Etymolgy and Entomolgy*, Part 2

The word 'teeny' - anything to do with 'teen'? According to my exhaustive research (I am goddamn exhausted), not in the least.

So 'teen' comes (I think) from 'ten' - via Germanic or Norse languages. Like, in German, 'thirteen' is dreizehn (literally, 'three ten'). And I assumed that 'teeny' and/or 'teensy' derived from '-teen'.

Not so!

Teeny comes from an alteration of 'tiny' (duh!), modified to resemble the long-e of 'wee'. And teensy is a further modification of 'teeny'.

Now, back to teen. Fascinatingly enough, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, "teenager is from 1941 (the earlier word for this was teener, attested in Anmer.Eng. from 1894). Teen-aged (adj.) is from 1952; shortened form teen is from 1951 (though this had been used as a noun to mean "teen-aged person" in 1818)."

Lastly, to address the asterisk in this post's title. In the course of researching this post, I came across the following web page - Teeny Nymph. This is the winner of my annual "Not A Porn Site, Although by All Accounts It Should Be" Award.

What type of fly-fishing lure is this? Well, "Teeny Nymphs are simple shrimp-like flies that are constructed entirely of cock Ring Neck Pheasant tail fibers." That's right. Made out of cock ring.

Huzzah.

Etymolgy and Entomolgy, Part 1

So I'm thinking about termites, and a thought hits me - wow. "What if termite comes from French Terre meaning earth, plus the word 'mite'?" Like an earth mite - a little bug that lives in the ground?

No go. At all, apparently. According to all the dictionaries around, the name comes from termes, which is Latin for 'termite', and which itself derives from the older Latin tarmes, 'wood-eating worm'. Okay. I can deal with that.

And worse, though, turns out mites aren't even insects. They're arachnids. So I am not only wrong, but on very shaky ground.

But it's okay, because now I am wiser.

Also, I learned that termite queens, when egg-filled, increase their size by about a hundredfold, and so can't really move around on their own. So the queen's got to be pushed from place to place by workers. Afterwards, she will shoot a rewarding juice out of her ass for them.

And, termites have soldiers, which can squirt noxious liquids or toxic glue (!!) from their heads. Wow.

Wow.