709: meerkat and mongoose Nov 16, 2016

When speakers of a language don't have a word for something and need one, or have a word but for whatever reason need a better one, the easiest way is to either create a word from existing elements, or to adopt a word from another language, assuming one exists. This happened a great deal when means for travel became simpler and faster some centuries ago, and people began to see objects and events never before witnessed by that group. When the Europeans ventured further and more often into Africa and Asia, they found the mongoose, a word adopted from the Marathi, 'maṅgūs'; we see here an example of word adoption. 'Meerkat', however, a type of mongoose, is derived from a Dutch word meaning, 'sea cat' as meerkats are no mere cats (nor cats at all).