Joel at Far Outliers posts excerpts from Aleksandra Jagielska’s Culture.pl article on entomological etymology:
The word pszczoła [‘bee’] has Proto-Slavic origins, probably even Proto-Indo-European – if we go back that far in the language, we will discover that the Polish pszczoła and the English bee most probably come from the same Proto-Indo-European form *bhiquelā! In Proto-Slavic, the proto-word was *bьčela or *bъčela (they differ in the quality of the yer – a Proto-Slavic vowel). If we wanted to discover the etymology of Polish pszczoła (bee), we’d discover that it is an onomatopoeic word: probably the Proto-Slavic root was an onomatopoeic *bъk-, *bъč-, related to the Proto-Slavic verb *bučati, brzęczeć – to buzz (about bugs). The suffix *-ela would indicate the meaning of *bъčela as ‘that which buzzes’.
The name of this bug was initially pczoła in Poland, with the consonant š (sz) eventually inserted. Language strives for economy, also in terms of articulation, hence the consonant group pč- (pcz-) was expanded to pšč- due to the desire to avoid excessive articulatory energy input. This also explains why the spelling of the word pszczoła is an orthographic exception, since there was never any ‘r’ in this word that could become a ‘rz’.
Wasps do not enjoy as good a reputation as their ‘cousins’, the bees. They are not useful from the point of view of humans – they are considered negative, dangerous, unpleasant bugs, in contrast to the hard-working, holy bees. An important feature of wasps, one with which they are usually most associated, is their painful sting. You can also say about someone that they are as evil as a wasp or as sharp as a wasp (zły jak osa and cięty jak osa, respectively]. Due to the gender of this noun in Polish, this term is usually used in relation to women. Only a woman can have a wasp waist – this expression is associated with the characteristic narrowing of the body structure of this bug. Unlike other phraseologisms related to wasps, however, it does not have a negative connotation but is rather a compliment.
The etymology of osa is not related to its ‘character traits’, however. It has Proto-Indo-European roots, and the names of this family in other languages indicate a common origin reconstructed by researchers to Proto-Indo-European *ṷobhsā, osa. Baltic, Romance and Germanic languages have preserved the initial v-, so for example, in Lithuanian, osa is vapsvà; in Latin it is vespa; and in English it is ‘wasp’. As Maciołek writes, in accordance with the law of the open syllable in the Proto-Slavic languages [all syllables had to end in a vowel, ed.], the intra-word consonant group *-bs- was simplified into -s-, hence the Proto-Indo-European *ṷobhsā became the Proto-Slavic *(v)osa, and today in Polish it has the form osa.
Andrzej Bańkowski sees the meaning of the name osa in the verb *webh-, ‘to weave’, which is related to the fact that wasps weave their nests from plant fibres. Wasp nests are a very important place for them, and they defend it fiercely. Maciej Rak cites a regional saying: włożyć kij w gniazdo os (‘to put a stick in a wasps’ nest’, meaning ‘to irritate, to provoke a bad situation’; in general language, this saying is related to ants: włożyć kij w mrowisko, ‘to put a stick in an anthill’).
Or, as we say in English, “stir up a hornet’s nest.”
Update. Joel has posted more excerpts: Flies, Mosquitoes (“Andrzej Bańkowski describes the meaning of the word mucha as ‘unclear’. For this word, he seeks the etymology in the Sanskrit root of the verb muṣ-, ‘to steal, to rob’”); Ants, Ladybugs (“The etymology of biedronka as a small cow would also find an explanation in another name for this animal, boża krówka, God’s cow, or formerly, krówka Maryi Panny, Virgin Mary’s cow”).
One of the many attempts to limn the etymology of Jewish Essenes–rather than looking to Hebrew–flew to the Artemis temple in Ephesus attendant priests as bee-keepers.
Hornet etymology is easy. Details aside, they have horns.
Etymology of Essenes/Ossenes elicited about 50 different published proposals. In case anyone wishes to check the proposed Artemis Ephesus connection: John Kampen, A Reconsideration of the Name “Essene” in Greco-Jewish Literature in Light of Recent Perceptions of the Qumran Sect, Hebrew Union College Annual 57 (1986) 61-81.
“оса” in Bulgarian, probably redudnant. Wasps are not really bees anyway. They’re closer to ants.
Behold, I give you a pretty rockin’ early Seventies version by the then-obscure Doobie Brothers of the early Randy Newman composition “Beehive State.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P42epKw6S0M
In the U.S., Beehive State is a somewhat obscure synonym for Utah, which I believe originates in some peculiarly Mormon theological interest in bees. Conceivably Essene-revivalist, but I really don’t know the details. (The first verse is about Kansas and it take a while for Utah to enter the narrative.)
J.W. Brewer : fascinating
…That’s not the same thing!
Bees and ants are more closely related to each other than to most “wasps”, including the actual Vespoidea. And they all have parasitoid ancestors. Check out the trees here and here – hallucinant, quoi.
If you are in Salt Lake City, the beehive motif is everywhere. I always assumed this had something to do with the not-specifically-Mormon image of hard work, but I may well be wrong.
The hard-work/industry association is definitely not specifically Mormon, but there is also a general association with teamwork and community, and the Mormons attached particular significance to the hive as a community analogous to the kingdom of God or something like that. The originally called their proposed state “deseret’, which is meant to mean honeybee according to the book of Mormon.
Presumably the obscurity of the hive as a symbol of Utah the state has been reduced by the choice of the new flag.
