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Comment on Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)parent

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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.

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