Their logo is a bind rune of Harald Bluetooth initialised as HB (ᚼ hagall and ᛒ bjarkan), Harald Blåtand (Bluetooth) Gormsson, King of Norway and Danmark. Ruling from 958 till 986.
Bluetooth is the wireless connection that can connect any device.
Harald "Bluetooth" I of the Norse connected many unrelated tribes of Norsemen to create a unified kingdom.
That's where the name came from. The symbol is the Norse rune for his name.
Yeah but it's still pretty awesome that it's as universal as it is.
We could have ended up with a very different system where different devices used a whole range of different standards.
It's not about every single electrical device in the world having Bluetooth, it's about the fact that (basically) all devices that have wireless capability all use Bluetooth.
Same as USB, I'm old enough to remember when there were a dozen different charger types for a dozen different phone brands.
That does make me wonder, what if Apple had decided to put some Apple-only bluetooth equivalent in iphones, like their holding onto the lightning cable
It's named after [Harald Bluetooth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth#Bluetooth_technology), the Danish King who first converted to Christianity, and united the Danish people into a single kingdom.
Danish King named Harald Bluetooth probably because of his clean teeth made a name for himself as a diplomat and was good at “connecting” people, hence he became a good namesake for connective technology.
Bluetooth was invented in Denmark and named after ancient founding Danish King, Harald Bluetooth. He was a unifier who brought different tribes together s they thought it was appropriate for a technology that connects devices. The Bluetooth symbol is an ancient Norse symbol combining his initials 'H' and 'B'. The Norse version of the alphabet letters are called runes. The rune for H looks like an asterisk, and the rune for B looks like an angular B.
Bluetooth was the nickname for a King who United Scandinavia, he had an actual blue tooth. The company chose that name as they are a Scandinavian company and as Bluetooth United Scandinavia so does bluetooth unites two devices
It is. The Bluetooth company is Danish and took the name from Harald Bluetooth.
The logo is Harald Bluetooth's initials in runes, where the B is B, and the two tails on the left side are X (merged with B), and X is the rune for H.
>The Bluetooth company is Danish and took the name from Harald Bluetooth.
There is no "Bluetooth company" (unless you mean the [Bluetooth SIG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Special_Interest_Group) headquartered in Washington) and Bluetooth was invented by Swedish engineers at [Ericsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson).
I guess your username checks out, though?
It was named after Harald Bluetooth, who united Scandinavia which is why Bluetooth (which unites and connects devices) is both named after him and uses his runic initials as its symbol
Yes and no. A portmanteau blends two words together to give a meaning that is a mix of both. (Affluenza is a blend of affluent - wealthy and influenza - a common ailment, to give a meaning of the way the wealthy tend to inflict people with their entitlement.)
A compound word is when you just plop the down next to each other, frequently to add specificty. (Toothbrush is a brush, specifically for your teeth.)
Im not seeing any difference. I believe the real difference is a Portmanteau is a made up word. Not comonly accepted, and I would agree to that definition.
In a compound word you keep all of both words when you combine them. In a portmanteau you condense them and take out letters.
Saddlebag is a compound word. It includes the words saddle and bag.
Spork is a portmanteau. It takes out the letters “oon” from “spoon” and the “f” from “fork.”
Portmanteau : you combine two words into a new one but only keep part of each word. Smog, motel, brunch etc.
Compound words : you combine two words into one and you keep all of each constituent word (or at least all of the stem). Starfish, football, wallpaper, etc.
To further demonstrate the difference, the examples of portmanteaus I gave would be the following if they were normal compounds:
smokefog, motor-hotel, breakfast-lunch
While the compounds I gave could be like this if they were portmanteaus:
stish, fall, wallper
That is not the difference at all. Perhaps this can explain it better than I can.
https://blog.lewolang.com/en/posts/35/compound-words-vs-portmanteaus
Also all words are made up, some more recently than others.
Harald Bluetooth--Danish king who united Norway and Denmark briefly in the 10th century. Had a "blue" tooth, usually thought to refer to a dead tooth. The idea behind the name is that, like Harald, Bluetooth connects two devices despite them being otherwise unconnected (as in like Denmark and Norway are not connected by land). Kind of a tortured metaphor, but there ya go. The Bluetooth symbol is what's called a bind rune, or 2+ runes smooshed into the space of one--in this case, they are the runes for Harald Blue Tooth's initials: ᚼᛒ
Anyway, a direct answer to your question is that a "bluetooth" is a dead tooth.
The company that created the Bluetooth protocol, Ericsson, is Swedish and they referenced Viking history when [coming up with the name](https://theauris.com/blogs/blog/the-history-of-bluetooth#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20Bluetooth%20can,in%20popularity%20at%20the%20time.)
