#semantle
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Etymological Weirdness I learned today
FULL Spoilers relating to today's Semantle Puzzle (#669) below the fold. Go do the puzzle yourself before reading, if you're so-inclined.
As part of my participation on the r/semantlegameplayers subreddit, I like to include some hints for the words, including basic facts, like word length, part of speech, and first letter.
And one not-so basic fact I've become fond of - Word Origins:
Okay, so today's answer was: remain
And you might expect it's a weird orphan of sorts.
"Main" as a verb these days is more of a modern back-formation after all. One context is a re-shortening of the compound word "mainline", used in the context of drugs, but then expanded out to any addiction (ie: you might mainline TV all day in the same way that an addict mains heroin all day). The other context that I see main as a verb in is pretty much a game thing - When a game has multiple classes/playstyles/modes/etc., you can *main* a specific one of those - A strong preference over all others, but not necessarily 100% exclusive. "I main Reaper in Overwatch"; "I main Tank for group stuff in MMOs", for example.
So maybe the original use of "main" as an English verb that the re- prefix was applied to was lost to time?
Well, here's the thing. It never existed in the first place.
Main and remain are completely etymologically unrelated.
Even going back to Proto-Indo-European, it appears as though they stem from entirely separate roots.
They're the result of a bit of meaning-divergence and then spelling/pronunciation-convergence
Main, in the English sense is a adjective and noun (with occasional/specific context usage as an adverb, and the later back-formation of the verb) derived from a Germanic (most likely Old Norse) source, related to strength, power, and eventually stemming from those, prominence. It is an old word that existed (in some form) in Old English prior to 900 CE.
There was no verb form to prefix.
Remain, in the English sense, didn't appear until sometime between 1375-1425, and was a verb (and noun, though generally with some modification in English, ie: remains/remainder/remnant) adapted from French. It has Latin roots, which are believed to go further back to Persian, with a Greek intermediary.
It actually came about as a bit of a pronunciation/stress change on the French word remanoir, with the emphasis being moved to the prefix.
Now, the re- prefix means "back", which makes it a little redundant with manoir and the Latin root manere, which also mean "to stay/ to remain" - We do have "stay back" in English, so that's kind of the same idea - The repetition of ideas for emphasis in-context.
But, that meant that manoir as an independent word was easy enough to discard for English.
Except, you might notice a similarity to another English word there. And you'd be right. The noun meaning of manoir, as "a dwelling / a place for remaining/staying" did carry on into English as "manor" and other related words like "mansion" and "manse".
In a weird bit of re-convergence, you could describe a manor house on an estate as the main house, taking the Norse-derived adjective and turning the likewise-Germanically-derived "house" and arriving at a more similar-sounding / meaning as the French-derived manor/mansion by sheer coincidence as the two sources of the "main"/"man-" sound are completely etymologically unrelated.
I honestly never would have thought that "remain" was more closely related to "manor" than "main" was to either of them.
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i have a really really funny post i want to make but not enough people on tumblr know about semantle
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moments that make you screech, "WHAT? WHAT???"
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I solved Semantle #401 in 21 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 0.39. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #6. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 9.47. https://semantle.com/
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getting the semantle in 60 guesses and feeling really good about myself only for my friend who never plays to beat me and get it in THIRTY
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Semantle #798
✅ 23 Guesses
Guess #10
🥈 0/1000🔝
💡0 hints
semantle.com
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Semantle #475
✅ 3 Guesses
Guess #2
🥈 885/1000🔝
💡0 hints
semantle.com
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what the FUCK
I solved Semantle Junior #6 in 3 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 2.65. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #3. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 15.78.
#semantle#semantle junior#literally what#this is the first semantle i've ever solved lmao the game is too hard#all skill no luck involved at all
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Another Semantle. I don’t know why these appeal to me so much (jk, yes I do, It’s About The Semantic Range of words and ideas)
I don’t normally include the “tepid” ones, but it’s kind of interesting to go from the nearest guess (#15, “flag,” 22.21 similarity) to (with guess #27, “wish,” 34.47) the top 70 words.
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Today's Semantle was much better for me than yesterday. Yesterday took me 300 guesses…
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
I solved Semantle #390 in 81 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 22.63. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #60. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 53.75 (996/1000). https://semantle.com/
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Moving this over
I solved Semantle #281 in 48 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 8.92. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #30. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 38.45 (935/1000). https://semantle.com/
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