Words, which were actually used to describe something practical and useful become part of literature. Their origin, no matter how obvious it is… often remains un-noticed.
Knowing the origin of these words gives us better understanding. Please share if you know the origin of words in any language. Here are few words that i know
MileStone
"He/she reached the milestone of his/her career ! "
The word is used to highlight an acomplishment. Actually its origin is simple. It is a ‘mile stone’. The stone which tells the distance (Miles/killometer) on highways.
In urdu it is called Sang-e-meel which is the direct translation of Mile stone
It may not a be common sight to see distance written on a stone on highway in developed countries, But in most underdeveloped countries this conventional method is still used to tell the distance to commuter
You can see a Pakistan /India, a big stone on roadside and the distance written on it for travellers. This would be a pure Milestone.
I dont know about pakistan but india we still have real milestones besides roads.. i mean it is a very rare site.... you have this new stones which show distance in KMs and then once in a while u get to see historic stones showing distance in Miles too...
I am sure most of the technically savvy folks know it as a technical term for malicious softwares, commonly known as virus. This tiny program tries to enter into computer system covertly. And Once inside it is triggers its warhead and destroys the whole system.
The name has a mythycal story behind it. Most of you must have seen The movie Troy, and the woden horse they make in the end after realizing that the defense of Troy is un-penetratable. Trojan army takes it inside the Fortress and then warriors hidden inside that horse come out at night and destroy the whole city.
Admiral originates from the Arabic: a*mir ul-bahr* (Navigator/commander of the sea) :)
When we say** filhaal** ('right now/ at the moment') in Urdu, it (like so many other Urdu devices) is taken from the Arabic: fi 'l-haal (fi: in, 'l-haal: the state/condition) ...but that's not incredibly interesting...
This is a widely used word in urdu and commonly understood as ‘well done’. I just recently stumbled across the real meaning of this word from the most unlikely place where you could learn something like that … yes Cricket commentary !
The commentrator (Ramiz Raja ) told that he recieved an email from person who did masters in persian and he told that Shabash is a combination of two words Sha means Be and Bash means king… So Shabash means ‘Be a king’.
Anyone know about l-m-n nearly always being in this order in nearly every (if not all) alphabet?
As for 'mother': in classical Arabic it's 'umm' but in colloquial, again like other languages yes it starts with an 'm'. Mamma is a syllable instinctively uttered by young children. Also pertains to the breast in mammals.
What's the orgin of word "mother" and why does it start with the sound of "m" in almost all the languages of the world?
Dont know about mother, it seems like rather new word. Although i agree with abeer in above post.
Something interesting which i gues most of pakistani would have noticed while watching Passion of the Christ. If i am not wrong the language spoken in that movie by character was classic Hebrew and quite a few words were familiar for us as exactly the same words are used in normal urdu. One of them Was 'Ammi' ... jesus called his mother ammi incidently, ammi is most common word for mother in urdu
^ Pondering a little more on this question, I realized that there is a similar word in persian i.e 'Madir' ... I can safely assume that persian is older language than english and the fact that english has absorbed many word from various different languages, Like Latin, French Arabic ... So Possibly the word Mother in english is adoptd from persian word Maadir used for mother.
Commonly us as Mathir-e-millat or Madir pidar azaad etc.
Touch-Stone
It is a special stone which was used for checking the purity of Gold. Now there must be words for this thing in other languages. The same thing is called Kas-watti in punjabi. now most probably this word was adopted in urdu / hindi as Kasoti, which is literally same as touchstone ( criterion , benchmark etc. ) but it does not have that same practical meaning as touchstone (the stone).
I remember there is an exact equilant word for Touchstone in urdu,persian... Which I forgot.
Mamma is the formal English medical word for breast. Mamma is a reduplication of the much older Proto-Indo-European root *ma, breast or mother. This is not only the first sound uttered by many human infants, it may also be the most widespread word root in the world. *Ma forms the basis of the word for mother in many different and possibly unrelated language families around the world:
Latin mater
Greek meter
French mère
German Mutter
Russian mate
Icelandic modher
Sanskrit mata
Irish mathair
Welsh mam
Arabic oum
Hebrew em
Swahili mama
Chinese ma
Hawaian makuahine (maka first, beloved < *ma-k Proto-Polynesian, the mother (?) + wahine woman)
Why so widespread a word? The sounds of m and a are among the easiest to make and among the first sounds acquired by a human infant. The first noise in life associated with deep pleasure may be the sound made by the infant’s mouth sucking milk from the mother’s breast. This sound is frequently some variant of ma-ma. The slight smacking movement of the lips made in uttering an m-sound is similar to the lip movement required to suck a nipple.
But that is merely what the word mother means. There is no one way to express all an individual mother signifies. The sum of our sentiment is not contained in or exhausted by a mother’s day card. A certain Irishman lay on his deathbed and was asked by an attendant what he thought of life. Said the dying man, “I should have kissed her more.” So too with mothers.
There are a number of words which are derived from other languages but it is difficult to find out which one is the original language. e.g.
"Earth" in english and "Arz", pronounced "Ardh" in arabic.
"Shemize" means shirt in french and undershirt in punjabi/urdu.
"Chandelle" in french, candle in english and qandeel in urdu/persian have the same meaning. Which one is the original? "Chandellier" in english is from chandelle
and I found this other meaning of ummi with refrence to its usage in Quran
"The Arabic word ummi is commonly translated as “unlettered.” In the Qur’an, Muhammad is described as “ummi” and traditionally this has meant for Muslims that Muhammad was illiterate, completely unable to read or write. Thus, the fact that he was able to write down the Qur’an should be regarded as a miracle (i’jaz) and evidence that it really does have a divine origin.
Some have, however, argued that ummi and “unlettered” should not be taken to mean illiterate, but rather scriptureless. This would mean that when Muhammad is described as ummi, it means that he is not one of the Jews (a people “of the Book”) or simply that he is not a member of a group which has yet received a revelation from God - at least, not until he received the Qur’an. Such a translation seems more likely to many because Muhammad is also described as having been a merchant, and it is unlikely that a completely illiterate person could have functioned as a merchant. "
