more etymology (origins of words)

In a dramatic shift from yesterdays origins of the word 'Tuesday', I bring you:

 

Wednesday : the origin of Wednesday is less obvious than that of some of the other days, but is revealed in the word's odd spelling. Despite its pronunciation the first half of the word has nothing to do with wend; rather, Wednes- comes from Wodnes, the genitive (possessive) form of Woden, the all father (known in Old Norse as Odin). The Old English version of the day was wodnesdæg.

Interestingly enough, wodnesdæg was the Germanic version of the Latin dies Mercurii (Mercury's day--cf. French mercredi); which is odd, because we don't particularly associate Odin and Mercury.

 

thanks: http://www.squibix.net/words/words.html

 

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Also, from the same page:

mother : Officially, mother comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *mater-, through Proto-Germanic *mothær and Old English modor, but really, it ultimately comes from ma (roughly), which is generally the first sound that babies make. So besides the Indo-European relatives' cognates like Latin mater or French mère, we find Matro in Ido and Amma- in Sinhala, not to mention Mama in Holooe, Mandarin, Quechua, Swahili and Xhosa.

So it seems that if there's any word that echoes that which was spoken by our primitive ancestors on the African plains or whatever--in the proto-language so beloved of certain linguists ma is it.

 

http://www.travlang.com/wordofday/195.html