I was wondering this morning… Why in the world is a butterfly called a butterfly? Found out more than I ever wanted to know. Personally, I like the German theory. These insects are actually milk-stealing undercover witches.
In Middle English, Butterfly was buterflie. In Old English, buttorfleoge. According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, the word butterfly may come from the notion that butterflies, or witches taking the form of butterflies, stole milk and butter.
| psyche | ancient GreekAlso meant “soul” and “breath” (now “mind,” of course).
Note that the human Psyche was lover with the god Eros (at least until she did the forbidden, gazed at his sleep form using an oil lamp she lit); compare the sexual butterfly images in Nabokov’s _Ada_. There may also be a connection, based on the shape, of butterflies with the Minoan labrys, or the double axe of the Labyrinth. |
| petalouda | modern GreekRelated to the words for “petal,” “leaf,” and “spreading out“.
Note that the priestly garments described in Exodus 28:36 include the petalon or ziz, a plate of gold attached to the miter, which shines with God’s approval of a propitious sacrifice. Possibly derived from “pteroda” by anaptyxis and lambdacism: p tero da -> petaloudia where “ptero” of course means wing, and has come home to roost once again in butterflies in the scientific name Lepidoptera. |
| papilio/onis | LatinAs in ancient Greek, the soul of a dead person is associated with the butterfly.
Our word “pavilion,” a tent or canopy spread out like wings, comes from this word as does “papilionaceous”. |
| papillon | French |
| fifoldara | Anglo-Saxon |
| fifalde | Old English |
| fifaltra | Old High German |
| fifrildi | Old Norse, modern Icelandic |
| farfalla | Italian The pasta, farfalle, often called “bow-ties” in the US, are really butterflies. |
| feileacan | Irish “feileacan oiche” is “night butterfly” i.e. “moth“. |
| mariposa | Spanish From “la Santa Maria posa” = “the Virgin Mary alights/rests“? (Recalling Psyche as butterfly?)Compare the ladybug or ladybird, “Our Lady’s bird“:
|
| borboleta | Portuguese “mariposa” includes both butterflies and moths. |
| Schmetterling | GermanFrom “Schmetten,” an Upper Saxon dialect loan-word first used 16 & 17th C, from Czech “smetana,” both meaning “cream,” referring to butterflies’ proclivity to hover around milkpails, butterchurns, etc. Folk belief had it that the b’flies were really witches out to steal the cream.
(As an aside, “schmettern,” among other things, means “to ring out, to warble, to twitter” — an aural analogue of how butterflies look in flight? Latin “pipilo/are” means “to twitter, to chirp,” after all. But the German, to my ears, sounds more like the sound a butterfly makes as a Prussian sort accelerates down the autobahn mashing it into a smear on the windshield.) “Tagfalter” is another name for butterfly, perhaps meaning “day-hinge” or “day-folder,” and “Nachtfalter” is a moth. These make semantic sense, or the “falter” part may instead reflect the Old High German “fifaltra” derived from the Latin.
|
| sommerfugl | Norwegian “summerfly” (or is it “summerbird,” as a German “Vogel”” = “bird“?) |
| zomerfeygele | Yiddish “summerbird“ |
| babochka | Russian Pronounced “bah’ bch ka“, it also means “bow tie“.It’s a diminutive of “baba” or “babka” (= “woman, grandmother, cake“, whence also “babushka” = “grandmother” in English, “babushka” = “a grandma-style headkerchief“). |
| dushichka | Russian (regional dialects)Derived from “dusha” = “soul“. |
| pillango’/lepke | Hungarian |
| hu-tieh | MandarinAs the word for 70 (years) is “tieh”, the butterfly thus becomes a punning symbol of longevity. It also represents young men in love (whereas in Japan it is young maidenhood or marital hapiness).
|
“Moth”
| moth | English English, cited in 950, from Scandinavian “mott” = “maggot“ |
| polilla | Spanish |
| traça | PortuguesePortuguese, “moth” or “silverfish“ |
| Motte | German |
| moell | Norwegian |
| moelur/moelfluga | Icelandic |
“Caterpillar”
| caterpillar | English“catyrpel” of 1440, derived from French “chatepelose” (?), meaning “hairy cat” (cf. “pile,” “pilose,” from Latin “pilus” = “hair“; “pill,” as in either medicine lozenge or fuzzball, like the hairballs cats regurgitate up, from Latin “pila” = “ball, originally knot of hair“). See also pussy willows and catkins, similar shapes and fuzzinesses associated with the feline.
