Apterous

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Apterous

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:38 pm

• apterous •


Pronunciation: æp-tê-rês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Without wings.

Notes: This word is so rarely used we can't seem to remember which suffix it contains; apteral and apteran mean the same thing. The last variant is used an adjective referring to a genus of wingless cockroach, Aptera. Recently, Aptera has been adopted as the name of a new three-wheeled electric automobile.

In Play: This word is used mostly in biological discussions of insects: "It is easier to rid your house of apterous insects than any of the winged varieties." However, we may play around with it: "Your idea for helicopter ejection seats is apterous; it just won't fly."

Word History: Today's Good Word was a gift from ancient Greek, where it was spelled apteros, created from a(n) "no, without" + pteron "wing, feather"+ -os, an adjective suffix. Pteron came from PIE pet-/pot- "fly, flow" + -er/-or, a common noun-maker in PIE, preserved today in most IE languages. Since [p] became [f] and [t] became [th] in Germanic, we are not surprised to find feather in English, but Danish fjer, German Feder, Swedish fjäder, and Dutch veder all underwent further changes since Proto-Germanic. We find the same PIE word underlying Greek potamos "river", Sanskrit patati "flies", Latvian putns "bird", Russian and Serbian ptica "bird", Polish ptak "bird", and Czech pták "bird". (Now, a double 'thank-you' to Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira for his long-term service on our editorial board and sharing today's extremely interesting Good Word with us.)
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Re: Apterous

Postby Dr. Goodword » Thu Aug 04, 2022 10:22 am

Duane Beard (no relation so far as I know) just raised an interesting question about the PIE word pet-/pot- "fly, flow":
As I was reading the explanation of today's work apterous, and the related words in the other Slavic languages, it struck me that perhaps the Russian word петух shares some of the same PIE derivation. Might this be true?
My response was as follows:
According to Max Vasmer, the most reliable Russian etymologist, петух is based on петь "to sing"; however, the root of that word is пой-, so there's room for doubt. Where does the T come from? Your suggestion makes more sense, but I haven't checked it out yet.
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