[ErsatzVerkehr]

The Google etymology thing (I didn't even know it existed - just search for "stuff etymology" and you get a nice little graph) tells me that the word "stuff" came to English from Greek (stuphein) via Old French (estoffe). So maybe it is not correct to say it's not a French-derived word?

But it's also present in German- stoff means something like "material". Amusingly, there's a wikipedia article titled "List of stoffs". The elements have names like Wasserstoff = water stuff = hydrogen. In the attached essay (which claims to be written without German derivatives), it seems strange to prefer "waterstuff" to the very Greek "hydrogen"... ?

[arethuza]

For some reason this discussion sent me off to try and find the origin of "loons" and "quines" - the terms for "boys" and "girls" in the dialect of Scots English I am familiar with.

"Quine" seems to be based on "quean" but "loon" seems a mystery!

NB Referring to someone as a "loonie" is not derogatory - but just means they are a young boy :-)

[smcl]

"Loon" and "Quine" aren't even Scots English, I suspect you'd get funny looks if you used either in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Each are very much "Doric" (the dialect of Aberdeen\shire) words.

edit: I recognise your name from another post and remember that you're from Scotland so you probaby know this already :)

[friendstock]

Correction: The attached essay claims to be written without NON-German derivatives.

[ErsatzVerkehr]

Ahhh - now it makes so much more sense. :-)

[CDokolas]

I can't find a reference to "stuff" having a Greek root, and can't think of any either (knowing enough Greek myself).

[schoen]

I find the suggestion surprising myself, given how Germanic the German term sounds to me, but I decided to check in Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache for the etymology of German "Stoff".

Kluge says that it came from Middle Dutch "stoffe", which got it from Old French "estoffe", which had a sense of 'cloth, mesh, fabric (especially of silk)'. He says the word's "economic background" is the importation of silkworms and silk weaving from Byzantium ("where Justinian had brought them in 552 from the Orient") via Sicily and North Italy to France and Flanders, and that the "assumed" etymology of the word in Greek στυφειν can thus be "supported on grounds of cultural history".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_silk#Spread_of_prod...

But other etymological dictionaries say that the origin of the Old French term is uncertain and may not come from Greek.

[king_phil]

As a german I can say that "Stoff" has different meanings. It can be used like cloth, but in other contexts it is used like material. For example there is "Stoffkunde" which it the study (Kunde) of materials (Stoffe). "Lesestoff" is reading (lesen) material.

[StavrosK]

"Atomic" is Greek too, so I don't know why they chose to use one Greek-derived word but not the other.