This weekend I watched The Wicker Man...the original, extended version, not the supposedly crap-assed Nicolas Cage debacle. Sergeant Howie flies a seaplane to Summerisle and then is rowed ashore via a dinghy. That got me thinking about dinghy, it's a funny word.

Dinghy is from the Hindi dingi (the h in the English spelling is to indicate a hard g), meaning "small boat" and is perhaps related to the Sanskrit drona-m, "wooden trough", which is related to dru-s, "wood, tree". My guess is that dru-s must be related to the Indo-European root derew(o)-, also meaning "tree, wood". From this root we get the Greek drus "oak" and dryas "wood nymph", which is of course the root of our word dryad.

The Wicker Man [Amazon]
dinghy [Online Etymology Dictionary]
dryad [Online Etymology Dictionary]
dinghy [OED]
dryad [Wikipedia]

Labels: Greek, Hindi, PIE, Sanskrit, The Daily Hump

Hey! You do have the same hair!