Zompist Bboard Again

I hadn't even heard that acorn is seen by some as a compound until it was mentioned here.

The A Corns are clearly a band of singing and dancing anthropomorphic CGI cereal grains which some of the less self-aware people in the music industry created in a poorly thought out attempt to cash in on the late 1990s/early 2000s success of the A Teens.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 10:05 am I hadn't even heard that acorn is seen by some as a compound until it was mentioned here.

I suppose the pronunciation with two unreduced vowels can make it feel like a compound, but I'd never thought of it that way either.

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 1:35 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 10:05 am I hadn't even heard that acorn is seen by some as a compound until it was mentioned here.

I suppose the pronunciation with two unreduced vowels can make it feel like a compound, but I'd never thought of it that way either.

To me the thing is I cannot consciously divide the word into clear words or morphemes even in the way that I can divide, say, cranberry.

I'd guess "a" is just not very morpheme-worthy


JAL

jal wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 10:07 am I'd guess "a" is just not very morpheme-worthy

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a-#English

(The last one listed there is even productive!)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 9:36 am

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 1:35 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 10:05 am I hadn't even heard that acorn is seen by some as a compound until it was mentioned here.

I suppose the pronunciation with two unreduced vowels can make it feel like a compound, but I'd never thought of it that way either.

To me the thing is I cannot consciously divide the word into clear words or morphemes even in the way that I can divide, say, cranberry.

I've always been able to see acorn as a + corn, but I always presumed that it was coincidental and didn't originate that way.

/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/ wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 10:09 am I've always been able to see acorn as a + corn, but I always presumed that it was coincidental and didn't originate that way.

probably because I pronounce acorn as /ˈeɪ̯kɔɹn/ and a corn as /ə ˈkɔɹn/, the a being drastically different in each

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 10:08 am

jal wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 10:07 am I'd guess "a" is just not very morpheme-worthy

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a-#English

(The last one listed there is even productive!)

The thing is that the main productive use of a- as a morpheme which is potentially realized as /eɪ/ makes no sense in acorn, and furthermore is primarily used in vocabulary of Greek origin.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 9:36 am

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2025 1:35 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 10:05 am I hadn't even heard that acorn is seen by some as a compound until it was mentioned here.

I suppose the pronunciation with two unreduced vowels can make it feel like a compound, but I'd never thought of it that way either.

To me the thing is I cannot consciously divide the word into clear words or morphemes even in the way that I can divide, say, cranberry.

I assumed that the "a" part was a fossilized version of "oak". (Like how the /E/ in "elder" is an fossilized umlauted version of the /o/ in "old".)

Also, the way that "acorn" is pronounced /"ej.korn/ instead of /"ej.kr=n/ or /V."korn/ suggests to me that it's a compound.

jcb wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 1:46 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Nov 07, 2025 9:18 am

Starbeam wrote: ↑Fri Nov 07, 2025 8:34 am In the case of acorn both components are living morphemes, they've just been obscured by sound changes.

Actually, acorn apparently isn't a compound at all -- according to Etymonline, it goes back to OE æcern and is cognate with ON akarn, Dutch aker, LG Ecker, StG Ecker (loan from Low German?), and Gothic akran, and the idea that it comes from OE ac (ModE oak) and corn is a 15th/16th century folk etymology.

I had no idea that even splitting it into the morphemes "a-corn" is an eggcorn!

OK, but where does this Germanic word *akrana come from if not *aiks+*kurna? It seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of pre-photo-Germanic compounding.

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Thu Nov 13, 2025 5:13 pm
OK, but where does this Germanic word for *akrana come from if not *aiks+*kurna?

Unsubdividable two-syllable morpheme?

Must we also assume that "bedbug" has no connection to beds or bugs?

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Thu Nov 13, 2025 5:13 pm

jcb wrote: ↑Sun Nov 09, 2025 1:46 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Nov 07, 2025 9:18 am

Actually, acorn apparently isn't a compound at all -- according to Etymonline, it goes back to OE æcern and is cognate with ON akarn, Dutch aker, LG Ecker, StG Ecker (loan from Low German?), and Gothic akran, and the idea that it comes from OE ac (ModE oak) and corn is a 15th/16th century folk etymology.

I had no idea that even splitting it into the morphemes "a-corn" is an eggcorn!

OK, but where does this Germanic word *akrana come from if not *aiks+*kurna? It seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of pre-photo-Germanic compounding.

Do you have any evidence that supports this hypothesis of pre-proto-Germanic compounding?

Edit: Wiktionary says it goes back to PIE *h₂égrō and is cognate with words such as Welsh eirin 'plums' and Russian я́года 'berry'; it specifically rejects the hypothesis that it comes from OE āc and OE corn.

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Thu Nov 13, 2025 5:18 pm Must we also assume that "bedbug" has no connection to beds or bugs?

No, of course not. But "acorn" sounds a lot less intuitively like a compound to me.

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Thu Nov 13, 2025 5:13 pmOK, but where does this Germanic word *akrana come from if not *aiks+*kurna? It seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of pre-photo-Germanic compounding.

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Thu Nov 13, 2025 5:18 pmMust we also assume that "bedbug" has no connection to beds or bugs?

Your "I don't know the actual cause so it must be a something I came up with" and "it must be a compound because other compounds exist" reasoning sounds too much like the "reasoning" of science deniers on Twitter. You make yourself look stupid. Don't do that.


JAL

Jal, you're right about Glass Half Baked's posts but:

1. Call it Twitter, you sellout
2. Why do you always manually write your name at the end of your posts instead of use a signature?

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 8:50 am Jal, you're right about Glass Half Baked's posts but:

1. Call it Twitter, you sellout

Constantly saying "the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter" does get old though.

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 8:50 am 2. Why do you always manually write your name at the end of your posts instead of use a signature?

When I write emails (but not forum posts) I always write my name at the end of them manually.

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 8:50 am1. Call it Twitter, you sellout

I do that almost always, don't know why I wrote "X" here. I'll edit the post.

2. Why do you always manually write your name at the end of your posts instead of use a signature?

Out of habit. I have signatures disabled for others, as some people (at least years and years ago three boards back) had pretty large signatures with pictures etc.


JAL

Maybe this could just as well be in the "German questions" thread, but I recently spoke with a German woman who told me that she really missed the word doch when speaking English.

She used the example of a recent trip where (IIRC) a tour guide had offered her use of a certain footpath and she declined. Shortly afterward, she realized she would in fact like to use this path. In German, she would have used doch to politely indicate that she had changed her mind. In English, she just said something rather dry like "I would like to go through here," as though no previous conversation had been had about the matter. So the tour guide was a little more annoyed than she might otherwise have been.

She asked me if there was a way in English to account for her change of mind like doch would in German, and I told her the magic word would be actually. The natural way to say what she meant to say in English (my American English, anyway) would have been something like "Actually, I would [in fact] like to go through here [after all]."

It got me thinking that "actually" is really an important word in spoken (and written) English. It seems to play an important role in the utterances of the guy who takes Bradley Martyn's hat (and is thereupon slapped by the same) in this clip.

What does he mean by "actually"? I want to say it serves a similar role as in my previous example, to say something like "I must admit that I was wrong before." But in this case it also (maybe primarily) expresses his incredulity at being slapped. I'm not sure what a German would say in such a situation.