English
water /ˈwɔːtər/
- *wod-r̥ / *wed- — Proto-Indo-European: water; that which is wet
- *watr- — Proto-Germanic: water
- wæter — Old English: water
water
English 'water' and Spanish 'agua' look like cousins but are not: they descend from two different Proto-Indo-European words, a fracture that opened before the Romans named the aqueduct or the Germanic tribes named the rain. Esperanto bridges this gap artificially, borrowing 'akvo' from Latin and so agreeing with Spanish where it might just as easily have agreed with English. Chinese 水 takes an entirely different path — not a word selected to name water but a picture of a river drawn from life, the central channel flanked by flowing tributaries, before writing and naming had fully parted ways. What strikes the comparatist is that Europe spent millennia holding two separate roots for the same liquid and never quite noticed, while Chinese encoded the concept once, in a single stroke, as motion.
Across languages
Español
agua /ˈaɡwa/
'Agua' is grammatically feminine but takes a masculine singular article when the stressed syllable opens the word: 'el agua fría' (not 'la agua'), though 'las aguas' in the plural.
中文
水 shuǐ
水 shuǐ
An oracle-bone pictograph of a river seen from above: the central stroke is the main current, and the flanking curves are its tributaries in motion. Water rendered not as a substance but as a flow — the river, not the drop.
水 serves as Kangxi radical 85 and appears in reduced form as 氵 (the 'three-dot water' radical) in hundreds of characters relating to liquid, moisture, rivers, and washing.
- *s-turʔ — Old Chinese: water, river
- *ɕwiX — Middle Chinese: water
Esperanto
akvo /ˈakvo/
Esperanto builds freely on this root: akvaro (aquarium), akvofalo (waterfall), akvumi (to water plants). The morpheme 'akv-' is borrowed; the '-o' is the universal Esperanto noun ending.
- aqua — Latin: source root borrowed by L. L. Zamenhof; published in the Unua Libro (1887)
Etymological chain
- *h₂ekʷeh₂- — Proto-Indo-European (c. 4500–2500 BCE): water (a distinct PIE root from the Germanic *wed-/*wod-r̥)
- aqua — Latin (c. 3rd century BCE – 5th century CE): water
In use
- The river had risen overnight, and by dawn the water was lapping at the kitchen steps.
- ¿Me puedes traer un vaso de agua fría, por favor? — Could you bring me a glass of cold water, please?
- 山上的雪融化后，溪水变得格外清澈。 — After the mountain snow melted, the stream became exceptionally clear.
- La infanoj saltis en la akvon sen hezito. — The children jumped into the water without hesitation.
Related roots
In the beginning was water; which word you use for it tells you which river your ancestors drank from.