Got Milk?

It's been quite some time since I've updated this blog. Getting married and moving to a different country may have had something to do with this. Regardless, my last entry made the blog look like it was going to go down the road of computational linguistics, so I'd better take a step back and diversify. LinguisticFX was always intended as a 'playground' for ideas about language and linguistics that I found fun and fascinating, so let's take a step back as I take this back to what made me fall in love with language to begin with (that is, after I learned to demand things as an infant) - awe, wonder, and a little laughter thrown in for good measure.

Warning - I'm sometimes very easily amused, and apparently I need to delve into Greek roots more often.

Tonight I was enjoying a "shot of milk" - don't ask - it just makes drinking milk seem a little decadent, and I wondered what the origin of the word "milk" was. A quick search on www.etymonline.com revealed Old English/Saxon roots as:

"meoluc" and "milc" (Anglian), which were both related to the verb "melcan" (to milk). The noun is from P.Gmc. *meluk- (cf. O.N. mjolk, Du. melk, Ger. Milch, Goth. miluks); the verb is from P.Gmc. *melkanan (cf. O.N. mjolka, Du., Ger. melken); both from PIE base *melg- "wiping, stroking," in ref. to the hand motion in milking an animal (cf. Gk. amelgein, L. mulgere, O.C.S. mlesti, Lith. melzu "to milk," O.Ir. melg "milk," Skt. marjati "wipes off"). O.C.S. noun meleko (Rus. moloko, Czech mleko) is considered to be adopted from Germanic.

Of course, some of these roots took me back to the Korova Milk Bar in the Anthony Burgess novel, "A Clockwork Orange" (and the subsequent film by Kubrick), where various incarnations of "Moloko" were served. I've always enjoyed works like this that were so playful and inventive with language - George Orwell's dire "1984" actually made me grin.

However, as I followed the roots of "milk" further down the page I stumbled upon connections to lactation (let's not spoil this by looking for Freudian connections - this is about language, not oedipus or psychotherapy):

1668, "process of suckling an infant," from Fr. lactation, from L. lactationem (nom. lactatio) "a suckling," from L. lactatus, pp. of lactare "suckle," from lac (gen. lactis) "milk," from PIE base *glact- (cf. Gk. gala, gen. galaktos "milk").

Hang on... galaktos "milk"? As in the milky way galaxy?

Sure enough, the etymology of "galaxy" is explained as:
c.1384, from L.L. galaxias "Milky Way," from Gk. galaxis (adj.), from gala (gen. galaktos) "milk" (see lactation). The technical astronomical sense emerged 1848. Fig. sense of "brilliant assembly of persons" is from 1590. Milky Way is a translation of L. via lactea.
"See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë Which men clepeth the Milky Wey, For hit is whyt." [Chaucer, "House of Fame"]

Therefore, every galaxy is a "milky way," and apparently our own "Milky Way Galaxy" is particularly milky. I'd never really thought of the heavens as a divine mother before - maybe a Freudian analysis is actually the right way to go with this topic afterall?