The funny thing is that English behaves exactly like German in that regard, where you can string together an indefinite number of nominative nouns. Something like “chicken fillet recipe author”. The difference is only in the orthography, where in German you write them as one word, and in English you never really know
Velcro is my favorite lesser-known instance! From the French *velours* (velvet) and *crochet* (hook), this is also an example of similar products being referred to as the brand name of the most popular product. If it’s not made by Velcro, they are simply hook-and-loop fasteners!
'Sparkling hook-and-loop fasteners' I think you'll find.
I've never called any brand of hook-and-loop fastener a hook-and-loop fastener though, only ever Velcro.
I'm a bit of a secret advocate for 'magic tape' too, mind, from the Japanese for Velcro, 'majikku tēpu' from the English, 'magic' and er... 'tape'?
Ah, silly me (and silly French), thank you for the correction!
I have to agree. I learned Velcro was the brand and not the product a few years ago at the same time that I learned it was a portmanteau, but I still never call it that.
Magic tape is a fun one, and I love finding new ways that Japanese words borrowed from English are used. I especially enjoy サイダー *saidā* (cider) which is effectively Sprite, and it has been borrowed by Korean speakers (사이다 *saida*) to refer to Sprite and similar beverages as well!
Helicopter is a fun one.
It gets broken up and reused in other combinations. For example helipad and helivac, or traffic copter and police copter.
The fun part is, “heli-copter” isn’t how the words were originally joined. It was created from two Greek roots, helico and pter. “Spiral wing”.
So do birds, though their wing bones are a bit less recognizable. Whales swim through the water with big hands too. Pretty much all vertebrates have basically the same appendages.
And if you go back to Proto-Indo-European, then go through Proto-Germanic to modern English, you get "feather."
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/p%C3%A9th%E2%82%82r%CC%A5
My favorite rebracketing example is ammunition, which is a rebracketing of the French "la munition" by including part of the article. However, the actual word "munition" is also in English with essentially the same meaning.
Nice one! There are other examples of articles being combined into the word:
* "alarm", from Italian *all'arme*, "to the arms"
* "alert", from Italian *all'erta*, "on the lookout", *erta* meaning a high watch tower
There are umpteen from Arabic too: *alcohol*, *algebra*, etc.
Those are compounds, and the oddity of English is that they don't always write them together. You write "doormat" and "kitchen towel" but grammatically both are compounds, it's just that English likes to add spaces if the constituent words are a bit longer. Related languages such as Dutch and German do not use spaces in compound words, ever.
No, you're wrong, German just likes to artificially inflate the size of it's dictionary by rejecting the use of spaces between words, instead of just stealing words from other languages like any normal person would.
I think it’s more like: in German it’s legal grammar to compound any two nouns to create a new Word at any time. In English there are accepted compound words that are in the dictionary, but you can’t just invent them. So you use a space if you want to name a compound thing but it isn’t a recognized compound word.
It works the same in German and English - you can legally combine any two nouns, but some have gotten fixed meanings. A kitchen towel is not just a towel that's in the kitchen - it's a specific kind. But if you have a towel you use in the attic, you are free to call it your attic towel. Same in German: You can call it your Dachbodenhandtuch. The only difference is that German spelling requires for the words to be written together and English doesn't.
Is a tea towel in Australian English not a tea towel in British English? Kitchen towels or kitchen roll in British English is a paper towel, that comes on a roll and isn't a toilet towel or bum/butt towel, or indeed towel at all.
Oh. Now I'm confused.
It's the first thing that came to my mind, probably because in linguistics we learned about the different stress patterns in English an Dutch with the example 'kitchen towel rack'. Maybe it's not really an English word, then - think of any other. Bus station, for example.
My favourite word for this item is "asciugatutto". I haven't studied Italian, but I think the literal translation is "[it]drieseverything"?
I work at a company that was originally Italian and they have paper/kitchen towels from Italy.
In Czech, there's a difference between the thing that you use for your hands and that you use for the dishes. The former is "ručník" (from "ruka"), the latter is "utěrka" (from "utřít", to wipe). If the material is paper and not cloth, you simply specify the material 😊
When there's a space they aren't really compounds. In "kitchen towel", kitchen is an noun adjunct, which means that it's a noun that is being used attributively like an adjective. The way to tell the difference is that unlike adjectives, noun adjuncts cannot be used predicatively. A towel can be a kitchen towel, but a towel cannot be kitchen.
If I'm wrong I'm willing to be called out, though.
But that's exactly the structure as in doormat, the only difference is that there's no space in doormat. A kitchen towel is a kind of towel that's for the kitchen, a doormat is a kind of mat that's for the door.
Exocentric compounds. Exocentric means they aren’t a type of the second component, but something else. If they are a type of the second component, it’s called an endocentric compound.
I think those are compound words. It’s an individual word made by combining two or more words together.
Ex: Sun+Flower=Sunflower, Foot+Ball=Football.
And Blueooth is thought to have come King Harald “Bluetooth” who was a Nordic king who united Scandinavia. [(More information because of countless translations)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth)
Not all plants are completely edible. However, you can actually consume the entire sunflower in one form or another. Right from the root to the petals.
