Edema Rue
-
Posts
10028 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
149
.jpeg.da0b0c735f69190d059cfde9c0e43d92.thumb.jpeg.3dbb0c004da86ce02cfd8cde1c92e217.jpeg)
Edema Rue's Achievements
10.3k
Reputation
Single Status Update
-
Caterpillar.
Cat. Er. Pillar.
Why?
Pillar is simple: they are pillar-shaped. They are long, colorful, squishy pillars.
Er is also simple: they started to call it a cat, and changed their minds. “It’s a cat-er…a pillar”
Cat is less simple. Perhaps they saw a fuzzy variety of caterpillar? But perhaps not. Perhaps they only needed an animal, something to show that the pillars live.
But if that were the case, any animal could stand in: a rhinoceroserpillar. A dogerpillar. A horserpillar. And that just isn’t right. So why a cat?
Caterpillar.
Cater. Pillar.
…no. Absolutely not.
Cat. Er. Pillar.
The most likely reason, I think, is a little known synonym for cat. In any scenario where you say cat, you could also say “small demon”.
in which case, we have a small demon pillar. That makes sense! They are small demons that take the form of a pillar. But “smalldemonerpillar” is a terrible name.
And so we have the caterpillar.
Cat. Er. Pillar.
Caterpillar.
- Show previous comments 2 more
-
Ok, so this is probably more then you wanted but I like etymology. From what I have found it originally comes from late Latin “catta pilosa”. Catta meaning cat and pilosa meaning hairy. It was then changed a lot over it being evolved into old French “chatepelose” and then into a Middle English form of “catyrpel” and finally into what we know and love “caterpillar”. So it literally is that they saw this thing that was hairy and thought to them selves “mmmm what should we name this. It’s hairy, it’s an animal, cats are animals. GUYS I HAVE AN IDEA!”
-
-
Your welcome. I got all my info from Etymonline.com. Also for naming me, just pick which ever you like better
