Showerthoughts @lemmy.world Square Singer @feddit.de 11 mo. ago

If "infant" means child does that mean that "fant" means adult?

Don't drink fant drinks when you drive!

Fanta: 😟

28 comments

According to wiktionary infant comes from the Latin word infans, meaning "unable to speak". The term fans means "to speak".

Not sure if your Fanta can speak though :P
- Which is why we have "infantry." Soldiers who don't speak and follow orders
- As a side note here, Fanta was derived from the German word „Fantasie“. I don’t think it needs translating.
  
  Side note on the side note: Fanta was invented in nazi Germany because they couldn't import all the ingredients for Cola
  
  🇬🇧 fantasy
  🇮🇹 fantasia
  🇫🇷 fantaisie
  🇨🇿 fantazie
  🇸🇰 fantazia
  🇷🇺 фантазия
  🇩🇪 FANTASIE
  
  Ah yes, a reference to the thousand year dream /s
  
  I know, I am from Austria and I do know the origin story of Fanta.
  
  Quite surprised how many people take this joke seriously here
- So it wouldn’t be technically wrong to refer to mute people as infants right? /s
  
  Probably falls into the same or similar category as calling them dumb, ones open a time an acceptable word to call them, but not really today. You know unless you are looking to insult them for being mute.
- We're fans, yo!
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?
- You mean, what am I fanting about?
If infancy is childhood, is adulthood fancy?
- It sure as shit doesn't feel fancy
  
  Try it again, but with your pinky out.
Permanently Deleted
- It says that it's cheaper than adultry.
  
  Also better for your marriage
Both of those are below elefants
Looks like it means unable + to speak. As in “This human is so young he can’t talk yet.”

https://www.etymonline.com/word/infant
- If your drink is talking you should already not be driving
I just fan’t
- 💨
No
The in is not a prefix here. That's just how the word is spelled.
- Actually, it is.
  
  It derives from Latin infans where "in-" is a negation prefix and "fans" is the present participle form of "for", which translates to "to speak".
  
  So an infant is a non-speaker (too small to speak).
  
  But my opener was of course a joke, where I purpously misunderstood what "fant" is derived of, by claiming that "fant" must be the opposite of a child, thus an adult.
  
  There are tons of Latin words in the English language and many of them only survived in English in their compounded form (e.g. "in-fant", where no other version of the actual verb in there survived, except the negated form).
  
  Often the parts of these Latin root words have no meaning at all anymore in English, so that people don't notice that they are actually using compound words and also the original meaning of the word is forgotten.
  
  Not a lot of people would associate "infant" with "hearing".

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