Questions tagged [etymology]

Johan Norberg in Open: The Story of Human Progress (2020) claims: ‘Yankee’, after all, was originally a derisive term for smugglers. Is this true?

At the National Museum of Ethnology, in Osaka, Japan, it's claimed that an inner, stretchy layer of a hijab is referred to by Malaysians as a "ninja", and that it was thus named based on the clothing ninjas wore. I'm aware of non-Muslims referring…

Does the work "quack" to describe a charlatan or medical kook, come from the word quicksilver (mercury)? I heard doctors would inject mercury in sick patients to destroy malignant cells, and as a result, the patients would get even more sick, their…