Was slightly mindblown whenl discovered this.

The two parts to the word “helicopter” are not “helil” and “copter”, but “helico” meaning spiral, and “pter” meaning one with wings, like pterodactyl.

1044 AM-5Mar 2018 21,200 Retweets 67,241 Lkes

wait WHAT

Aderinthemadscientist: Wait, so… does -copter come “from” helicopter?

108echoes: Yep! This is called rebracketing. Another famous example would be"-burger": the original food item is named after the German city, (Hamburgl+(er], but semantically reinterpreted as (ham]+[burger].

    • Enkrod@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      No, Bürger means Citizen, Burger doesn’t really exist as a german word, but would mean “someone from a castle” or “someone doing something with castles”.

      Those Umlaut-Dots change the pronounciation and the meaning, they are important!