for Guitar in other indoeuropean languages (i.e. the German "gitarre" git-a-ra.

Still the kithara and sitar may be related. The word Sitar could be a Greek loanword too. I am not a sanscrit expert, so I cannot speak to it.

[Redstone]

17. Linguistics is a fascinating but ultimately imprecise

field, full of oddities: For example, why do Spanish and Portugese look so much alike in writing, and sound so little alike when spoken?

Redstone

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Because they diverged from common Iberian Latin....

there are also similarities with Italian (more with Italian, in fact, than with French or Romanian, the other Romance languages). THat's why they're orthographically somewhat similar.

Centuries of geographic separation of the Spanish and Portuguese populations, however, led to linguistic drift, as did a greater or lesser degree of influence by Arabic, Occitan, and Catalonian on Spanish in particular (what we think of as "Spanish" is the Castilian dialect). Due to Portugal's geographic separation from the source of these influences, its phonology eveolved differently; there's actually a school of thought that Portuguese may be an archaic form of Spanish.

[Redstone]

19. Well, now I'll know who to ask when I have a language

question. You sound like an expert.

Thanks for the info.

Redstone

[greekspeak]

20. That is a darn good question!

I used to listen to short wave radio to accumulate stations (DXing). It took very little time to learn to tell Portuguese from Spanish without knowing either. They really do not sound that much alike at all.

[Maddy McCall]

15. Bayou. It has Choctaw origins.