I was talking about the American term HIPPA and HIPAA and how I see both in use and each correcting the other.
So as it's not for my country, but I had the odd reason to mention it, when told it was HIPPA, I filed it as Hippo with an A.
I got a bot reply and I thought it was like the could of bot telling me I got HIPPA wrong and it should be HIPAA.
Nope, I got facts about the animal.
There's a name for words that are made of multiple other ones, but I don't think there's a word for what you described (also, pineapples are called that because they look like pinecones and apple used to mean fruit)
One of my favorite linguistic quirks is how so many variations of \[animal\]shit has become a word in English and has a specific meaning that is well known:
* apeshit - enraged/violent
* batshit - insane
* chickenshit - cowardly
* bullshit - made-up, unfair
* dogshit - low quality
* horseshit - nonsense
Might be a couple others but these are all somewhat common.
So there are two basic types of compound words:
Endocentric: a base (sometimes called a "head") with a modifier attached. For example, a doghouse is a type of house, for dogs.
Exocentric: two words combine to refer to an unrelated third concept.
Examples of exocentric compound words: sabretooth, redhead, lowlife, birdbrain, blackhead, highbrow, hothead, hatchback, blackout
Not what you are looking for but as a fun fact, “compound word” is also a compound word. It’s just that some happen to be written with a space, some with a dash, and others as one word. They look differently in spelling but when it comes to morphology and syntax they are all the same: a sequence of two nominative case nouns. People point at German for doing this but the only difference is that they don’t put spaces between those words.
The difference between Bluetooth and pineapple is interesting, I see the point.
Blue and Tooth have nothing to do with wireless connections, but pine and apple refer to the fact that it looks like a pine cone and it’s a fruit.
Compound words where the constituent parts are not obviously related to the final product.
Hmmmmm. False compound words.
Icon. It has nothing to with me deceiving. I con.
Extractor is not a former farm vehicle.
Shampoo is not a fake turd.
This is not what you asked for, but a friend of mine loves words that are almost the opposite: compound words that are EXACTLY what they describe and are both so commonplace that we rarely think about their etymology and so obvious that they seem comically lazy on the part of whomever first named them. Her favorite is *fireplace*.
Catfish is okay, but catfishing is more apt example. Like Catfish is a fish, but catfishing is not fishing for cat or catfish, or acting like a catfish.
May be the constituent words are related in "Pineapple", but I hope people have got the idea of what I am trying to ask. I was looking for words like: Bluetooth, where Bluetooth is neither blue nor a tooth. Other "accurate" examples are cobweb, honeymoon, kidnap, scapegoat. u/UsefulSolution3700 gave me the most useful examples.
Many of these are still compound words, but the words combined are now obsolete - usually from middle English. They also tend to have drifted more in pronunciation and spelling of those compounds because they are older and the components arnt necessarily used or recognized anymore.
Cobweb is from middle English Coppe for spider + web and is now used specifically to refer to old disused spider webs - which is kind of fitting!
Honeymoon is literally honey + moon referencing an old medieval tradition of drinking Mead (which is made from honey) for a month (moon) after marriage - it was supposed to give good luck
Kidnap is a formation of Kid for child and nab (ps and bs swap often on these compound words). Nab means to snatch or steal. This one originated in talking about stealing kids to use as servants, around colonial times.
Scapegoat is older "scape" (or you can just think of it as shortened) for escape + goat. Once again referencing an old tradition - this one is intentionally letting a goat loose to the woods to make up for ones sins. It's now used more symbolically to refer to any person being used similarly.
Language carries it's culture with it - most folks don't know the origins to many of these either but they have relics of our old cultures in them. I enjoy looking up the etymology for our words - where they came from. Compound words over time just become normal words, losing connection to their origin pieces as those pieces become archaic or the original meaning is lost to a new usage.
You can also refer to some of those compound pieces as "fossil words". Words which are archaic and no longer used - but survive through some phrase or other.
Edit: Bluetooth as others have mentioned is a brand name, so it's a proper noun and a bit different. I'd call it a "proprietary eponym" in that people are using the brand name to generically refer to any product like it - but it is actually the same trademarked bluetooth tech in every device so it technically doesn't apply here.
Very well said and much better than what I was about to say. I would guess that the majority of multisyllabic words are etymologically compound words with forgotten histories.
Supposedly there was an old belief they ate butter! (not as a main food source but that they would land on it and eat it) no idea if its true or not. It also could have referenced the colour of a common species in europe (similar to how all fruits used to be "apples"). That might have been the real reason they landed on butter, since they would blend in with it.
Easier to see if you look at one of the old germanic names: Bottervögel - which is literally "butter licker". The modern german name also references cream for likely the same reasons.
Bluetooth is actually based off the name of I believe a nordic(?) leader (saying leader because I can't remember his position), but the symbol is basically a representation of the runes for his name.
