Etymologies

[Hrolf Kraki]

What interesting etymologies have y'all come across? Random things pop in my head and I happened to look up the following etymology, then giggled a little:


Verb: to masturbate ===> Derivation uncertain; one suggestion is Latin masturbare from mas < manus = hand and turbare = to throw into disorder. Whence the words disturb and trouble.


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masturbate#Etymology



Post your own; English or otherwise.

[Lenny]

I like the story of the word "Google". It was invented by a small child

It is one of the few words with utterly no "etymology". It was just a nonsense noise from the mind of a child. Now it is one of the most common words in the world. (Just not in China these days...:D).


googol : The number 10 raised to the power 100, written out as the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Coined in 1940, in "Mathematics and the Imagination," a layman's book on mathematics written by U.S. mathematicians Edward Kasner (1878-1955) and James R. Newman. The word supposedly was coined a year or two before by Kasner's 9- (or 8-) year-old nephew (unnamed in the book's account of the event -- but later found to be Milton Sirotta), when asked for a name for an enormous number. Perhaps influenced by comic strip character Barney Google.

Google : [...] The site's name is apparently derived from the mathematics term "googol".

[Hrolf Kraki]

Soccer


Colloquial abbreviation for Association football, via abbreviation Assoc. +‎ -er (“‘(slang suffix)’”); earlier socca (1889), then socker (1891), with soccer attested 1895.