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A comment on Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet. Parent comment

Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by dredmorbius on Saturday July 28, 2018 @02:08AM (#17631822)
The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek:

c. 1600, from French syntaxe (16c.) and directly from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek syntaxis "a putting together or in order, arrangement, a grammatical construction," from stem of syntassein "put in order," from syn- "together" (see syn-) + tassein "arrange" (see tactics).

https://www.etymonline.com/word/syntax

(One of my favourite wwebsites.)

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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by blattimwind on Saturday July 28, 2018 @03:54AM (#17632139)
> The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek:

... meaning you can't understand many terms if you only know English, because they are actually french/latin/greek. "Cache" is actually an example of this.

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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by dredmorbius on Saturday July 28, 2018 @04:56AM (#17632297)
Or, putting on my optimist's glasses: learn enough English etymology, and you'll learn Latin, Greek, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Celtic, Klingon, ...
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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by matt-snider on Saturday July 28, 2018 @05:05AM (#17632320)
It's really interesting reading up on etymologies like that - thanks for the link!

This is what I meant about the meaning being obscured too much, so it has to be simply memorized as one chunk.

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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by dredmorbius on Saturday July 28, 2018 @05:40AM (#17632415)
I ... can spend a lot of time at Etym Online. Some fun finds: vodka, pollution, pen, fiction, dough.
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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by zerb on Saturday July 28, 2018 @09:22AM (#17633027)
What do you think of Wiktionary? That's been my go-to for a long time.
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Re:Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is takin... by dredmorbius on Saturday July 28, 2018 @02:08PM (#17634244)
Strictly on a UI/UX basis, it beats most other online dictionaries for not being annoying A.F.

I haven't done a close evaluation, but itcompares favourably generally.

I also use dict (Debian), which is mostly Foldoc and 1913 Webster. As well as several dead-tree dictionaaries & etymological dictionaries. Those stand up surprisingly poorly to online references in several cases, though the OED still proves useful.

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