this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
81 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

54307 readers
431 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Mine is "guinea pig" originating in andes (not guinea) and them being not-a-pig type, whole thing is just wrong.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 31 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Without doubt, the turkey. Buckle up, it's a wild ride: The North American bird is named after the Eurasian country because it reminded settlers from Europe of an African bird, the guinea fowl. Allegedly, they called the guinea fowl "turkey fowl" because it was first imported to Europe through Turkey.

That'd be crazy enough, if it stopped there The French call it dinde, as in d'Inde, or Indian fowl, because it came from a land originally confused with India. The Dutch, though, call it kalkoen, which derives from "fowl of Calicut," which is a city in India now called Kozhikode. Lots of other languages use a derivation of this word. Apparently, they got turkeys from India after Portuguese traders brought them from the Americas. I say Americas, because the Portuguese name is perú, a South American name that they used to refer to Spanish settlements in the Americas, generally. The Spanish, on the other hand, call the bird pavo, derived from the Latin word for peafowl, which actually are from India.

Germans, at least, call it Truthuhn, or Pute, onomatopoetic names based on the birds' calls.

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That is wild lmao thank you for this post. One of my favorite bits of etymology trivia is the phrase "comparing apples to oranges" which means a false or meaningless comparison. But in fact while we call them oranges now, they were once called apples of the orange tree and the orange tree was named before the word orange became the name of the color and then the fruit.

So in a round about way the phrase sort of takes on the opposite of its colloquial meaning.

[–] asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

The Turkish name for the bird is "hindi" which means Indian since it came from India.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] shweddy@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Geoduck

Its pronounced "gooey-duck"
Its not gooey
Its not a duck
Its a clam

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Clam expert here. It comes from the Salish word gʷidəq, a word whose exact etymology is not well understood. Why that became anglicized as "geo-", I am not linguistically experienced enough to know!

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Clam expert here

how many times have you had to explain when people expressed surprise that clam experts exist? lol

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, all the time! Tobias saying there are dozens of us, dozens!

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The Salish languages mostly use a phonetic alphabet, and if I recall correctly, only one has standardized an alphabet which only happened in the 1970s. So the written word got obliterated compared to the pronunciation. The 'ge' is meant to sound like 'get'. But since 'geo' exists, we hear and read 'Jee-oh' before ever thinking 'Geh-oo'.

/former geoduck farmer and language student where geoducks were the mascot.

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Best mascot ever, tied with the banana slugs!

[–] its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You should go tanning.

Then you would be Dan, the tan clam man.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Eh maybe not that, careful about the tan clam man with the van

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 7 points 2 weeks ago

I had to google this, legitimately thought you were referring to a Pokemon or something. Some weird combination of Geodude and Psyduck, maybe.

[–] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Pineapple. Neither pine nor apple, tastes like neither.

[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 22 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] Jack@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
  • Asturian: piña (Spain, via Latin)
  • Tagalog: pinya (Philippines, via Spanish)
  • Afrikaans: pynappel (Southern Africa, via Dutch like English)
  • Japanese: painappuru
  • Korean: painaepeul
  • Welsh: pîn-afal, afal pin
  • .
  • Chamicuro: mawuli (Peru)
  • Cherokee: notsiiYusdisvgata (USA)
  • Chinese, Cantonese: bo1 lo4, fung6 lei4-2
  • Chinese, Hakka: vòng-lì
  • Chinese, Hokkien: ông-lâi
  • Chinese, Mandarin: bōluó, fènglí, huánglí
  • Dusun, Central: tintingabai (Malaysia)
  • Hawaiian: hala kahiki
  • Isan: bàk-nát (Thailand)
  • Kaqchikel: ch’op (Guatemala)
  • Khmer: mnŏəh (Cambodia)
  • Lao: māk nat
  • Malayalam: kaita (India)
  • Melanau, Central: piseng (Malaysia)
  • Nahuatl: matzahtli (Mexico)
  • Ojibwe: zhingwaako-mishiimin (USA, Canada)
  • Pali: kharattaca, madhuketakī, bahunettaphala (India, SL, SE Asia)
  • Thai, Central: sàp-bpà-rót
  • Tibetan: thang 'bras
  • Vietnamese: dứa, cây dứa, thơm, cây thơm, khóm, cây khóm

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pineapple (plant)

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

Japanese: painappuru

Pain-apple

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Note: While "ananás" is one name for it in Portuguese, in Brazil it's more often called "abacaxi", and other Portuguese-speaking countries may use both words to differentiate cultivars. Both words come from the old-tupi language a lot of indigenous American peoples spoke.