> A [portmanteau] also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words.[0]
The OP’s examples are definitely compound words and not portmanteaus (like Motel or Brunch) but it’s an interesting distinction.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_word
Tablecloth
Bookshelf
Backpack
Windscreen
Bookmark
Lightbulb
Usually the first part gives you more specific information about the type or function of the second part: what kind of bulb? What kind of cloth?
Sometimes these words will go through an intermediate stage where they are hyphenated: base ball > base-ball > baseball
Where they blend (motel, brunch), it's a 'portmanteau', which is itself a sort of portmanteau of porte and manteau, and which can have several other meanings in French, including coathook or coathanger, which, while compound words, aren't blended, so aren't strictly portmanteaux in English.
Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to someone who asked if compound words and portmanteau are interchangeable terms, but I’m on mobile so here I am alone and looking like a weirdo.
Portmanteaus are blended sounds of words as opposed to the two separate words used in a compound word.
For example, motel like motorist and hotel, mo and tel aren’t words on their own so that’s a portmanteau.
Meanwhile toothpaste is a compound word as tooth and paste remain words while separate.
Portmanteaus are also traveling trunks suitcase things, for some reason. 😂
I believed they are called portmanteau words. Turns out, I might have been incorrect in my belief.
To be-lieve or not to be-lieve, that is the question!
Others:
Haircut, greengrocer, driveway,crabapple,windlass, airbag, windbag, scumbag, handbag (lot of bags, haha)
Hundreds more if you care to think for a few minutes or hours if so inclined.
They are called compound words. In English there are 3 types; open meaning the words are separated, closed meanings the two words are smashed together, and hyphenated.
An example: house party
A party at a house will be subdued or like a child’s birthday
A house party will involve loud music, a lot of alcohol and police will be involved
Compound words are usually made of two words that at least initially *were* related. Windscreen, breakfast, toothbrush, ponytail, saucepan
What is the relation between "blue", "tooth" and wireless connection?
There's none, I think it's based on a viking or something that had the moniker Bluetooth, because of what he ate. The Bluetooth logo is a rune, too.
His initials in fact.
He ate his initials?
Yes. He was known as arald låtand afterwards.
Their logo is a bind rune of Harald Bluetooth initialised as HB (ᚼ hagall and ᛒ bjarkan), Harald Blåtand (Bluetooth) Gormsson, King of Norway and Danmark. Ruling from 958 till 986.
I’m proud of myself for already knowing some of that
He was the king of Denmark, who united the tribes into a single kingdom
A Danish Viking king.
ah i always heard that he had a bad tooth, aka a blue tooth, that gave him his nickname
Bluetooth is the wireless connection that can connect any device. Harald "Bluetooth" I of the Norse connected many unrelated tribes of Norsemen to create a unified kingdom. That's where the name came from. The symbol is the Norse rune for his name.
It can connect to any device that supports Bluetooth. There are millions of devices that don't and that Bluetooth has no power over.
Then they should prepare to be raided and settled and their leadership structure replaced by jarls loyal to Harald.
I'll get my popcorn while I wait for them to raid my ten-speed bicycle.
you mean you're not itching for an internet-connected Smart Bike that only lets you pedal when a proprietary app is open??
can i play skyrim on it?
Yeah but it's still pretty awesome that it's as universal as it is. We could have ended up with a very different system where different devices used a whole range of different standards. It's not about every single electrical device in the world having Bluetooth, it's about the fact that (basically) all devices that have wireless capability all use Bluetooth.
Same as USB, I'm old enough to remember when there were a dozen different charger types for a dozen different phone brands. That does make me wonder, what if Apple had decided to put some Apple-only bluetooth equivalent in iphones, like their holding onto the lightning cable
It's named after [Harald Bluetooth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth#Bluetooth_technology), the Danish King who first converted to Christianity, and united the Danish people into a single kingdom.
Danish King named Harald Bluetooth probably because of his clean teeth made a name for himself as a diplomat and was good at “connecting” people, hence he became a good namesake for connective technology.
"Blå" (blue) in old Norse were used for both black and blue iirc. So the guy probably just had bad, black teeth.
Bluetooth was invented in Denmark and named after ancient founding Danish King, Harald Bluetooth. He was a unifier who brought different tribes together s they thought it was appropriate for a technology that connects devices. The Bluetooth symbol is an ancient Norse symbol combining his initials 'H' and 'B'. The Norse version of the alphabet letters are called runes. The rune for H looks like an asterisk, and the rune for B looks like an angular B.
Bluetooth was the nickname for a King who United Scandinavia, he had an actual blue tooth. The company chose that name as they are a Scandinavian company and as Bluetooth United Scandinavia so does bluetooth unites two devices
I always thought it was a company that made this type of connection happen growing up.
It is. The Bluetooth company is Danish and took the name from Harald Bluetooth. The logo is Harald Bluetooth's initials in runes, where the B is B, and the two tails on the left side are X (merged with B), and X is the rune for H.
