 So it's time in this video for a highly educational etymology lesson yesterday I got a comment on one of my videos, which was probably a joke But it's a joke that I can give a very serious response to and the joke is or the comment was How do you say cuck in proto-indo European? Probably just someone messing around but you posted that on the right channel if you wanted to get an answer about that So how do you say cuck in indo-european? Let's say you want to own someone thousands of years ago in a language that's not spoken anymore. How do you do that? Let's find out so of course cuck in English short for cuckold comes from the cuckoo bird which lays its eggs and other birds nests That's not a very interesting etymology I think it actually comes from the the sound that the bird makes it's onomatopoeia But let's look at the word cuck in other languages other indo-european languages and see if we can't reconstruct something So in Spanish the word for cuck or cuckold is cornudo, okay Now that means literally someone who is horned like cornudo also means something like you know something that has horns, right? Now in other romance languages as well For example, Italian you say cornuto. That's a cuck Same same etymology. It means something with horns now. There's debate as to where why this actually comes You know, maybe I don't know. It's something phallic or something I don't think any people just have folk etymologies as for why but the word in romance languages that means horned Usually means a cuck and it's the same thing in Latin as well Cornutus in Latin means a cuck and that means literally means someone with horns, but it also means cuck That's basically what it what it Mounts to and I'm trying to think so we do have some so cornu in Latin means horn We have some English words that actually come from this. So like cornucopia Cornu means horn and copia means plenty. So a cornucopia is a horn of a horn of plenty But where things get interesting if we want to reconstruct some into European word is that if you look at earlier English You see that English actually use the same kind of metaphor So, you know in Middle English or so, you know several hundred years ago If you described someone is horned or horned That actually meant basically the same thing it meant that they were a cuck So there are two possibilities here. Well three possibilities one is it could just be a coincidence Another one is that English speakers heard this metaphor used in romance languages and borrowed it Another one is that both of them go back to the same Indo-European source And I think this actually might be a stronger alternative here Because the word horn if you don't know already Horn is actually related to the Latin word cornu etymologically They sound very different if you have an untrained ear but um in Indo-European, of course Germanic languages go through, you know, the Grim and and Werner's law where they a bunch of sound sounds change systematically So a sound the co sound in most other Indo-European languages shows up as a ha sound in Germanic languages So there are other words like this as well. So like, you know, corno in Latin versus horn in English or like let's say like Kratos in Greek that means like strong. That's equivalent to the English word hard or even something like The Latin word Carlos which means beloved or dear or sometimes expensive That's actually related to our English word whore which took on different connotations But it used to mean someone beloved or something like that or loved or something So Ka actually corresponds to ha in English and of course, if you know Grim and Werner's law There are a bunch of other sounds, but this is the one that matters for us So horn is actually the same word etymologically as corno in Latin and that's horned Etymologically is basically the same word. It's not like English speakers borrowed it on to just a similar like a Word in similar meaning they happen to borrow it on to the if they borrowed it from Latin languages They would coincidentally borrow it to the word that etymologically was the same and this might be good proof that Calling someone a cock actually etymologically goes back further than English and Latin back to where they had a common ancestor in Proto-Indo-European contrary to popular belief It's not like European languages and Indo-European are more closely related than they are to other languages You know Germanic and Italic slash romance. They basically have to go back to the source if you want to find how similar they are So what's next so the other interesting thing? Let's say we actually want to figure out which Indo-European word What it would sound like an Indo-European now if you look at words for horn in other languages So for example in Hittite the word for horn is Sorno, I think so Sorno Sorna something like that and that actually is related as well to Corno and horn and I think in Sanskrit. There's a word. I don't know Sanskrit that well, but there's something like Shinga Shinga starts with the SH kind of sound now You might be asking why does an SH sound or Sorna in in Hittite? How is that related to the Cah sound in Latin? Well, that's because all of them come Whenever you see that in an Indo-European language that actually corresponds to the Indo-European Palatal K Which sounded some it's not exactly like a K sound. It's more like it's a little bit different But in Western, well, that's actually the wrong term to use But in some Indo-European languages like Latin and English that sound actually Merges with the normal K. So it comes to Latin as Corno It comes to Latin or it comes to English as horn because you know both become K and then K changes to H Whereas in other Indo-European languages like Sanskrit and like Hittite that actually the Palatal K The K sound becomes something more like sh and you can sort of see how those are related or Hittite. It's it's or whatever So what this tells us is that the Indo-European word for Cuck had to have had a Palatal vealer in fact the specific root it would have come from is Kerr Which can mean different things sometimes, you know, it's associated with horns But it's also associated with just like the top of your head or something like that So one derivative of this of Kerr is in Latin. There's the word Kerebrum, which is brain We obviously get the word cerebrum from it So this too is related actually to the same source. So Kerr gives us all of those things Now this is where things get a little fuzzy for me. Now, of course, I can give you a good word for it But I haven't done a new European in a couple years. So I might get some details wrong So here's the important thing now first off We have an in and in's pop up in many different places in Indo-European It's not too weird to have, you know, a root from Kerr like Kerr no or something like that. So that that isn't too surprising But it also so the Latin ending cornutus that sort of tells you that it comes from the toos comes from a A adjectival ending or sort of a nominalizing ending in Indo-European that's toos And that's what it's specifically what's called a hetero wait hysterokinetic and I think that's it hysterokinetic Suffix because when you put it on a word the stress actually shifts to the suffix and sometimes you'll have vowel changes or Ablald or something like that You can if you can get it wrong. You can correct me if I get something a little wrong here, but The so anyway what the Indo-European word for a cuck should be literally someone who is horned should be like let's see Knottos or something like that Knottos and it depends on What exact word you want to have it come from you could just say instead of having a? a Solabic r it has an o because that's what you see in Latin Cornotos Cornotos I should be clear. We have stress at the end. So that should basically be your Indo-European word for cuck again, it now this is definitely the Indo-European word for Horned or something like that barring any mistakes that I make made as I'm Etymologizing in my car here today, but that should be the Indo-European word for horned horned But it might be the case that like in Germanic and romance languages that has the connotation of being a cuck as well So that is that is basically how you say cuck in proto-Indo European and I will put the maybe I'll put the declension for it in the video description or in the comment section in case any you guys want to decline the word in all Appropriate cases so anyway, that's about it, and I will see you guys next time