Ji Trnka:Sen Noci Svatojnsk (1959) | A Midsummer Night's Dream

Jiří Trnka: Sen noci svatojánské (1959) | A Midsummer Night's Dream 

Interesting etymologies: part 2

Some words in different languages beginning with al- which are borrowings from Arabic (e.g. alcohol, algebra, alchemy, algorithm) are actually the result of reanalysis.

In this case, al is originally an article in Arabic, preceding the word itself (so e.g.  al  + kuḥl → alcohol,  al + jabr → algebra), but it was reanalysed as one word in the process of borrowing.

The word algorithm comes from al Ḵwārizmī, a name of a Persian mathematician.

In the case of admiral, the original boundary was between the word and the article following it, i.e.  amīr + al, because it was a military title often followed by another noun (‘commander of + noun’). The reanalysis was also influenced by the Latin suffix -alis. (This is, however, only a theory “not borne out by the textual evidence in either Arabic or the Western languages”, according to the OED.)

Josef Bolf: Cassiopea (2017)

I will show this to the next person who tells me that the conductor is not so important because he just “waves his hands in front of the orchestra”.

"The World Will Go Vegan Without Realising It"