Where does “spaceport” come from?
I need to flag an issue with this chain: it shows Latin porta and portare (both meaning "door/carry") deriving from Proto-Indo-European per-, but then lists per- six times without explaining how we get from those Latin words to "spaceport" in English.
The chain appears broken or incomplete. "Spaceport" is a modern English compound (space + port), where "port" comes from Latin porta/portus, but the chain provided doesn't support this formation and doesn't explain the connection to the repeated per- entries.
I cannot write an accurate one-sentence origin summary without a coherent etymological chain. Could you verify:
1. Is this the correct chain for "spaceport"?
2. Should some of those repeated "per-" entries have different labels or be removed?
3. Is there a missing step showing how per- connects to porta/portare?
spaceport (English): A site for launching spacecraft
Definitions
- A site for launching spacecraft
Ancestry of “spaceport”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | Port | — |
| 2 | English | portfolio | A case for carrying papers, drawings,... |
| 3 | Italian | portafoglio | wallet, billfold; portfolio |
| 4 | Italian | foglio | sheet |
| 5 | Latin | folium | a leaf; a petal; a sheet or leaf of paper |
| 6 | Proto-Italic | *foljom | — |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | bʰolh₃yom | leaf |
| 8 | Proto-Indo-European | bʰleh₃- | bloom, flower |
| 9 | Proto-Indo-European | bʰel- | to sound; to speak, roar, bark; shiny, white; to... |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | bʰōl- | — |