• Kitathalla@lemy.lolEnglish
    3·
    2 hours ago

    In the defense of the ancients who were naming things like other things they sort of looked like… what OTHER substance was around at that time that was both white and liquid?

    …

    Because maybe we should be grateful for the milk metaphor instead of the option that only nuts would choose…

    \ >.> Would you rather it be called after dough?

  • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    37·
    10 hours ago

    In German and Dutch it’s way worse: “Säugetier” and “zoogdier”. Both can roughly be translated to “sucking animals”. I was taught in school that it’s called that because babies suck on the mother’s breasts to be fed and this is a unique trait to mammals. So in conclusion, we all suck.

  • yarr@feddit.nlEnglish
    8·
    9 hours ago

    I’ve always thought my defining characteristic was my nipples.

  • pocopene@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    9 hours ago

    Just wait till you know the etymology of mastodon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon

    Edit to save a click: "A mastodon, (from Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós), meaning “breast, and ὀδούς (odoús) “tooth”)”

    Edit 2: the “mast” in “mastodon” is the same one as in “mastectomy”

  • Im_old@lemmy.worldEnglish
    110·
    16 hours ago

    I had to scroll back in my saved posts to a million years ago to resurrect this.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 hours ago

      That metaphor (breasts as fruit) transcends language though. Whatever you call fruits you’ll end up calling breasts. Here’s the song of Solomon which was semetic.

      I said, ‘I will go up to the palm tree; I will take hold of the boughs thereof.’ Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples.

      Instead of viewing things like this etymologically, it’s better to see them as universal metaphors that transcend language and culture. Similar to light and darkness.

  • sik0fewl@lemmy.caEnglish
    35·
    15 hours ago

    Ackshully, “galaxy” (or rather, “galaxias”) means “Milky Way” already, it’s just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.

    Of course, we realize there’s more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      12 hours ago

      And we didn’t realize there was more than one galaxy until the 1920s (I think?)

          • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 hours ago

            My great aunt explained to me as a child in the 70s that the moon was round because gravity pulled it into a sphere. This woman was born around 1890, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and lived on a Civil War-era farm in bumfuck West Virginia.

            And then ya got what we have here today.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
            7·
            8 hours ago

            May I suggest reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos? Or watch one of the TV shows.

            While your average human is about as smart as a brick, there are so many minds throughout history that were able to pull humanity out of our dark caves and into space.

            What we need, to survive as a species, is to nurture people, give them (proper) education, and more will come up.

            • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              7 hours ago

              I grew up on Sagan. I’m not saying we should accept anything the way it is or not take inspiration from our achievements, just that we should not be prideful or expect any greatness from anyone.

              We’re currently smarter than we’ve ever been in a lot of ways, but I find the smarter you are it only changes the kinds of mistakes you make.

              I do agree that humans increase in value the more you value them, and vice-versa. Society should be structured around maximising “human capital”, so to speak.

        • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 hours ago

          Just looking at them, they appear fairly similar to nebulas within our own galaxy. It took sophisticated spectroscopic measurements to realize they’re actually much further away.