In my first language of Serbian and in Russian, we use the word семафор for "traffic light". When spoken aloud, this sounds like sehmah-for. Yesterday in traffic I had an epiphany concerning this: in English, we also have the word semaphore (pronounced the exact same way) as a noun for the communication system using colored flags to send messages. You can see the connection: both use colors to signal something to you. It seems like the words from both languages come from French semafore, which literally meant "bearer of symbols". This has two parts: Ancient Greek sema, meaning "sign", and phoros, meaning "bearer". Sema, a root in semantic and polysemy, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root dyeh, meaning "to notice". Phoros, which is present in phosphorous and Christopher, comes from Proto-Indo-European bher, "carry". Surprisingly, usage of the word semaphore in literature over time increased all the way up to the 1990s, but has been on the downturn since.
1 Comment
Nenad Aleksic
1/15/2019 01:59:37 pm
Semaphores have quite a history, see
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AUTHORAdam Aleksic, a freshman studying linguistics at Harvard University, has been described as the internet's sixth most famous etymologist. He also has disturbing interests in words, vexillology, geography, board games, limericks, and law.
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