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A comment on The Deadliest Animal in the World. Parent comment

Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by mootothemax on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @07:46AM (#7672663)
It would have been quicker to tap "Mosquito etymology" into Google than it would have been to write up your incredibly petty comment:

1580s, from Spanish mosquito "little gnat," diminutive of mosca "fly,"

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mosquito

I genuinely dislike writing such harsh comments, and in this case have let the frustration of seeing this comment as the top-rated one on an otherwise discussion-worthy topic boil over.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by davidw on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @08:00AM (#7672712)
Interestingly, Italian has 'mosca' for fly, too, but mosquitos are "zanzare", which is onomatopoeic.
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Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by ogig on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @08:01AM (#7672714)
What about consulting the actual, present day, normative instead of the middle age origin?

http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=mosquito http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=mosca

Sorry about frustrating you, and i mean it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by mootothemax on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @08:07AM (#7672738)
What about consulting the actual, present day, normative instead of the middle age origin?

Because one's the reason it got its name, and the other's day-to-day speech?

Sorry about frustrating you, and i mean it.

No worries, and I'm sorry if I caused anything on my part.

I read your comment as picking holes in an article purely for the sake of picking holes, which is something I find frustrating waaaaay out of proportion.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by ogig on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @08:57AM (#7672943)
The etymology of the word, while interesting, is not relevant to my assertion. I only said that "Mosquito" is NOT the spanish word for "small fly". Not normative, and not day-to-day speech.

I did not want to pick holes, and it also bothers me sometimes, but the first sentence of the writing had a glaring error that caught my attention. I do think you tried to pick holes on my hole picking.

I linked you to the normative, actual definition of mosquito, because that's what you need to use to prove me wrong. Not the 1600 definition.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by mootothemax on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @09:03AM (#7672968)
The etymology of the word, while interesting, is not relevant to my assertion.

This is where you're going wrong.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Deadliest Animal in the World by ogig on Wednesday April 30, 2014 @09:25AM (#7673084)
How is that? The roots of a word and its current meaning may differ greatly. You can take mosquito as an example, wich originated at "small fly" but now it means "the blood sucker insect".

Consider for example the word "Musket", you wouldn't be here debating that a musket is a fly, right?. Well, both share the same latin origin in musca, like mosquito. That's my point.

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