Myrmecology


Posts

Ant etymology rabbit hole

Was admiring the word myrmecology (the study of ants), and got curious about its similarity to the Swedish word for ant, myra, and the Norwegian variant maur.

Started wondering about the word ant, since it’s so different. As far as I can tell, it’s an orally eroded version of the synonym emmet from the Old English ǣmete, related to the German Ameise. Myrmecology, like most “studies of”, comes from Greek, in this case múrmēx (ant).

Looked up the etymology for maur as well: the Scandinavian names come from the Old Norse maurr, so it looks like the relation to myrmecology is either coincidental or goes back to Indo-European.

Trying to make sense of an online Indo-European dictionary, the closest I got was:

Root / lemma: mai-1

English meaning: to cut down, work with a sharp instrument

[...]

2. d-extension: got. maitan `hew, hit, cut, clip', [...] ahd. mīza `Milbe' (probably to gr. μίδας `Made'), perhaps also ags. ǣ-mette, engl. ant, emmet, ahd. ā-meiza `Ameise'

So... looks to me like there’s some kind of link between King Midas (μίδας) and the word ‘ant’, but damned if I can find the link to “myrmecology”.

As a consolation prize, I’ll settle for finding out there’s a Midas ant (Myrmecia midas) living in Australia.


Quotes

Myrmecologist quote

The Finnish myrmecologist Rainer Rosengren showed that when the ants emerge in the spring, an older ant goes out with a young one along the older ant’s habitual trail. The older ant dies and the younger ant adopts that trail as its own, thus leading the colony to remember, or reproduce, the previous year’s trails.