Talk:τρόικα

Etymology

The etymology here seems misleading.

I find it unlikely that Greek borrowed the term from the Russian sense of a kind of sleigh directly to a group of three people.

More likely either Russian already had a sense meaning a group of three people and Greek just borrowed that.

Or other European languages developed it for the meaning of a group of three people from the Russian original and Greek was influenced by this new international word.

It is still plausible that Greek took it first, developed this sense, and then other European languages such as English followed on from there.

But if this last of three cases is not the way then we should change our gloss to mention that a kind of sleigh was merely the original sense. — 58.172.68.199 08:44, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Surely the etymology shown is unspecific about the initial usage in Greek? — Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 05:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Most dictionary distinguish directly from language X and "unspecific" about how from language X by using a wording like "Ultimately from". I've also seen this used here. Otherwise we are faced with very many apparently obvious and clearly worded etymoligies actually meaning "from language X in some nonspecific way". Hence it's easy to distinguish and better to distinguish. Better yet of course is if we know the actual path of the borrowing. — hippietrail (talk) 09:44, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

OK :) — I only have my Greek dictionary to go on - they may have had the same problem, it may have arrived via the French? — Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 10:07, 22 August 2014 (UTC)