# Fire



## 涼宮

Hello everyone 

I am curious about what the etimology of ''fire'' is in romance languages.

Firstly, I thought it would be from Latin like the mayority of words, but I looked up in several Latin dictionaries and any of them gave an F word for fire.

I found ignis, flamma and fax.

Fax is an F word but I read it is usually used in peotry, I think it's not as common as ignis is, though. 


Someone had told me it should be ''focus'' but focus is altar, fireplace and home.

The word fire is really similar in romance languages:

Català= foc
Français=feu
English=fire
Italiano=fuoco
Romanian=foc
Deustch=Feuer
Portuguese=fogo
Galego=fogo/lume
Occitan= fuèc
Spanish= fuego/lumbre

As we can observe all of them are similar, except for the fact that English and German were the only 2 germanic languages in obtaining an F word, because in other germanic languages the word oscillates between _brand_ and _vuur(_and similarities_)_.

How did the romance languages obtain that word? Perhaps I'm wrong in something.

Thank you in advance


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## CapnPrep

涼宮 said:


> Someone had told me it should be ''focus'' but focus is altar, fireplace and home.


Yes, the "F-words" in Romance all come from Latin _focus_. The semantic development is quite straightforward, and the phonetic evolution is absolutely regular in every language, as far as I can see.

See also this thread in the Latin forum:
*fire*


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## entangledbank

You need to include _vuur_ in your Germanic 'F-words'. Dutch changes [f] to [v] (and I think it's still pronounced [f] in some Dutch dialects), but it's the same word as _fire_ and _Feuer_, and also Greek _pyr_ and Hittite _pahhur_. You can't just look at the letters of the 21st-century spelling.

The Germanic word is unrelated to the Vulgar Latin *_foco_ and its Romance descendants. Once again, just starting with the letter F isn't a connexion.


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## 涼宮

Thanks both of you


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## mataripis

I observed the word fire in English and other European languages and even in Tagalog have evolved from the word of El-linika(Greek) called "Phos" meaning light.Before the fire was used to cook food, it was known first as an element that bring brightness to the sorroundings.


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## artion

fire and vuur are probably cognates to Gr. pyr (πυρ) (fire). 
Etymoline says that focus is of unknown origin and a post-classical word related to fire. I suppose focus was metaphorically connected to fire after the spread of use of lenses. It is the Greek word originally meaning "lentils" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aalphabetic+letter%3D*f%3Aentry+group%3D3%3Aentry%3Dfako%2Fs ). The "lens" is the Latin "phakos" and "focus" the latinized word because magnifying lens and lentil have the same shape.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...phabetic+letter=*f:entry+group=3:entry=fako/s


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## berndf

artion said:


> fire and vuur are probably cognates to Gr. pyr (πυρ) (fire).
> Etymoline says that focus is of unknown origin and a post-classical word related to fire. I suppose focus was metaphorically connected to fire after the spread of use of lenses. It is the Greek word originally meaning "lentils" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper...phabetic+letter=*f:entry+group=3:entry=fako/s ). The "lens" is the Latin "phakos" and "focus" the latinized word because magnifying lens and lentil have the same shape.


You are right in assuming a cognate relation between Germanic _fire, vuur, Feuer_ etc. and Greek _πυρ_. This is explained be the Germanic sound shift /p/>/f/. In Latin it was exactly the opposite way you surmised: _fireplace_ is the original meaning of _focus_. The meaning of _fucus_ as the burning point of a lens is modern. The earliest attestation of this use is form the 17th century.


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## Ben Jamin

artion said:


> I suppose focus was metaphorically connected to fire after the spread of use of lenses.


It was exactly the other way round: The word focus (meaning "fire place") was given to this point in a certain distance from the lens after observing that one could collect sun rays and ignite a material in this point.


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## artion

Ben Jamin said:


> It was exactly the other way round: The word focus (meaning "fire place") was given to this point in a certain distance from the lens after observing that one could collect sun rays and ignite a material in this point.


 
In this case the acoustic similarity between L. _focus_ and Gr. _phakos_ is accidental. Or is it? The ancient Greeks and Romans knew the focal point of concave mirrors  and lenses:
Aristophanes, Clouds
_*STREPSIADES* : Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', __with which *you may kindle fire*? _
_*SOCRATES* : You mean a *crystal lens*. _
_*STREPSIADES* : That's right. Well, now if I placed myself with this stone __in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out __the conviction, I could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, __melt_. 

The question is if the L. focus is attested before 420 BC.