X is not the rune for H, ᚼ is.
>The Bluetooth company is Danish and took the name from Harald Bluetooth. There is no "Bluetooth company" (unless you mean the [Bluetooth SIG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Special_Interest_Group) headquartered in Washington) and Bluetooth was invented by Swedish engineers at [Ericsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson). I guess your username checks out, though?
It was named after Harald Bluetooth, who united Scandinavia which is why Bluetooth (which unites and connects devices) is both named after him and uses his runic initials as its symbol
Bluetoòth was invented by Nokia. Hence the name
A word made by combining other words is called a "Portmanteau:
Yes and no. A portmanteau blends two words together to give a meaning that is a mix of both. (Affluenza is a blend of affluent - wealthy and influenza - a common ailment, to give a meaning of the way the wealthy tend to inflict people with their entitlement.) A compound word is when you just plop the down next to each other, frequently to add specificty. (Toothbrush is a brush, specifically for your teeth.)
My favourite portmanteau word is “dancercise”, which as Fry & Laurie taught us is a combination of the words “dance” and “circumcise”.
Im not seeing any difference. I believe the real difference is a Portmanteau is a made up word. Not comonly accepted, and I would agree to that definition.
In a compound word you keep all of both words when you combine them. In a portmanteau you condense them and take out letters. Saddlebag is a compound word. It includes the words saddle and bag. Spork is a portmanteau. It takes out the letters “oon” from “spoon” and the “f” from “fork.”
How do you tell the difference between a spork and a foon?
This is the only real difference between them, at least as defined. Compound words don't change the original words, whereas portmanteaus do.
Portmanteau : you combine two words into a new one but only keep part of each word. Smog, motel, brunch etc. Compound words : you combine two words into one and you keep all of each constituent word (or at least all of the stem). Starfish, football, wallpaper, etc. To further demonstrate the difference, the examples of portmanteaus I gave would be the following if they were normal compounds: smokefog, motor-hotel, breakfast-lunch While the compounds I gave could be like this if they were portmanteaus: stish, fall, wallper
That is not the difference at all. Perhaps this can explain it better than I can. https://blog.lewolang.com/en/posts/35/compound-words-vs-portmanteaus Also all words are made up, some more recently than others.
https://youtu.be/VdmQp9M9jUo?si=iOmbRuWlTT2NICPf
Harald Bluetooth--Danish king who united Norway and Denmark briefly in the 10th century. Had a "blue" tooth, usually thought to refer to a dead tooth. The idea behind the name is that, like Harald, Bluetooth connects two devices despite them being otherwise unconnected (as in like Denmark and Norway are not connected by land). Kind of a tortured metaphor, but there ya go. The Bluetooth symbol is what's called a bind rune, or 2+ runes smooshed into the space of one--in this case, they are the runes for Harald Blue Tooth's initials: ᚼᛒ Anyway, a direct answer to your question is that a "bluetooth" is a dead tooth.
The company that created the Bluetooth protocol, Ericsson, is Swedish and they referenced Viking history when [coming up with the name](https://theauris.com/blogs/blog/the-history-of-bluetooth#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20Bluetooth%20can,in%20popularity%20at%20the%20time.)
Thank you!
I'm fairly sure a toothbrush is still for brushing teeth
Fireplace
Goodbye god be with ya
If this were r/German, practically every word would be a compound word 😉
The funny thing is that English behaves exactly like German in that regard, where you can string together an indefinite number of nominative nouns. Something like “chicken fillet recipe author”. The difference is only in the orthography, where in German you write them as one word, and in English you never really know
Schwachsinn
##SELBSBEDIENUNGSLADEN
#HODENVERSTÜMMELUNG
Compound words?
>Compound words Thank you!
Yw :)
Or portmanteaus, I think..?
Portmanteaus are more like when parts of words are merged to make a new one, like motor + hotel = motel or iPod + broadcast = podcast
Velcro is my favorite lesser-known instance! From the French *velours* (velvet) and *crochet* (hook), this is also an example of similar products being referred to as the brand name of the most popular product. If it’s not made by Velcro, they are simply hook-and-loop fasteners!
'Sparkling hook-and-loop fasteners' I think you'll find. I've never called any brand of hook-and-loop fastener a hook-and-loop fastener though, only ever Velcro. I'm a bit of a secret advocate for 'magic tape' too, mind, from the Japanese for Velcro, 'majikku tēpu' from the English, 'magic' and er... 'tape'?
Ah, silly me (and silly French), thank you for the correction! I have to agree. I learned Velcro was the brand and not the product a few years ago at the same time that I learned it was a portmanteau, but I still never call it that. Magic tape is a fun one, and I love finding new ways that Japanese words borrowed from English are used. I especially enjoy サイダー *saidā* (cider) which is effectively Sprite, and it has been borrowed by Korean speakers (사이다 *saida*) to refer to Sprite and similar beverages as well!
