Well, the etymology is correct and the definition is close, but no cigar . . . Yikes! well, I guess i shouldve been more clear. I know and knew what the use for the word nostalgia is/was in English, and family gatherings can be painful indeed! :wink: but this was a post about the etymology of it. '...

i dont understand, how did i miss my cigar?

(Perhaps the metaphorical person didn't chew properly and choked?)

Or perhaps if you're face down in it and bleeding already, there isn't much of a choice!

thanks a lot tim n katy! i guess i didnt see the previous one

'bite the dust' is Homeric according to the back cover of a translation of the Iliad that I have. Unfortunately I dont have a citation.

ive never looked this up, but im going to make a wild guess, unless somebody knows for sure: nostos (Nostov, in greek SPIonic font) in greek means a journey home, like the Odyssey, and algia (algia) means pain, such as in an analgesic medicine so am I wrong in assuming nostalgia means 'pain for retu...

i just realized i dont know how to use the quote box. if someone could help me thatd be greeat. dont want to appear as too much of a newbie

[quote]Oh, quite often (but indeed not always), there is a way to tell! [/quote] I understand that there exists such a thing as language reconstruction, and ways to discover previous forms, and cat, admittedly was a bad example. Maybe if the word was bird or fish we could all agree :wink: but 'two,'...

English is easy! if you know greek, latin, french, and of course some germanic language.

in my ESL class i gave them this list and they all but gave up:

rough tough cough trough though thorough laugh baugh bough slough

oh - and these apes definitely demonstrate social competence! very very advanced competence with hierarchical structure and all the sex stuff, and thats without 'human style' language

i was referring to overall linguistic competence as opposed to just production such as some signing for basic objects which has been done for years. As far as recognizing sounds and distinguishing several variables, dogs and cats do that all the time. A two and a half year old human is far beyond th...

there are no languages, only dialects and families

ive heard that English and Mandarin are the only (well-known) languages that observe the logical neg+neg=pos construction.

Unfortunately, if an 'incorrect' usage is more common than a 'correct' one, the names don't apply any more.

people and tribe names are tricky and should not be counted as exclusively one language or another. But i agree, Gaul is from Gallia and Germany is from Germania.

the cat thing makes a lot of sense, especially with the Egyptian obsession.

as long as were talking about archaic etymologies: the PIE root for death is *mrot i believe, as evidenced in 'mors' in latin and 'amrot' (i think, somebody know this one?) in sanskrit. But death appears as 'thanos, thanatos' in Greek except for one word. The food of the Gods made them im-mortal, wi...