Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

> These words all descend from the Greek "karkinos", meaning "crab", which became "cancer" in Latin.

> "Cancer" later took on an alternative meaning, "enclosure", because of the way a crab's pincers form a circle.

I am not an expert, but I think this may be backwards. I think the original meaning was circle, from which both the "enclose" meaning and the "crab" meaning (because the pincers form a circle or an enclosure) derive.

wiktionary [1] has the most in-depth etymology I can find, and has for "cancer" (meaning crab) the etymology is: karkros (“enclosure”) (because the pincers of a crab form a circle), from Proto-Indo-European kr-kr- (“circular”), reduplication of Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”) in the sense of "enclosure", and as such a doublet of carcer. Cognate with curvus.

Anyway, that aside, I felt stupid not having realized the etymology of "cancel," since in Italian (one of my languages) "cancello" means "gate."

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cancer#Latin

Relatedly, "cycle", "wheel", "circle", and "chakra" are all from the same Indo-European root via different languages.

How does “wheel” relate? In Sweden/DK/NO we call it “hjul” which is pronounced like the American nicotine vape brand juul, quite similar to English

All those words derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root, *kwel- : https://www.etymonline.com/word/*kwel-

Apparently also "pole", via a change kw > p in Greek!

Grimm's Law was a sound change that turned k into h when Proto-Germanic split off from Proto-Indo-European. The original form was something like *kwel which turned into *hwel in Proto-Germanic, then eventually wheel in English and hjul in Scandinavian languages.

The other words (chakra, circle, cycle) are from some kind of reduplicated form like *kwekwlos, via different routes.

This is easily seen today in e.g. Norwegian Kval and English Whale, which still sound similar enough to appear related even to the layman.

Thanks! It reminds me of how western Norwegians (Bergen, Stavanger etc) say a hard K sound when I think a H sound would be “normal”. Maybe they just never changed?

> In Sweden/DK/NO we call it “hjul” which is pronounced like the American nicotine vape brand juul, quite similar to English

I can't quite tell, but if you're saying that the American brand Juul is pronounced in English as if it were the word "you'll", that is not correct. Americans don't think of the letter J that way.

(If you're saying Nordic hjul and English wheel are similar, they are cognates.)

Can’t fix the comment now but meant that SV: hjul is pronounced like the vape brand

Ah yes, I think you're right, I got that backwards! I'll update the post, thank you!

Wow, kark is crab in sanskrit.

That should be the least surprising. Sanskrit (especially the Vedic stage) preserves a tremendous number of old Indo European forms and is often used as a sort of validity check for PIE etymologies.

In Spanish we also use "cancel" as gate or fence.

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