[singularity2001]

Why 'strangely' different? Why would you expect such exotic animals to be ultra-nonconserved?

Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly)

also:

motyl~moth sommerfugl~summer-fly

interesting that wiktionary for papillon shows a puppy :) might also be linked to big pupils and fake eyes

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/papillon

[ginko]

> Schmetterling may be semantically linked to butterfly via 'batter-fly' (beater-fly)

No, it's semantically linked via 'butter'. Schmetterling comes from Schmetten or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream. There used to be a folk believe that butterflies would consume milk or butter if left uncovered. They were also sometimes called Milkdieb or milk-thief in German.

See: www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=butterfly

[pbhjpbhj]

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27471/does-the-...

Adds a little too, looks like the idea of butterflies stealing butter may come from their voids looking like butter.

I'd also like to imagine a story being made about them stealing butter to encourage children to cover the butter.

[throwanem]

> Schmetten or Schmand which is a sort of heavy cream.

Is "smetana" a false friend?

[MagnumOpus]

That is disputed. Most scholars say that germanic "schmand" has different roots and is cognate with English "smooth" - some scholars however consider schmand a very old loan word from proto-slavic smetana.

[singularity2001]

Interesting.

Butter + Schmetten/смета́на • (smetána) probably still come from beat:schmettern<>smith and or smeltan:smelt.

Where do Schmeissfliege (blowfly) and Schmalz(molten fat) sit? ;)

[singularity2001]

Or maybe not: βούτῡρον (boútūron, “cow cheese”), compound of βοῦς (boûs, “ox, cow”) and τῡρός (tūrós, “cheese”). tūrós <> Taurus = cow hmmm

[pale-hands]

You would expect closely related languages to have similar words for a common animal, i.e. to be at least somewhat conserved. I do find it mysterious. Another one: Dutch vlinder, Afrikaans (very close descendant) schoenlapper.

I think the papillon dog breed has big, butterfly-like ears!

[stevula]

But the main reason closely related languages tend to have similar words is because the word existed before the languages diverged. When the already distinct languages borrow a word independently, the word might have a different story or source behind it.

[ajuc]

But Butterfly isn't exotic in most of indoeuropean-speaking countries?