It may seem hard to believe, but Latin aqua, “water,” is related to island, which originally meant “watery land.” Aqua comes almost unchanged from Indo-European *akw?-, “water.” *Akw?- became *ahw?- in Germanic by Grimm's Law and other sound changes. To this was built the adjective *ahwj?–, “watery...

I may have been a bit too melodramatic with my statement heh. I do think you made a valid point - jargon is indeed used in certain communities to exclude others, to communicate with certain secrecy, and to discriminate between those who belong and those who don't. my objection was to your reference...

as I noted on my recent travelogue , the Guarani word Iguazu means "big waters". What I didn't point out is that their word for water is « i » - which makes one wonder whether the similarity with our own word (see etymology for island , or watery land) is purely coincidental, or pehaps the...

Companies and scientific groups have Jargon, all specifically to exclude outsiders the statement makes it sound as if the intent is to alienate. but from my experience, jargon surfaces from necessity. stock brokers need to describe conditions and events that have no meaning outside of their realm s...

• querulous • PS : Let us hope that ekkis does indeed decide to pay us a visit !... men herregud! vilken överraskning att find all the usual suspects here! to be honest, I did attempt to join this site before, at TCWard's suggestion, but the registration agreement with all that nonsense about offen...