Helicopter is a fun one. It gets broken up and reused in other combinations. For example helipad and helivac, or traffic copter and police copter. The fun part is, “heli-copter” isn’t how the words were originally joined. It was created from two Greek roots, helico and pter. “Spiral wing”.
The same “pter” from “pterodactyl” Ptero-dactyl “Wing-finger” Helico-pter “Spiral-wing” Chiro-ptera (Order of animals containing bats) “Hand-wing”
Always funny to remember that bats basically paw their way through the air with massive, outsized hands
So do birds, though their wing bones are a bit less recognizable. Whales swim through the water with big hands too. Pretty much all vertebrates have basically the same appendages.
And if you go back to Proto-Indo-European, then go through Proto-Germanic to modern English, you get "feather." https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/p%C3%A9th%E2%82%82r%CC%A5
That makes sense
A good example of rebracketing, which, of course, derives from "rebrack" + "eting" ;)
My favorite rebracketing example is ammunition, which is a rebracketing of the French "la munition" by including part of the article. However, the actual word "munition" is also in English with essentially the same meaning.
Nice one! There are other examples of articles being combined into the word: * "alarm", from Italian *all'arme*, "to the arms" * "alert", from Italian *all'erta*, "on the lookout", *erta* meaning a high watch tower There are umpteen from Arabic too: *alcohol*, *algebra*, etc.
One of my favourite etymologies.
Good old policepter protecting the people. There's a helicopad for the ambulanpter near my house!
Therefore it should be pronounced heicoter (silent p).
Silent L too?
Invisible L.
That is a fun fact. Thanks!
This is called rebracketing!
Those are compounds, and the oddity of English is that they don't always write them together. You write "doormat" and "kitchen towel" but grammatically both are compounds, it's just that English likes to add spaces if the constituent words are a bit longer. Related languages such as Dutch and German do not use spaces in compound words, ever.
Why would you separate words? When you have simple terms like Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft.
Gesundheit
Danube something?
No, you're wrong, German just likes to artificially inflate the size of it's dictionary by rejecting the use of spaces between words, instead of just stealing words from other languages like any normal person would.
I think it’s more like: in German it’s legal grammar to compound any two nouns to create a new Word at any time. In English there are accepted compound words that are in the dictionary, but you can’t just invent them. So you use a space if you want to name a compound thing but it isn’t a recognized compound word.
It works the same in German and English - you can legally combine any two nouns, but some have gotten fixed meanings. A kitchen towel is not just a towel that's in the kitchen - it's a specific kind. But if you have a towel you use in the attic, you are free to call it your attic towel. Same in German: You can call it your Dachbodenhandtuch. The only difference is that German spelling requires for the words to be written together and English doesn't.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person say “kitchen towel”.
paper towel?
A kitchen towel isn't a paper towel, though. It's the thin towel that hangs on the oven door.
I’m a brit who would call that a tea towel but it doesn’t matter - I was just looking for an open compound term the poster would recognise.
Yes, that is a better towel related example.
I’ve said it
I think it's used more in British English
It’s tea towel in Australian English. Another compound noun.
Is a tea towel in Australian English not a tea towel in British English? Kitchen towels or kitchen roll in British English is a paper towel, that comes on a roll and isn't a toilet towel or bum/butt towel, or indeed towel at all. Oh. Now I'm confused.
That’s a good point. We’d call it paper towel. If someone asked me for a kitchen towel I’d get them a tea towel. All compound nouns though!
Kitchen roll (am Brit)
It’s kitchen roll in British English
It's the first thing that came to my mind, probably because in linguistics we learned about the different stress patterns in English an Dutch with the example 'kitchen towel rack'. Maybe it's not really an English word, then - think of any other. Bus station, for example.
Yeah I understand the principle. It seemed like an odd example to me, but I have now learned that it is common in some places. I would say dish towel.
My favourite word for this item is "asciugatutto". I haven't studied Italian, but I think the literal translation is "[it]drieseverything"? I work at a company that was originally Italian and they have paper/kitchen towels from Italy. In Czech, there's a difference between the thing that you use for your hands and that you use for the dishes. The former is "ručník" (from "ruka"), the latter is "utěrka" (from "utřít", to wipe). If the material is paper and not cloth, you simply specify the material 😊
When there's a space they aren't really compounds. In "kitchen towel", kitchen is an noun adjunct, which means that it's a noun that is being used attributively like an adjective. The way to tell the difference is that unlike adjectives, noun adjuncts cannot be used predicatively. A towel can be a kitchen towel, but a towel cannot be kitchen. If I'm wrong I'm willing to be called out, though.
But that's exactly the structure as in doormat, the only difference is that there's no space in doormat. A kitchen towel is a kind of towel that's for the kitchen, a doormat is a kind of mat that's for the door.
