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UVULA GRAPES

11/11/2018

1 Comment

 
I've always noticed an orthographic similarity between the Spanish word uvas, meaning "grapes", and the English word uvula, meaning "that dangly thing in the back of your mouth". Turns out this is no coincidence! In the 1300s CE, uvula was borrowed from the Latin word uvola, meaning "small bunch of grapes", because of an apparent similarity between the physical characteristics of the fruit and what the uvula actually looks like. Uvola is a diminutive of the earlier word uva, which referred to a singular grape and is the direct etymon of the aforementioned Spanish word, and its Italian and Portuguese cognates. There are two theories after this: uva could be from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction weg, meaning "wet", or another PIE root, og, which meant "berry". Usage of the word uvula in literature was seven times more frequent around 1800 than today, but Spanish uva ​has been relatively constant in that time.
1 Comment
Jonathan Liber
5/29/2021 04:16:40 pm

I’ve been looking up the etymologies of street names, creeks, lakes I grew up on or near. Powerfully revealing in some very personal ways as was Uvas Lake in Northern California.

Thank you

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    AUTHOR

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, ​magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy philosophy, trivia, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law. 
      If I don't cover it soon, I probably already did it
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