• FreeBeard@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    One Word you mentioned showed nicely what you missed here: Plain

    Originally it was called an aeroplane. This could be translated with “flat thing in the air”. Which is exactly as ridiculous as your other examples in German. The difference is that Germans don’t mind complicated long words where English does so they just drop the part they don’t like.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
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      5 days ago

      Oh Germans do drop parts they don’t like. For example, they drop the Gute- from Gutemorgen.

          • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 day ago

            It is connected to both moron and oxygen. The Greek word moros means stupid, so a moron is someone or something stupid, and oxys means something like sharp or pointed. An oxymoron is thus a “pointed stupidity”.

            The word oxygen derives from the old, now falsified belief that it is the key element to create an acid. genes means creation and it was named because of that thought that it creates sharp (acidic) stuff.