Ethnographic Arms & Armour
 

Go Back   Ethnographic Arms & Armour > Discussion Forums > European Armoury
FAQ Calendar Today's Posts Search

 
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 10th July 2009, 09:47 PM   #14
fearn
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 1,247
Default

More on oon (shortening this up, does this make me a moron?):

Can't vouch for it's total correctness, but here's someone's take on where "oon" came from in English (link)

"The Romance languages use an -one or -on suffix to mean a larger or augmented version of the base word; it's often modified to "-oon" in English. In addition to "trombone", other examples are balloon (big ball), bassoon (deep bass), medallion (large medal), galleon (a ship larger than a galley), cannons and canneloni (big canes or hollow tubes — cannoli are little ones), saloon (a large salle, room), and so on. A squadron is a group of soldiers bigger than a squad. (Squad itself is ex-quadra, a square.) The original meaning of cartoon was a poster-sized image, from Italian carta-one, large paper, and a baboon is etymologically a "big baby". [13Nov08] A macaroon is etymologically a large macaroni, although the taste is now somewhat different. [19Jun09] French bouffer meant to swell or puff up; this led to both buffoon (a clown) and the bouffont hair style. Buffer in the sense of "cushion" or "shock absorber" is also from this root. This has been generalized to anything "in the middle" — buffer state, a computer's buffer memory, and so on.
...
Just to aggravate us, French sometimes used the -on or -oon suffix to mean smaller, not larger. A platoon is French peloton, a very little ball (pellet is already a diminutive), and a pontoon seems to have originally been a "small bridge" or maybe "temporary bridge" — Latin pons. The French word for "small cat" is chaton, which has been borrowed into English as kitten."

Not sure it helps, but don't ya love language?

Best,

F
fearn is offline   Reply With Quote
 


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 03:46 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Posts are regarded as being copyrighted by their authors and the act of posting material is deemed to be a granting of an irrevocable nonexclusive license for display here.