Talk:עתיק

Greek origin

@Wikitiki89, was this borrowed from a Hellenic language or is it from Proto‐Semitic? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 08:43, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

If you're thinking of Ἀττικός (Attikós), then I don't see much of a semantic connection. It's tempting to a connection with antiquus, particularly because the n would have assimilated to the t, creating a geminate -tt- like this word has, however the initial consonant would have been א (ʾ), rather than ע (ʿ) (this applies to Ἀττικός (Attikós) as well). Also, contact with Latin is very unlikely that early on (contact with Greek would have been more plausible). More likely, it's simply derived from the verb עֲתַק (ʿăṯaq), which had the meaning "move, advance", but in Aramaic developed into "advance in age, grow old", and עַתִּיק (ʿattīq) would be a regularly derived adjective from that root. --WikiTiki89 16:01, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

@Wikitiki89: yeah, I should have suggested Latin, but I was pretty exhausted when I wrote that message. The similarities are probably just coincidental. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 20:05, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

When I look at the Indo-European etymon for antiquus, it could almost have been borrowed from that... But yeah, probably just coincidence. Btw: I've just changed the etymology in Persian عتیق, which derived it from French. (Had been around for nine years :)) Kolmiel (talk) 05:59, 8 June 2016 (UTC)