18 December 2019

Nau, nausea, nautical


This week I've been playing Civilization V in the role of Maria of Aragon, Queen of Portugal (the game describes her as "struggling with illness" throughout her reign, but the Wikipedia entry notes that she was "almost continually pregnant," carrying ten children to term in 14 years).  In the course of the game I learned about the nau -


- which was totally new to me, even as a word.  But this same week I happened to listen to a podcast of No Such Thing as a Fish, where the discussion of seasickness included the comment that the word nausea was related to nautical.  So... to the dictionary.  Portuguese nau borrowed from Catalan nau, from Latin nāvis.  And nausea is a borrowing from the Latin nausea, from Ancient Greek ναυσία (nausía, sea-sickness), from ναῦς (naûs, ship).  You learn something every day.

1 comment:

  1. The same root occurs in astronaut/cosmonaut, literally "star/space sailor."

    ReplyDelete

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