• Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    The word ‘dog’ is interesting because it essentially has no etymology. It has no known cognates in English/Germanic/other Indo-European languages. It first showed up in Old English as dogca, referring to some sort of mastiff, but other than that nobody really has any idea at all where it came from.

    • Iconoclast@feddit.ukOP
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      1 day ago

      Bear is a bit similar. It is not known what the actual name of that animal was. The term “bear” refers to brown scary thing that people called it instead because it was thought that saying it’s name would summon it. Kind of like Voldemort.