[–] AMoralNihilist@feddit.uk 3 points 2 weeks ago

It's actually supposed to be a "pie napple"

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

It does kinda look like a pinecone, though, and "apple" just means "fruit."

[–] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The English Horn is not a horn nor was it invented in England. It is a woodwind and was created in Poland (Silesia at the time). Also the French Horn was created in Germany, although it is at least a horn.

[–] proudblond@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

My aggressively pedantic music theory prof in college insisted that “French” was incorrectly applied to the horn and that we should instead call it the Horn in F. She did not play the horn.

[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yosemite actually is a Miwok phrase meaning "those who kill", referring either to the Ahwahnechee people who were feared by the Miwok, or to European colonizers themselves. Colonialism produces a lot of misnomers.

[–] Chais@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 weeks ago

Common sense. Much less common than the name would suggest.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

They squeal like pigs for food and they used to cost a guinea in UK when people first sold them as pets.

[–] tleb@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's apocryphal actually, according to wikipedia:

The origin of "guinea" in "guinea pig" is unclear. One proposed explanation is that the animals were brought to Europe by way of Guinea, leading people to think they had originated there.[1] "Guinea" was also frequently used in English to refer generally to any far-off, unknown country, so the name may be a colorful reference to the animal's exotic origins.[27][28]

Another hypothesis suggests the "guinea" in the name is a corruption of "Guiana", an area in South America.[27][29] A common misconception is that they were so named because they were sold for the price of a guinea coin. This hypothesis is untenable because the guinea was first struck in England in 1663, and William Harvey used the term "Ginny-pig" as early as 1653.[30] Others believe "guinea" may be an alteration of the word coney (rabbit); guinea pigs were referred to as "pig coneys" in Edward Topsell's 1607 treatise on quadrupeds.[1]

They also just have lots of strange names in different languages

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

They also just have lots of strange names in different languages

In Polish it's "świnka morska", literally "sea piggy" (same in basically all Slavic and many central/north Asian languages). Though it was officially renamed "kawia domowa" few years ago because even the superconservative Polish Language Council had enough.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Left and right politics. Extreme right people don't want rights for the people.

[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And the extreme left wants rights for everyone and ensure everyone has time to sleep and hobbies, and universal healthcare! Ugh the audacity I want to go bankrupt after a visit to the hospital goddammit, that is freedom.

They are clearly the same.

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Look, if I have to go bankrupt for visiting the hospital to make sure that all these "rainbow flag" groups can't corrupt our youth, that's what I'm going to do!

  • Conservatives, probably
[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

I will take the hit personally for my big beautiful country

[–] groet@feddit.org 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They got that name because of the position of their seats in the national assembly after the French revolution. Those that were pro monarchy sat to the right, those that were opposed to the king having any say sat to the left.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago

Porque la izquierda libera, la derecha oprime.

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Mistletoe.

It looks neither like mist, nor rain, nor missile, or definitely not a toe.

[–] blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Primodial soup. It was perfectly sterile. No organic matter in it. (didn't exist yet.) Today's oceans are wet cement in comparison.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The word primordial doesn’t imply anything living. It means something that came before something else. It’s the soup of organic compounds from which life originally formed.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Duct tape.

Many uses, but should never be used on ducts.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] SpacePanda@mander.xyz 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact its all dark.

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Both sides are dark and lit for equal amounts of time. That's why it's a misnomer. "Far" side is the better term.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] SpacePanda@mander.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yes! Thank you :) lol

[–] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.

[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That the “stomach flu” is the same as influenza

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That makes sense. It's influenza but in the stomach

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Flyberius@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

[CE Confession of a meat eater]I'm in Peru and I ate a guinea pig yesterday...

load more comments
view more: next ›