Definition of "etymon"

etymon

/ˈɛt.ɪ.mɒn/

noun
plural etymons or etyma
1. (linguistics) The original or earlier form of an inherited or borrowed word, affix, or morpheme either from an earlier period in a language's development, from an ancestral language, or from a foreign language.
  Quotations
  Here such cases as ghost words & misglosses, secondary semantics, different etymologies for one etymon or one etymology for different etyma, and finally semantic overpermissiveness are discussed.
  2006, Folia orientalia - Volumes 42-43, page 467
  The resulting citation collection was databased and coded for meaning, etymon, and date range (earliest and latest occurrence found).
  2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide‎, page 5
  Parricide, the more usual word, means (1) "the murder of one's own father"; or (2) "someone who murders his or her own father" […] It is also used in extended senses, such as "the murder of the ruler of a country" and "the murder of a close relative." These are not examples of slipshod extension, however, for even the Latin etymon (parricida) was used in these senses.
  2016, Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th edition
2. Meaning as derived and conveyed thereby: The literal meaning of a term according to its origin, which may differ from its usual meaning when the latter relies on idiomatic conventions that are not conveyed by the term alone (that is, they must be known in other ways, such as experience, training, education, or dictionary lookup).

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