many times, even etymology does not make things intuitive: e.g. 'spendthrift'.
similarly, many English words are close, but their meaning diverge a lot. e.g. condemn vs condone, or vindicate vs vindictive.
I don't think this is a good example of cognates diverging in meaning. They're both more or less kinds of avenging or counter-attacking. When you vindicate something you are responding to some attack made against it, and when something is vindictive it responds to attacks with attacks of its own.
Thrift was formerly a word for profits, now it makes sense. But I recognize the snowclone as a popular 16th century way to form personal verb-noun descriptors like cutpurse, upstart, sawbones, spoilsport, dreadnought. This is still productive because midwit is a recent addition. (Eh, I suppose mid isn't a verb, but I think it's the same pattern.)
(Spanish does this more than Portuguese, but also Wiktionary has been more thorough in categorizing the Spanish examples compared to the Portuguese examples.)
It's cool to be reminded that this pattern also has a history in English.
Another example I was thinking of, pasatiempo/passatempo, actually has an exact English equivalent, pastime.
Comments
many times, even etymology does not make things intuitive: e.g. 'spendthrift'. similarly, many English words are close, but their meaning diverge a lot. e.g. condemn vs condone, or vindicate vs vindictive.
I don't think this is a good example of cognates diverging in meaning. They're both more or less kinds of avenging or counter-attacking. When you vindicate something you are responding to some attack made against it, and when something is vindictive it responds to attacks with attacks of its own.
Thrift was formerly a word for profits, now it makes sense. But I recognize the snowclone as a popular 16th century way to form personal verb-noun descriptors like cutpurse, upstart, sawbones, spoilsport, dreadnought. This is still productive because midwit is a recent addition. (Eh, I suppose mid isn't a verb, but I think it's the same pattern.)
Huh! Spanish and Portuguese still use this pattern (verb+noun → noun), like Spanish matafuego 'fire extinguisher' (literally 'killfire'), Spanish rascacielos (literally 'scrapeskies'), Portguese arranha-ceu (literally 'scrape-sky').
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Spanish_verb-object_...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Portuguese_verb-noun...
(Spanish does this more than Portuguese, but also Wiktionary has been more thorough in categorizing the Spanish examples compared to the Portuguese examples.)
It's cool to be reminded that this pattern also has a history in English.
Another example I was thinking of, pasatiempo/passatempo, actually has an exact English equivalent, pastime.
the etymology of snowclone itself is amusing ;)