Post #2360601

2026-05-10 18:22 UTC

The word ‘queen’ is distantly related to the first part of ‘gynaecology’ and the second part of ‘misogyny’. It’s also related to Norwegian ‘kone’ (wife) and ‘kvinne’ (woman), but they’re not full cognates. While ‘queen’ comes from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (wife), ‘kone’ and ‘kvinne’ stem from *kwenōn (woman). In English, this became the disparaging – and now archaic – word ‘quean’ (slʋt).

Replies (6)

@ZuilenV@mastodon.nl 2026-05-10 18:23

@yvanspijk@toot.community altijd leuk om je toots te lezen en wat te leren, dank!

Open ##2423148
@aburka@hachyderm.io 2026-05-10 18:30

@yvanspijk@toot.community wait, "queen" and "quean" were homophones? That seems like a dangerous ambiguity, but maybe some vowel shifts made it distinguishable?

Open ##2423150
@geomannie@mastodon.scot 2026-05-10 18:36

@yvanspijk@toot.community I think quean is a variation of spelling of quine, which in the Doric Scots of NE Scotland means young woman or girl. Quine is by no means disparaging, rather a simple description.

Open ##2423153
@onepict@chaos.social 2026-05-10 18:40

@yvanspijk@toot.community in Doric Scots we say quine which means girl. So it's interesting to see the roots https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/quine_n_1

Open ##2423155
@JensJot@mas.to 2026-05-10 19:21

@yvanspijk@toot.community Is “gynaecologia” Neo-Latin or Greek? The components are all Greek but it was possibly used in Latin, so the answer may be “both” 😅

Open ##2423158
@nojhan@social.antigene.org 2026-05-10 19:52

@yvanspijk@toot.community I have a rather technical question: do you encode your diagrams as semantic knowledge graphs? Or do you make them directly as raw graphics?

Open ##2423161