Etymology

metalinguistic

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Today it means: Treating words as words, rather than interacting with their meaning. Full definition →

English linguistic ← German linguistisch ← Latin lingua
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*me
  2. Proto-Indo-European*meth₂?
  3. Ancient Greekμετᾰ́ (metắ)
  4. Ancient Greekμετᾰ- (metă-)
  5. Englishmeta-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s
  7. Proto-Italic*dn̥ɣwā
  8. Latindingua
  9. Latinlingua
  10. GermanLinguist
  11. GermanLinguistik
  12. Germanlinguistisch
  13. Englishlinguistic
  14. English todaymetalinguistic

From meta- + linguistic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.