Where does “nontechnical” come from?
I need to work through this chain carefully, but I notice there's a significant problem: the chain provided doesn't support a coherent etymology for "nontechnical."
The chain appears to conflate two separate etymologies:
- One path: English technical → Latin technicus → Ancient Greek τέχνη (tekhnē, "craft/art")
- Another path: involving Proto-Indo-European roots for "nine/new"
These two paths don't connect logically. The "nine/new" branch doesn't lead to "technical."
For "nontechnical," I would need a reliable chain showing how the prefix "non-" combines with "technical," but the supplied chain doesn't support this structure.
**I cannot write an accurate one-sentence summary from this chain because it appears corrupted or incorrectly transcribed.**
Could you verify the etymology chain? For "nontechnical," I would
nontechnical (English): Not technical
Ancestry of “nontechnical”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | non- | Used in the sense of no or none, to show lack of... |
| 2 | Latin | nōnus | — |
| 3 | Latin | novenos | accusative masculine plural of novēnus |
| 4 | Latin | novem | nine; 9; first-person singular present active... |
| 5 | Latin | novo | I make new, renew, refresh; I alter, change;... |
| 6 | Proto-Italic | nowāō | — |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | néweh₂ti | to renew |
| 8 | Proto-Indo-European | néwos | new |
| 9 | Proto-Indo-European | new- | new; to nod, assent to |