Thanks! In the back of my mind I had assumed that “Deseret” had something to do with desert, and looked no further. It does indeed mean ‘bee’, in the supposed language of the Jaredites.
There’s a book coming out later this year, an in-depth treatment of the Deseret alphabet, an English phonetic script devised by the Mormons and still favored by enthusiasts.
Back in my geocaching days 20 years ago, I created a puzzle partly based (spoiler) on the Deseret alphabet. It is still functional, to my surprise
https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCQY58
the consonant group pč- (pcz-) was expanded to pšč- due to the desire to avoid excessive articulatory energy input.
ROFL!
Yes, I raised my eyebrows at that.
I believe the bulk of the etymological info comes from the linguist Marcin Maciołek’s 2012 doctoral thesis Kształtowanie się nazw owadów w języku polskim. Procesy nominacyjne a językowy obraz świata (The Formation of Names of Bugs in Polish: Nominative Processes and the Linguistic Image of the World). (Note: Pol. Kształt < Ger. Gestalt)
Fortunately, I didn’t need Polish speech therapy after my (lucky) stroke. Some of it might have been interesting.
Is owad really colloquial, like English bug?
https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/insekt.html
https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/owad.html
Seems like owad is the generic word (not colloquial) and insekt is specialised to “parasitic” insects.
I first experienced the anger and despair of Old Age when I entered London’s Natural History Museum a few years ago and discovered the gallery devoted to invertebrates had been rebadged “Creepy Crawlies”… I mean, WTF??
Because SJP PWN says so? I can speak only for myself, but frankly I have not encountered such a strict distinction in real life usage. For me insekt is rather bookish synonym for owad, that may imply being a pest but not parasitism as such.
@N
Thanks. I posted in hopes of attracting someone like you. ☺️
I couldn’t think of the word for ‘bee’ in Gaelic, with its notoriously entertaining insect names, and had to look it up – the ordinary word which I know is ‘seillean’, but I thought you might appreciate this entry:
earc
boir. gin. eirce, iol. -an
unspecific archaic term for a speckled or striped animal (especially reptiles such as lizards or snakes but also salmon or trout, bees and wasps, speckled cows and deer, piglets etc)
Dwelly just writes out the separate meanings in a list, to comical effect:
† sf Cow. 2(AF) Heifer. 3 (AF) Trout. 4** Bee. 5** Honey. 6** Dew. 7** Salmon. 8** Tax. 9** Heaven.
@jen
https://www.faclair.com/ViewEntry.aspx?ID=CED0ACE4A59ABC90C801C74ED392C87E
Beach is the common word for bee in Irish; I am not sure this covers wasps, I would have considered wasp to be foiche (or even something like *fuáisp, cf. fuip)
earc:
Welsh gwenynen is “bee”, but the same word turns up in gwenynen farch “wasp” (“horse bee.”) GPC says it’s from the same root as gwanu “pierce, stab”, which seems plausible enough. Possibly from PIE *gʷʰen-.
No Oti-Volta language seems to have a word which covers all wasps: they have distinct words for various species of wasp instead.
“Bee” goes back beyond proto-Oti-Volta, though; historically, its stem is derived from the stem of “honey” with a derivational suffix *-m-, but most of the modern Oti-Volta languages have levelled the stems of the two words, in favour of the stem of “bee.” Mooré still keeps them apart: sĩ́ifú “bee”, sɩ́ɩdò “honey”, but Kusaal has siinf /sī:f/ “bee”, siind /sī:d/ “honey.”
Because the Slavic words for ‘bee’ sound similar to the genitive of the word for ‘forehead’ (in Polish: pszczoła – czoła), there exist folk tales telling how the insect came into existence when an angry country woman threw a rock at Jesus or St Peter or some other saint, hurting him in the forehead. The wound got infested with worms, which later miraculously changed into bees.
As for the ladybug, ‘little sun’ is another widespread name for it in Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian сонечко). This one also received a lot of attention from country folk. Children used to say a short nursery rhyme to it, asking the ladybug to go to the sky and bring them bread/rain/sunny weather.
Hornet etymology is easy. Details aside, they have horns.
The definition is easy too, in my American experience: “Whatever kind of good-sized wasp the speaker happens to call a hornet.”
@Jen: “Bees, Taxes, and Other Dangerous Things.”
@Y: That sounds like a Kusaal noun class.
Despite appearances this explanation could make sense. List of descendants here shows that this cluster does not seem to be stable cross-linguistically and as far as I am aware in case of Polish it only occurs on syllable (and morpheme) boundaries. The /pt̠͡ʂ/ or /pt͡ʃ/ falling on syllable onset could be perceived as awkward to pronounce, so insertion of additional sibilant resolves such difficulty.
Technically some species of cockroaches can fly, but not very well.
Firstly, an intermediate form chrobak is not mentioned here. Secondly, Wiktionary provides somewhat different etymology indicating that it originally referred to ‘grub’. It makes more sense, since the semantic shift from larva to worm is much easier.
It is not certain which meaning of bąk is referred to in this idiom, quite often the ‘bittern’ is mentioned as the correct one. English version of Wiktionary for some reason omits another, quite commonly used meaning of bąk: ‘fart’.
Dyirbal, rather.
Yeah: Kusaal is more “war, soap and porridge.”
(Sounds like a new Neflix series, perhaps aimed at the UK wartime-nostalgia market … though “Women, Fire and Dangerous Things” sounds more commercial, to be honest.)
I was mistaken — within Hymenoptera termites and wasps are more closely related than ants and bees. Also, termites are cockroaches anyway.