![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In situations like this, the most sensible thing for an English speaker to do would be to cherry-pick Germanic and Latinate words to tell the two animals apart. Even though “locust” is the more obvious descendent of the Latin word, the OED posits that the word applied to lobsters first, and then, by extension, to the “lobsters of the land.” That Latin confusion has persisted into modern Spanish, where both lobsters and locusts se llama langosta, and for a while in the Middle Ages, the French called both langouste (whence langoustine ). …the Ancient Romans went for concision: their word for lobster, locusta, was the same as their word for locusts. For “lobster,” Bon Appétit is on the case and I’m just gonna share a chunk of their article because it’s wonderful: Okay, since the etymology for “butterfly” was so rewarding, I wanted to check out some other animal words. ![]()
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