Folk Etymology for "Agita" in AHD? (was: Provolone)

jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> BOO wrote:
> ...
>> I hear/use "agita" a bit--always thought this beed a
>> Jew/Yiddish word tho, which like Italian & Spanish also have heavy
>> influence on foreign terms in dis area!
> ...
>
> What does "agita" mean, and how do you pronounce it?

See:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/28/A0142800.html

But I think that etymology is dead wrong. "Agita" is an Americanized
spelling of an Italian dialect word -- Neapolitan, one suspects. I've
always been under the impression that it corresponds to standard Italian
_acido_ "acid", and refers to stomach acid. That might be a folk
etymology, but I ask any Italian speaker out there to say whether a
derivation from _agitare_ makes any linguistic sense. I don't see it.
Most likely the lexicographers were completely ignorant of dialectal
variation in Italian. They might not know that Neapolitan tends to turn
Standard Italian -o into a schwa, for example, or that voiced and
voiceless consonants sometimes get switched, so that [tS] could become
[dZ].

To answer your question, it's pronounced /'&dZId@/ or, less commonly I
think, /AdZId@/. I think the _agitare_ etymology put forward by AHD is
the one that's the folk etymology. Tsk, tsk.


--
Salvatore Volatile
ref at freeshell dot org

.

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