Re[2]: [tied] Scientist's etymology vs. scientific etymology

At 3:21:05 PM on Thursday, June 5, 2008, Carl Hult wrote:

> Well, you rush to your linguist friend's defence, as I
> thought you would.

What 'linguist friend'?!

> I can agree that greek could very well be the origin of
> germanic word butter but there's also the chance it could
> have taken the course via latin from another language
> without greek being the "middle man".

The spelling of Latin <butyrum> with <y> is a very good
indication that it came from Greek.

[...]

> Maybe I should be more precise about why I doubt the
> "official" etymology of the word church. First of all, the
> word originates in the western hemisphere of Europe. I
> believe it has more to do with a relative of the word
> circle. Second, why did the germanic peoples of all bother
> to use a word to translate the word ecclesia if that word
> they used was a word from another language in the first
> place.

Obviously because it was borrowed into WGmc. at a very early
date and thoroughly nativized. Nothing strange about that.

Brian