A lot of people wonder where Earth came from and how long it's been around (this is almost as hilarious as my God post). Some may say Earth has been around 5,000 years; they are wrong (I wonder if I'm only funny to myself here?). In truth, it's only been around for about 1,000 years, since Proto-Indo-European had er, or "the ground". This two-letter word then made the miraculous journey into the world of five-letter words, when it evolved into the Proto-Germanic term ertho, because those zany Germans just had to add on some extra letters. From here it was an understandably short journey through a millenium until the word passed from Old English into New English as Earth. Through all this time, it continually referred to "soil" or "the ground" or something along those lines, until around the fourteenth century, where a schism occurred: the old definition was kept, but the Earth also came to mean our planet, because they needed a scientific term for it. Therefore, Earth has been around for a while and undergone some drastic changes (haha).
2 Comments
Ken Bone
11/28/2016 07:42:24 am
Why are the names of the earth moon and sun not Roman gods like the rest of the solar system?
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Adam
11/28/2016 12:04:42 pm
Good question!
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a senior studying government and linguistics at Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy trivia, politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
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