Word History & Etymology Engine
Name a word, in any language, and get its history and evolution
i. purpose
Origins is a word history and etymology engine. Name a word. Origins traces where the word came from, what the word first meant, how the meaning moved, and what that movement reveals about the idea itself.
Origins gives the language the word belongs to, the earliest known form, the root and how the root breaks down, the original meaning, the stages of change, why the meaning changed, the borrowing path where the word crossed languages, related words, and the myths attached to the word. Where the record runs out, Origins says so instead of picking the better story.
Origins works in any language. A word is traced through the language the word belongs to, rather than routed through English. Origins also handles the cases where one word belongs to several languages at once: loanwords, calques, cognates, doublets, and the pairs that look related and are not.
