We get our word sinister ("evil") from Middle English sinestre, which meant something more along the lines of "unfavorable", and that is from Old French sinistra, which meant "left". There's a lot to explain here; the transition from "left" to kinda "unlucky" occurred because the left hand is associated with clumsiness and abnormality among right-handed people, who got to name the word, and the meaning merely amplified to "evil" over the centuries, to get to today's words. Anyway, sinistra comes from Latin, where the word once again takes the form of sinister (I know, it was much ado about nothing). The suffix is not -er here; this is not Germanic. The suffix is -ter, formed as a counterpart to dexter (we'll get to that tomorrow), and the root is a mystery to etymologists, but we theorize that it goes back to a Proto-Indo-European word, because it may have a Sanskrit cognate.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
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