Usual(ly) & habit

Discussion in 'All Languages' started by ThomasK, Feb 21, 2013.

  1. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    There is something strange & interesting in French and English: both habit (clothes), habiter (to live), habitude (habit) have the same etymological root.

    But how about your word for 'usual(ly)'?

    - Dutch: gewoonlijk, maybe linked with wonen (to live, habiter)
    - Dutch: gebruikelijk, linked with gebruiken (to use)
    - English: usual(ly), related with to use
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2013
  2. apmoy70

    apmoy70 Senior Member

    In Greek:

    Habit: «Συνήθεια» [si'niθi.a] (fem.) < compound, prefix & preposition «συν» [sin] (ancient «σὺν» sun) --> together with + neut. noun «έθος» ['eθos] (ancient «ἔθεος» ĕtʰĕŏs & «ἔθος» ĕtʰŏs --> custom, habit; PIE *swedʰ-, custom, cf Lat. suescere > cōnsuēscō > Vulgar Lat. consuetudo > OF costume, Eng. custom; Proto-Germanic *sedu- > Ger. Sitte).
    Usual: Adj. «συνήθης, -ης, σύνηθες» [si'niθis] (masc. & fem.), ['siniθes] (neut.).
    Usually: Adv. «συνήθως» [si'niθos].
  3. Encolpius

    Encolpius Senior Member

    Hungarian szokás [1372] (habit) < ancient Hungarian word of unknown origin > szokásos [1581] (usual)
  4. ahmedcowon Senior Member

    In Arabic:

    these words are dervied from the root عود (ʕ-w-d), this root is used for words with the meaning of (to return, to get back)

    the verb عاد /ʕaada/ means "to return"
    the verb اعتاد /eʕtaada/ means "to be used to"

    Habit:عادة /ʕaada/

    Usual: عادة /ʕaada/ or معتاد /moʕtaad/

    As Usual: كالعادة /kal-ʕaadati/ or كالمعتاد /kal-moʕtaadi/

    Usually: عادة /ʕaadatan/
  5. arielipi Senior Member

    In hebrew you could say that we have a connection between them:
    בדרך כלל bedere/x/ klal is usually (we do not have one word for usually),
    habit is הרגל hergel root רגל which is used as 'normal'.
    So we do not have one root but both are etymologically tied.
  6. bibax Senior Member


    obvyklý, obejný = usual (also common like in "common people", not "our common friend");
    obvykle, obejně = usually (commonly);

    zvyk = habit, custom;
    obej = custom, traditions;

    zvyknouti, přivyknouti, uvyknouti = to become accustomed to sth, to adapt to sth;

    The root is yk-, vyk- (prothetic v) and yč- (k -> č before a front vowel); it is related (essentially the same) to the root uk-, uč- in výuka (tuition), iti (to teach), itel (teacher), etc.

    (ob-, z-, při-, u- are verbal prefixes);

    (hábit, a loanword from Latin, rarely used = habit, frock, garb);

    Similarly in Russian:

    обыкновенно (-yk-), обычно (-ych-) = usually;
    привычка, обычай (-ych-) = habit, custom;

    учить, обучать (-uch-) = to teach;
    наука (-uk-) = science;
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2013
  7. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    But then: is there a link between showing, teaching and habit ? I am looking forward !
  8. bibax Senior Member

    The verbs zvykati (= to adapt someone to something) and učiti (= to teach someone something) have the same original root uk (yk < *ūk is a long form of the root; ,: 'k' was palatalized before front vowels). The reflexive verbs are zvykati si (= to adapt oneself to sth), učiti se (= to learn, "to teach oneself").

    However the average native speaker is not aware of it.
  9. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    How would you explain the root word then? Adapting? (Thanks a lot !)
  10. bibax Senior Member

    IE root euk- (zero-grade uk-): to be used to;

    Reflexes: Scots Gaelic twig (I understand); Gothic bi-uhti (custom); Latin uk-sor (wife); Lithuanian jùnkti (to become accustomed); Armenian usanim (to learn, to become accustomed to); Sanskrit úcyati (to be accustomed), ókas (dwelling); Slavic see above;
  11. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    Could you link that with tradition, what offers you a (fig.) home to live in, teaching as showing one the way (initiating) into tradition, custom... I do recognize this link between living and custom, but the link with teaching is new to me...
  12. 涼宮

    涼宮 Senior Member

    Sbaeneg/Castellano (Venezuela)
    In Japanese there are no links of any kind among any of those words.

    Habit (clothes)= 修道服　shuudoufuku (lit: discipline + moral/road + clothing)
    Habit= 習慣 shuukan (lit: learn + accustomed) or 癖 kuse (lit:mannerism/vice). The word kuse is made of several roots: ice + wide + law/develop.
    To live= 生きる ikiru (to live talking about life), 住む sumu (to live talking about physical location).
    Usually=　普通 futsuu (lit: universal/wide pass through/avenue); 大抵 taitei (lit: big resist); 良く yoku (lit: well)

    Each kanji has several roots/words, but when you analyze them you find that they don't make sense. At least I don't get why the word habit has ice in it. The concepts of the Japanese way of thinking for writing is too strange.
  13. Gavril Senior Member

    English, USA

    tavallisesti "usually, ordinarily" based on the word tapa "custom, habit".

    Other terms for "usually" are yleensä, yleisesti (based on the root seen in yli "above"). Another word for "habit" is tottumus, based on the word tottua "to become accustomed [to something]"


    venjulega "usually, customarily" < venja "habit, custom", related to the adj. vanur "accustomed (to sth.)"

