Spontaneous etymological combustion

[Bereta_Eder]

I was just looking for some scifi to watch and there was a netflix film called oxygen.

The letters of the word started appearing one by one on the screen. But they didn't stop at "n" there was also a final "e". So "oxygene"

And I thought that's not english, ti could be french.
And then I laughed and thought, dear god everything is taken from Greek.

And of course oxygen is just yet another greek word. And I started thinking what it means

oxy means acid
gene means to give birth

So Oxygen is smoething that gives birth to acidity

and it's true it rusts things.

I will now look up the etymology and I think I'm right

[Bereta_Eder]

I was partially right.
The etyomology stands but the word itself is not ancient greek but thought up by a french scientist in the 17th century using two existing greek words (acidic and birth).

[N35t0r]

French it's oxygène, so could be.

In German it's Sauerstoff, so 'acid substance'

[Egbert]

Etymology is a big word. It sounds very Greek, perhaps two greek words rolled into one?

[Sugarrynad]

It's definitely French, bud. Whole movie has been speaking in French.

[One2Tfourth]

Saw this one on Netflix last night. Looks like an experiment she was willingly involved in but once she’s in this state she can’t remember. Probably will have to remember and get out to prove the experiment successful. Interesting

[Bereta_Eder]

French it's oxygène, so could be.

In German it's Sauerstoff, so 'acid substance'

very interesting!

[Bereta_Eder]

Etymology is a big word. It sounds very Greek, perhaps two greek words rolled into one?

it is greek and "pure greek" meaining it wasn't thought up afterwards (like oxygen for example)

I thought it had something to do with etoimos which means "ready" but it doesn't make sense. "Ready-logy"?? what is that.

It doesn't originate from ready but from a sort of timi which means a lot of things like, pride, decent, truth, and it is the the latter.
so Ετυμολογία means the truth meaning

Etoimos (ready) is written with a οι
Etumos (truthful) is written with an υ

in english etymology is written with an y that doesn't mean anything so you can't tell.

[N35t0r]

In this case, it was the Romans who put in the upsilon in the word etymologia when 'borrowing' the greek ἐτυμολογία. A lot of romance and romance-influenced languages inherited it from there (ex. French and English).

[Bereta_Eder]

In a way it makes sense because in a way the latin υ is actually y

[Bereta_Eder]

btw I just noticed you used the polytonic system and put the accent οξεία in ετυμολογία (I can't even do that!).

pretty neat. the original greek was all in capitals and without diacritics. After alexander the great and because greek spread to the whole known world, they started using diacritics (accents etc) in order to teach the new people that came under greek dominion to speak greek and pronounce it correctly.
It's gone now after the linguistic reform of the 1980's or so and now it's monotonic

[N35t0r]

btw I just noticed you used the polytonic system and put the accent οξεία in ετυμολογία (I can't even do that!).

pretty neat. the original greek was all in capitals and without diacritics. After alexander the great and because greek spread to the whole known world, they started using diacritics (accents etc) in order to teach the new people that came under greek dominion to speak greek and pronounce it correctly.
It's gone now after the linguistic reform of the 1980's or so and now it's monotonic

I just copied from Wiktionary ;-p