The similarity between focus and phakos and Gr. fos/faos (light) is also notice-worthy.


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## Ben Jamin

artion said:


> In this case the acoustic similarity between L. _focus_ and Gr. _phakos_ is accidental. Or is it? The ancient Greeks and Romans knew the focal point of concave mirrors and lenses:
> Aristophanes, Clouds
> _*STREPSIADES* : Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', __with which *you may kindle fire*? _
> _*SOCRATES* : You mean a *crystal lens*. _
> _*STREPSIADES* : That's right. Well, now if I placed myself with this stone __in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out __the conviction, I could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, __melt_.
> 
> The question is if the L. focus is attested before 420 BC.
> 
> The similarity between focus and phakos and Gr. fos/faos (light) is also notice-worthy.


Do you mean that the Romans called their fire place 'focus' because it reminded them of the Greek word for lentils (phakos), becuase fire could be lit by means of glass lenses?

How probable, do you think, this explanation is?
You should found this theory on some historical facts, for example, how many people used lenses to make fire in those times, and how many ordinary Romans spoke Greek at the time when the word 'focus' came into use.
Remember, that the fire was usually lit indoors, often at night and/or in cloudy weather.


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## berndf

artion said:


> In this case the acoustic similarity between L. _focus_ and Gr. _phakos_ is accidental. Or is it?


A common PIE root _*bhok-_ for both is indeed not implausible.


artion said:


> The question is if the L. focus is attested before 420 BC.


Focus was a very common word in classical Latin. Look e.g. here in Ovid's Fasti and search for _focus, focis, foci, focum_.

The question is rather which meaning this common root would have. Fact is that Latin _focus_ had nothing to do with lenses, neither those to eat nor those to look through; nor had it anything to do with mirrors or any other optical device.

Pokorny surmises _*bhok-_ = _to burn_ as the root of _focus_. He does not mention any Greek words derived from it.

Lewis relates Latin roots in _fa-_ and Greek roots in _φα-_ to the root _*bha- =  bright_.


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## Perseas

φως /phos (φωτ-ός /phot-os, in genitive) = light 
πυρ/pyr (πυρ-ός /pyr-os, in genitive)= fire

In my opinion, "φως" is related to the latin "focus" with all its derivatives in the romance languages. On the other hand, "πυρ" is related to the English "fire", the German "Feuer" and the Dutch "vuur" .
Something more: the first part of the word photograph (photographie, in French) *-photo-* comes from the Greek phos/photos.



> Pokorny surmises _*bhok-_ = _to burn_ as the root of _focus_. He does not mention any Greek words derived from it.


 Phos/φως ?


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## berndf

Perseas said:


> Phos/φως ?


_Focus _and _φως _probably share the PIE root _*bha = bright_ as mentioned above:





berndf said:


> Lewis relates Latin roots in _fa-_ and Greek roots in _φα-_ to the root _*bha- =  bright_.


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## artion

artion said:


> Romans knew the focal point of concave mirrors  and lenses:
> Aristophanes, Clouds
> _*STREPSIADES* : Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', __with which *you may kindle fire*? _
> _*SOCRATES* : You mean a *crystal lens*. _
> _*STREPSIADES* : That's right. _



A remark: The original Greek text does not say "phakos" but "yelos" (glass). Probably the glass lens was not known as "phakos" that time. So, it is possible that focus and phakos are accidentally similar. 
However, the L. focus  as "fire place" can be a metaphore for "_central point, concentration point_" of the house. The Greek for the "focal point of the lens" is "_estia_" (fire, home, the sacred fire of the ancient homes, goddess Estia). This semasia is probably post-medieval but probably the people who coined it knew something that we don't know.


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## berndf

artion said:


> However, the L. focus  as "fire place" can be a metaphore for "_central point, concentration point_" of the house.


This seems to be the metaphor behind the modern use of the word _focus_. In Latin, the metaphorical meaning of _focus_ was _home_.


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## artion

berndf said:


> A common PIE root _*bhok-_ for both is indeed not implausible.
> Pokorny surmises _*bhok-_ = _to burn_ as the root of _focus_. He does not mention any Greek words derived from it.


 
Almost right. There seems to be no Greek word from it. Herodotus (Book 2 (Euterpe), 2) says that the Phrygians were calling _bekos_ the bread. He also believed that Phrygians migrated from North Greece to Asia Minor in prehistory. Today it is believed that the Phrygian language is IE and was close to Greek in pre-classical times.


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