Etymolog

An etymolog is a scholar who studies etymology, the history and origin of words, and how their forms and meanings have changed over time. Etymology is a branch of linguistics, often treated as part of historical linguistics and lexicography.

Etymologs trace word origins by comparing related languages, reconstructing proto-forms, and analyzing patterns of sound change, semantic shift, and borrowing. They use the comparative method, philological evidence from texts, inscriptions, and manuscripts, and, increasingly, corpus data and computational tools. Their work helps explain why a word looks or sounds the way it does, how its sense develops, and how words in different languages relate to one another. They also assess folk etymologies and provide more historically grounded explanations.

The results of etymology research underpin dictionaries, language education, and the study of cultural contacts and language contact phenomena. Etymology differs from, but informs, other linguistic subfields such as phonology, morphology, and semantics.

The term etymology derives from Greek etymon, "true sense," plus -logia, "study of." An etymolog may specialize in a particular language family, period, or corpus, and may publish etymologies in scholarly journals, reference works, or digital resources.