The Etymology Tree

It's a well-loved fact that we like to use dictionaries (or our phones) to get a quick definition, a working definition that allows us to use the word we'd like to express an idea in the ballpark of what we're thinking in our minds. I used to especially prefer sites that just gave me the most street definition on a somewhat sketchy platform, but still perfectly useful in helping me understand what word I was looking up. Those sites were espeically preferred because unlike other sources, they cut straight to the chase and gave me only what I needed, saving me the trouble of scrolling down the blubber of a paragraph with abbreviations and funny-looking roots that comes directly before the actual word itself. But, as I became more forced to do projects that relied on my understanding of etymology, I was somewhat forced to appreciate where our words come from. This language is especially interesting- we have words shared verbatim with other languages and some that contain chopped-up bits and pieces, words that have come to describe new and exciting technologies, slang that reflects our hatred for extra syllables when they're not needed, and some that we all share. But with so many languages, so many dialects, it's seemingly impossible to find little slivers of commonality since word origin is heavily related to regional location and culture. But the tree of etymology is still a tree- it may have a million branches, but they have to come from the same base.

I especially found interest in Hendrik Willem van Loon's model of the word "mother".

I've taken interest in this specific etymology- and that of a few other words- because it does have a more general benefit to the rest of the world. Things like these, we all share- and trust me, it's harder to find human commonality than it is to find the family tree of a word. If we as citizens of the earth share nothing else, we share ""mother" in some form or another.