See also “ornitho” (relating to birds) and “pter” (wing) creating the term ornithopter for a heavier than air vehicle that flies by flapping its wings. Famously seen in Dune, but I think also back in the day people actually tried to make them, long before aircraft existed.
In Lithuanian, we escaped the madness by making up our own name for it:
Sraigtasparnis = sraigtas (cog) + sparnas (wing)
Not to be confused with the word for autogyro:
Malūnsparnis = malūnas (mill) + sparnas (wing)
Which is not interesting unless you are writing some alternate history with aircraft in it and want to call them something with no Greek or Latin.
So it should be quadpter then
Considering pteron is greek and quad is latin, it should probably have been tetrapter. Which actually rolls off the tongue better.
Til : Pterodacrylus and helicopter share a linguistic ancestry
And so do mastodon and mastectomy (not a joke).
In Czech we call it “vrtulník” (propeller thing), which I find kinda hilarious now that I think about it.
The german word for aeroplane is similar, “Flugzeug” directly translates to “flying thing”. Helicopter is also fun, “Hubschrauber” translates to “lifting screwer”.
I don’t think it means “thing”, but rather “Gerät” as in 2 c):
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Zeug
It evolved from a word for “pulling”
I guess for “Flugzeug”, ‘device’ works better but I don’t think I have ever thought about it in that way. From my experience usage usually goes more like this: “Pack dein Zeug zusammen wir gehen weiter.” which I think best translates to ‘Stuff’ or ‘things’. Zeug is an interesting word though. It is also used for the harness of a draft animal (“sich ins Zeug legen”), it’s bridle (“Zaumzeug”), bed linen (“Bettzeug”), work tools (“Werkzeug”) , or as a word for nonsense (“red kein dummes Zeug”). I would say it started, as you said, as a word for device but became a slightly negative word for ‘Stuff’.
Then the Pis silent and we’ve all been saying it wrong this whole time.
Nah, englishers just lack the skill.
In greek, the p is loud in pterodactyl and psychology.
Saiki for psyche, psh, that’s 1/6 letters read correctly. Or with greek letters, that’s 0/4 (ψυχή).
The piss is never silent. There is always the clattering sound.
If you are a penis owner and piss from the standing position, you can arc the stream just so down the smooth porcelain interior of the toilet bowl, letting the piss flow neatly into the water making nary a sound