    I think the word yfirleitt (< yfir "over" + leitt , possibly from leiða "lead") is more common for the meaning "usually"than venjulega, which may (I'm not sure about this) have a stronger implication of people "normally doing" something, rather than something "normally happening".


    yn arfer "usually" contains arfer "custom, habit"

    Another, possibly more common expression for "usually" is yn gyffredinol, which contains the adjective cyffredin "common, mutual".
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2013
  14. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    Well, I beg to disagree ;-). I mean that one habit refers to discipline, and the other to learning. I think those have some in common, don't they?
    The live translations are quite interesting, but I'd love to hear more about what you mean by 'to live talking about', or do you mean: to live, referring to?

    The kanji: if there's a good site giving background about such things, please tell me!

    The references to 'above', 'lead', are intriguing. The reference to 'common' reminds me of '(in-)general', DUT 'in het algemeen' (al-gemeen,all-common), something like: what everyone mostly does, I suppose.
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2013
  15. 涼宮

    涼宮 Senior Member

    Sbaeneg/Castellano (Venezuela)
    No, the word habit referring to discipline makes sense, but I was talking about the root of each kanji itself, not the word, that's what often makes no sense.;)
    The kanji for discipline 修 is made of the roots 人、亻 which mean man/person/human, person respectively (it has another root meaning person, too, but WR doesn't display the kanji). So, even though discipline does indeed have to do with people I don't find very logical some roots, like the case of ''ice'' in the word habit. In that very word kuse, its root 辟 has the word 辛 which means bitter (this make sense). But perhaps it has ice in it because they associate that with the heart or something, as kuse usually means a bad habit.

    If the website you're talking about you mean one which tells you the meaning of each kanji individually, then you may use this dictionary:

    Go to the section that says ''kanji look up'' and paste the kanji you want. However, as for a deeper kanji breakdown I use a program specialized at kanji; that's not online. The program is called JavaDiKt. It comes in Spanish but you can put it in English (which is better) and tickle the option to increase the kanji repertoire so that it doesn't look up only in the basic list of 2136 kanji that people must learn. The English version is the one that has more meanings, so I use that one by default.
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2013
  16. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    I am seeing something, not the whole picture. (I am sorry, I seem to have been mistaken!!! I know though: I suffer from wishful thinking and then jumping to conclusions...)
  17. aruniyan Senior Member


    in Tamil

    pazhakkam : Habit, from the root of pazhaku(acquaintance, practice), i do not see any words related with clothing..
    vazhakkam : Usual (way), from the root of vazhangu (presentation, to give).

    live, life - Vaal
    Clothing - uduppu, udukkai(covered)
  18. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    I'm just wondering: vazh- and pazh- as such are related, I suppose (p/v). But indeed, no link with the others, so it seems. Do you have other words related with pazh/vazh, derivations, or compounds having very different (metaphorical) meanings?
  19. Ghabi

    Ghabi Moderator

    Hong Kong
    Hi! You've confounded the idea of character (kanji) and word. くせ is a native Japanese word, and it's represented by the character 癖 only because in Chinese 癖 also represents a word meaning "bad habit/addiction" (Cantonese: pik1 癖). kuse (Japanese) and pik1 (Chinese) have no etymological connections.

    You've also misinterpreted the construction of the character 癖, which is a typical semantic-phonetic character, made up of the semantic part 疒 (indicating "sickness") and the phonetic part 辟 (Cantonese: pik1). 癖 has nothing to do with 辛 (the phonetic indicator is 辟 as a whole), and I'm not sure what you mean by "ice". Your interpretation of 修 is also incorrect (it actually consists of the semantic part 彡 and the phonetic part 攸).

    When you want to investigate the etymology of a native Japanese word, you should look at its pronunciation, not its kanji.
  20. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    Nowl let's try to look back at the issue itself: can you from your point of view find links between the equivalents of my words in Cantonese or... ? (BTW: I just read somewhere that writing in Chinese somehow came before the ... [talking ?]. But that does not make sense, I suppose...)
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2013
  21. arielipi Senior Member

    In hebrew the root i used also is used for something you can see as 'teaching', הרגיל hirgil (made one get) used (to); is some kind of teaching.
  22. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    That might be interesting, but could you explain /hirgil/ by means of an example?
  23. arielipi Senior Member

    המורה הרגיל את התלמידים לשבת במקום בלי לזוז
    hamore hirgil et hatalmidim lashevet bamakom bli lazuz
    the teacher accustomed the students to sit without moving(=sit idle).

    המאלף הרגיל את הכלב לעשות את צרכיו בחוץ
    hame'alef hirgil et hacelev la'asot et tzra/x/av ba/x/utz
    the trainer(? one who trains dogs) taught/accustomed the dog to do his things outside( of the house, poopie!).
  24. ThomasK Senior Member

    (near) Kortrijk, Belgium
    Belgium, Dutch
    I see: something like training, raising some kind of conditional reflex, I guess, some automatism. Interesting to look at learning as adopting certain automatisms, which is one way of looking at it.
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2013
  25. arielipi Senior Member

    In hebrew if someone hirgil or if one was hurgal(the passive form) it is perceived as a bad thing.
    We actually do not see hergel as something that was taught rather as something that one got used to.
    We have several words for teaching each with its own connotation but thats for another thread.
  26. 涼宮

    涼宮 Senior Member

    Sbaeneg/Castellano (Venezuela)
    Hello, thank you for the correction. Then I had broken it down wrongly. If you split up sickness you get ice and wide, that's what I had done :D. However, I find it hard to do it by phonetics since they're supposed to be arbitrary, no?
  27. Frank78

    Frank78 Senior Member

    In German the stem of all the words is "wohn"

    to live: wohnen
    usual: gewöhnlich
    usually: gewöhnlich
    habit: Gewohnheit

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