The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years
nautil.us
The word lox was one of the clues that eventually led linguists to discover who the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where they lived.Photograph by Helen Cook / Flickr One of my favorite words is lox,” says Gregory Guy, a professor of linguistics at New York University. There is hardly a more quintessential New York food than […]

it’s also yummy

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Yep, 8,000 years ago laks meant any type of fish, living or prepared food.

    And even in modern times it means the same thing: a specific breed of fish when prepared for eating by smoking

    It is fascinating how words evolve and change instead of staying the same for that long…

    • Pipoca@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Yep, 8,000 years ago laks meant any type of fish, living or prepared food.

      Citation?

      From what I’ve seen, 8000 years ago it meant salmon. Today, in English it means smoked salmon.

      It’s a surprisingly minor shift for 8k years.