According to wiktionary infant comes from the Latin word infans, meaning "unable to speak". The term fans means "to speak".
Not sure if your Fanta can speak though :P
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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So it wouldnโt be technically wrong to refer to mute people as infants right? /s
Probably falls into the same or similar category as calling them dumb, ones open a time an acceptable word to call them, but not really today. You know unless you are looking to insult them for being mute.
Right. The term that would probably fit the context would be "infantile", which again has negative connotations.
English has a long history of descriptors of intellectual deficiencies becoming contemporary insults then terms to be avoided because of that insensitive use, then the use continuing until everyone's kinda desensitized to it but now it can't be used in the original context.
See also: idiot, imbecile, moron, etc.
Currently going through that process: "retarded".
Happens in most languages.
Also, many languages have a link between deafness and lacking intelligence, e.g. dumb meaning "not able to speak" and "not intelligent".
In general, being sensitive to people with disabilities (both physical and mental) is a rather young concept, hence anything that would make someone not be able to be part of society is often also an insult.
That's also why e.g. terms linked deafness/muteness are often an insult to someone's intelligence, while e.g. terms linked to blindness are not. Blind people might be unable to perform some things seeing people are able to, but blindness doesn't necessarily limit someone's ability to be part of a society unaccomodating to people with disabilities.
As a side note here, Fanta was derived from the German word โFantasieโ. I donโt think it needs translating.
๐ฌ๐ง fantasy
๐ฎ๐น fantasia
๐ซ๐ท fantaisie
๐จ๐ฟ fantazie
๐ธ๐ฐ fantazia
๐ท๐บ ัะฐะฝัะฐะทะธั
๐ฉ๐ช FANTASIE
q.e.d.
The in is not a prefix here. That's just how the word is spelled.
Actually, it is.
It derives from Latin infans where "in-" is a negation prefix and "fans" is the present participle form of "for", which translates to "to speak".
So an infant is a non-speaker (too small to speak).
But my opener was of course a joke, where I purpously misunderstood what "fant" is derived of, by claiming that "fant" must be the opposite of a child, thus an adult.
There are tons of Latin words in the English language and many of them only survived in English in their compounded form (e.g. "in-fant", where no other version of the actual verb in there survived, except the negated form).
Often the parts of these Latin root words have no meaning at all anymore in English, so that people don't notice that they are actually using compound words and also the original meaning of the word is forgotten.
Not a lot of people would associate "infant" with "hearing".
If infancy is childhood, is adulthood fancy?