Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To trace and state the etymology of.
  • intransitive verb To give or suggest the etymology of a word.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To study etymology or the history of words; search into the origin of words.
  • To provide or suggest etymologies for words. How perilous it is to etymologize at random.
  • To give the etymology of; trace the etymology of; provide or suggest an etymology for.
  • Also spelled etymologise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To give the etymology of; to trace to the root or primitive, as a word.
  • transitive verb To search into the origin of words; to deduce words from their simple roots.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb linguistics, transitive, intransitive to find or provide etymology for a word, to find etymon for a given word

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb give the etymology or derivation or suggest an etymology (for a word)
  • verb construct the history of words

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • Nonetheless, some do try even to loosely etymologize the aforementioned Philistine word in Indo-European terms with no noteworthy success.

    Edward Sapir and the Philistine headdress 2010

  • Nonetheless, some do try even to loosely etymologize the aforementioned Philistine word in Indo-European terms with no noteworthy success.

    Archive 2010-07-01 2010

  • The basis involves my ability to etymologize the term Chimaira into Etruscan terms.

    The Chimaira chimera 2010

  • Whenever it comes to European vocabulary, specialists of Indo-European languages are in there like a dirty shirt trying to etymologize it automatically through some concocted Indo-European root.

    Archive 2010-02-01 2010

  • Taken *collectively* however, reduplication, prothetic a- *and* a-vocalism of the root makes the attempts to etymologize this as a genuine PIE root very painful to me. ;o

    The hidden face 2010

  • If I were the kind of person to speculate without foundation about the origin of idioms in other words, if I felt competent to folk-etymologize with abandon I would say that perhaps it comes from the notion that a big full skirt and big round cheese might have some topological symmetry.

    September 2006 2006

  • If I were the kind of person to speculate without foundation about the origin of idioms in other words, if I felt competent to folk-etymologize with abandon I would say that perhaps it comes from the notion that a big full skirt and big round cheese might have some topological symmetry.

    "make cheese" - A Dress A Day 2006

  • Alas, the same Teutonic root almost certainly accounts for harbor, thereby putting paid to George Borrow's attempt to folk-etymologize that word to the Welsh/Gaelic aber ` riverine estuary or confluence. '

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 2 1983

  • And I'm not saying to offend you, but to question a) why do you insist to defend such erroneous claims? and b) why do you etymologize the words of a language you haven't studied?

    The etymology of Latin tofus 'tufa' isn't written in stone 2009

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