701
(Re)bracketing
(lemmy.world)
Was slightly mindblown whenl discovered this.
The two parts to the word "helicopter" are not "helil" and "copter", but "helico" meaning spiral, and "pter" meaning one with wings, like pterodactyl.
1044 AM-5Mar 2018 21,200 Retweets 67,241 Lkes
wait WHAT
Aderinthemadscientist: Wait, so... does -copter come "from" helicopter?
108echoes: Yep! This is called rebracketing. Another famous example would be"-burger": the original food item is named after the German city, (Hamburgl+(er], but semantically reinterpreted as (ham]+[burger].
Perhaps I'm going to show myself up as a linguistic brat but doesn't everyone know that helio means wing or flight?
It's where words like halo come from. The aurora around a winged angel.
Or heliopause, Helio in this case meaning high up. Literally, high up air.
I've always just known helio- as in the sun, like heliocentric, I figured that was where halo came from as well ahah.