Webster's English Dictionary

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etymology

et.y.mol.o.gy \-je-\ n [ME ethimologie, fr. L etymologia, fr. Gk, fr. 
   etymon + -l]ogia -logy 1: the history of a linguistic form (as a word) 
   shown by tracing its develo pment since its earliest recorded occurrence in 
   the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one 
   language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by 
   identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its 
   cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language 2: a branch of 
   linguistics concerned with etymologies