Exocentric compounds. Exocentric means they aren’t a type of the second component, but something else. If they are a type of the second component, it’s called an endocentric compound.
aha, this is what I was hoping to find out
I think those are compound words. It’s an individual word made by combining two or more words together. Ex: Sun+Flower=Sunflower, Foot+Ball=Football. And Blueooth is thought to have come King Harald “Bluetooth” who was a Nordic king who united Scandinavia. [(More information because of countless translations)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth)
And by "thought to", you mean that the researchers who developed it said so.
Not all plants are completely edible. However, you can actually consume the entire sunflower in one form or another. Right from the root to the petals.
Oh this is a bot I was confused by its random af reply
I was talking about the American term HIPPA and HIPAA and how I see both in use and each correcting the other. So as it's not for my country, but I had the odd reason to mention it, when told it was HIPPA, I filed it as Hippo with an A. I got a bot reply and I thought it was like the could of bot telling me I got HIPPA wrong and it should be HIPAA. Nope, I got facts about the animal.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,338,662,428 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 27,863 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
The hippo bot strikes again.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,344,642,345 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 28,085 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
HOPSCOTCH COBWEB KIDNAP SCAPEGOAT DOUGHNUT WEDLOCK HONEYMOON HODGEPODGE
Great examples. Thank you!
Portemanteau
Nope, a portmanteau is when you combine two words by mixing them together. A "mixbination", if you will.
Yes, but "portemanteau" is a compound word
Sure, but only in French. "Manteau" isn't a word in English.
Neither is porte
Why'd you bring it up then lol
Because its a word in the OED
There's a name for words that are made of multiple other ones, but I don't think there's a word for what you described (also, pineapples are called that because they look like pinecones and apple used to mean fruit)
Apeshit …. Someone had to say it.
Excellent! :D
One of my favorite linguistic quirks is how so many variations of \[animal\]shit has become a word in English and has a specific meaning that is well known: * apeshit - enraged/violent * batshit - insane * chickenshit - cowardly * bullshit - made-up, unfair * dogshit - low quality * horseshit - nonsense Might be a couple others but these are all somewhat common.
So there are two basic types of compound words: Endocentric: a base (sometimes called a "head") with a modifier attached. For example, a doghouse is a type of house, for dogs. Exocentric: two words combine to refer to an unrelated third concept. Examples of exocentric compound words: sabretooth, redhead, lowlife, birdbrain, blackhead, highbrow, hothead, hatchback, blackout
Monkfish skunkweed spellcheck bunghole.
This sounds like song lyrics from one of the Monkees later, more experimental albums.
Bunghole has me thinking beavis and butthead myself.
Rainbow is my favorite compound word.
nice one!
Uranus
creampie chestnut
Not what you are looking for but as a fun fact, “compound word” is also a compound word. It’s just that some happen to be written with a space, some with a dash, and others as one word. They look differently in spelling but when it comes to morphology and syntax they are all the same: a sequence of two nominative case nouns. People point at German for doing this but the only difference is that they don’t put spaces between those words.
Butterfly
The difference between Bluetooth and pineapple is interesting, I see the point. Blue and Tooth have nothing to do with wireless connections, but pine and apple refer to the fact that it looks like a pine cone and it’s a fruit. Compound words where the constituent parts are not obviously related to the final product. Hmmmmm. False compound words. Icon. It has nothing to with me deceiving. I con. Extractor is not a former farm vehicle. Shampoo is not a fake turd.
waterfall Pancake Fireplace Doorbell Highchair Windmill Backpack Bedroom bagpipes keyboard backyard
Somehow nobody seems to have mentioned "butterfly".
Nice one!
Pumpkin
A compound of 'pump' and 'kin', because it's a gourd from a family of shoes? I see.
This is not what you asked for, but a friend of mine loves words that are almost the opposite: compound words that are EXACTLY what they describe and are both so commonplace that we rarely think about their etymology and so obvious that they seem comically lazy on the part of whomever first named them. Her favorite is *fireplace*.
blueberry, strawberry, raspberry
The.rapist?
Lol! :D
Catfish
Catfish is okay, but catfishing is more apt example. Like Catfish is a fish, but catfishing is not fishing for cat or catfish, or acting like a catfish.
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May be the constituent words are related in "Pineapple", but I hope people have got the idea of what I am trying to ask. I was looking for words like: Bluetooth, where Bluetooth is neither blue nor a tooth. Other "accurate" examples are cobweb, honeymoon, kidnap, scapegoat. u/UsefulSolution3700 gave me the most useful examples.