Or is it from “piller,” meaning “pillager/ravager,” and “cate,” meaning “food” (root of today’s “caterer“) , as caterpillars devour leaves?
|
| chenille | FrenchFrom Latin “canicula,” diminutive of “canis” = “dog” . Thus English caterpillar is a hairy cat, and the French is a hairy dog. Meanwhile, the word “chenille” in English means a kind of thick fuzzy yarn that looks like a caterpillar! |
| eruca/ae | Latin Pliny uses this word to mean “caterpillar“, Horace to mean the garden cabbage “colewort” . This word in English also means “caterpillar,” as well as the garden herb “rocket“. |
| bruco | Italian(caterpillar, grub, maggot) |
| oruga | Spanish |
| lagarta/larva | Portuguese(“lagarto” = “lizard“) |
| larve/kaalorm | Norwegian(and “puppe” = “pupa“) |
| fifrildislirfa | Icelandic(and “pupuskeid” and “lirfa” = “pupa“) |
Related words in English
| pupa | From Latin for girl or doll, from PIE root meaning “to swell up, inflate,” whence Russian “pulja” = “ball“. “Pupil” = “student” comes from Latin “pupus” = “boy“; “pupil” = “center of eye” comes from the little “doll” you see reflected there. |
| cocoon | From French “coque” = “shell, of mollusc/egg/nut/…“. |
| chrysalis | From Greek for “chrysos” = “gold” (golden sheath), of Semitic origin (cf. Hebrew “haruz” = “gold,” Arabic “hara” = “yellow“). |
| fritillary | From Latin “fritillus” = “dice box,” from the spotted markings on the wings, this butterfly flits aleatorily (“aleatory” = “dice,” now = “random“). |
| Lepidoptera | Scientific name for the butterflies and the moths, meaning “scale-winged (insect)“. “Ptera” was discussed above; “lepidote” = “scurfy, scaly” (whence “leprosy“) comes from Greek “lepein” = “to peel“. Unrelated, but charming, is the archaic Latinate “lepid” = “pleasant, neat, charming“. |
According to Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion, “In Madagascar and among the Naga of Manipur, some trace their ancestry from a butterfly. According to the Pima of North America, at the time of beginning the creator, Chiowotmahki, assumed the form of a butterfly and flew over the world until he found a suitable place for mankind. The Maori of New Zealand believe that the soul returns to earth after death as a butterfly, and in the Solomon Islands a dying person, who has a choice as to what he will become after death, often chooses to become a butterfly. In Islamic Sufism, the moth that immolates itself in the candle flame is the soul losing itself in the divine fire.”
Harking back to the ancient Greek Psyche as butterfly, there is an interesting coincidence in Aztec and Mayan mythology. Itzpapalotl is the goddess of the Obsidian Butterfly, which is to say, of the soul embedded in stone. The seemingly antinomian idea is that the free butterfly/soul is released from the body by the sacrificial blade of obsidian, and simultaneously captured or contained in it. Itzpapalotl is a counterpart of the god Tezcatlipoca of the Smoking Mirror; “tezcat” means “obsidian knife“. The butterfly is also an attribute of Xochipilli, the god of flowers and vegetation, and is also associated with flickering firelight. (I suppose these names are Nahuatl.)
What’s next for these flying souls? Metamorphosis? Transfiguration? Perhaps the *beat*ification of butterfly wings?
(And as for “Lepid*opera*“, let’s not forget Puccini’s Madama Butterfly…)
Original article here: http://www.insects.org/ced4/etymology.html
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
If you are learning Latin, I have written a book with all of my best tips and strategies. It’s available as a free download here: https://dwanethomas.com/via/
If you are interested in learning Latin, you can go through the classes on my site 24/7. I recommend the book Lingua Latina by Hans Ørberg. If you tackle the book and find yourself bogged down, you may find the classes on my site helpful. To join, just click here: https://dwanethomas.com/join/
If you want a more professionally filmed experience, check out the best-selling DVD series: Visual Latin.
Or, if you want to skip Latin, and just jump right into learning English words from Latin and Greek roots, you may enjoy the series Word up! Warning. Word up! is a bit wacky. You will learn a lot… but, you may find yourself rolling your eyes, too.
By the way, some of the links in this post are affiliate links. Not trying to pull a fast one on you. I only promote what I believe in.