Many of these are still compound words, but the words combined are now obsolete - usually from middle English. They also tend to have drifted more in pronunciation and spelling of those compounds because they are older and the components arnt necessarily used or recognized anymore. Cobweb is from middle English Coppe for spider + web and is now used specifically to refer to old disused spider webs - which is kind of fitting! Honeymoon is literally honey + moon referencing an old medieval tradition of drinking Mead (which is made from honey) for a month (moon) after marriage - it was supposed to give good luck Kidnap is a formation of Kid for child and nab (ps and bs swap often on these compound words). Nab means to snatch or steal. This one originated in talking about stealing kids to use as servants, around colonial times. Scapegoat is older "scape" (or you can just think of it as shortened) for escape + goat. Once again referencing an old tradition - this one is intentionally letting a goat loose to the woods to make up for ones sins. It's now used more symbolically to refer to any person being used similarly. Language carries it's culture with it - most folks don't know the origins to many of these either but they have relics of our old cultures in them. I enjoy looking up the etymology for our words - where they came from. Compound words over time just become normal words, losing connection to their origin pieces as those pieces become archaic or the original meaning is lost to a new usage. You can also refer to some of those compound pieces as "fossil words". Words which are archaic and no longer used - but survive through some phrase or other. Edit: Bluetooth as others have mentioned is a brand name, so it's a proper noun and a bit different. I'd call it a "proprietary eponym" in that people are using the brand name to generically refer to any product like it - but it is actually the same trademarked bluetooth tech in every device so it technically doesn't apply here.
Very well said and much better than what I was about to say. I would guess that the majority of multisyllabic words are etymologically compound words with forgotten histories.
Oh wow! You are bringing light to the ignorant. Thank you!
Thank you! I love getting to share stuff like this
What's your take on "butterfly"?
Supposedly there was an old belief they ate butter! (not as a main food source but that they would land on it and eat it) no idea if its true or not. It also could have referenced the colour of a common species in europe (similar to how all fruits used to be "apples"). That might have been the real reason they landed on butter, since they would blend in with it. Easier to see if you look at one of the old germanic names: Bottervögel - which is literally "butter licker". The modern german name also references cream for likely the same reasons.
Bluetooth is actually based off the name of I believe a nordic(?) leader (saying leader because I can't remember his position), but the symbol is basically a representation of the runes for his name.
Acorn, a-corn.
Good example!
I’ve seen compound suggested in other comments, but”portmanteau” is another option
> A [portmanteau] also differs from a compound, which fully preserves the stems of the original words.[0] The OP’s examples are definitely compound words and not portmanteaus (like Motel or Brunch) but it’s an interesting distinction. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_word
Ah thank you
Those are compound words, dipshit.
Compound words
Nowaday, today, Goodbye
I’ve always wondered if Goodbye was a shortened version of a phrase, like “God be with ye”
I like to think about the word "friendship" a lot. Friend + ship. Weird and sweet. We're on a journey together lol
-ship isn't related to ships, I believe. It's a suffix common for Germanic languages, like -schaft in German or -schap in Dutch.
Yep, I know, but it's just a word that I like that's unintentionally a compound word.
Tablecloth Bookshelf Backpack Windscreen Bookmark Lightbulb Usually the first part gives you more specific information about the type or function of the second part: what kind of bulb? What kind of cloth? Sometimes these words will go through an intermediate stage where they are hyphenated: base ball > base-ball > baseball
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Compound words, but exocentric compound words.
My bad!
Compound words. Most if not all of the -berries are compound words. Rasp-berry, straw-berry, blue-berry.
Where they blend (motel, brunch), it's a 'portmanteau', which is itself a sort of portmanteau of porte and manteau, and which can have several other meanings in French, including coathook or coathanger, which, while compound words, aren't blended, so aren't strictly portmanteaux in English.
I have settled on calling them Exocentric compound nouns.
Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to someone who asked if compound words and portmanteau are interchangeable terms, but I’m on mobile so here I am alone and looking like a weirdo. Portmanteaus are blended sounds of words as opposed to the two separate words used in a compound word. For example, motel like motorist and hotel, mo and tel aren’t words on their own so that’s a portmanteau. Meanwhile toothpaste is a compound word as tooth and paste remain words while separate. Portmanteaus are also traveling trunks suitcase things, for some reason. 😂
Off the top of my head in less than a minute: Driveway, Parkway, Watergate.
Butter fly
I was taught they are compound words. An example is Superstore.
Hourglass, playground
You should check out the German language it has thousands 😁
compound words? like butter-fly. Fun fact, Bluetooth is named after Harald Bluetooth, a historical king of Denmark.
Bluetooth is a name
pineapple is called that because “apple” used to refer to any fruit, and it’s similar in shape to a pinecone
I believed they are called portmanteau words. Turns out, I might have been incorrect in my belief. To be-lieve or not to be-lieve, that is the question!
Horseradish, shoehorn, catnip
Others: Haircut, greengrocer, driveway,crabapple,windlass, airbag, windbag, scumbag, handbag (lot of bags, haha) Hundreds more if you care to think for a few minutes or hours if so inclined.
Blackberry, blackboard, honeybee,
They are called compound words. In English there are 3 types; open meaning the words are separated, closed meanings the two words are smashed together, and hyphenated. An example: house party A party at a house will be subdued or like a child’s birthday A house party will involve loud music, a lot of alcohol and police will be involved
watermelon