Germans wish each other ‘einen guten Rutsch’, literally, in modern German, ‘a good slide’ into the New Year.

Now I keep reading that this is related to Jewish ‘Rosch Haschana’ (head or beginning of the year). After reading this several times, perhaps just taken from the dpa text and copied, I had the feeling I was being deceived. Bremer Sprachblog supports my doubts, suspecting, without being certain, that ‘Rutsch’ here means a journey.

… auf der semantischen Seite sieht es schlecht aus. Wie sollte das hebräische Wort für „Kopf“ in einen deutschen Neujahrsgruß kommen? Das ginge nur, wenn es einen hebräischen Neujahrsgruß gäbe, in dem dieses Wort vorkäme: dieser Gruß könnte als Ganzes entlehnt und danach durch Volksetymologie neu analysiert worden sein. Und hier bricht die Hypothese zusammen: wenn man der Wikipedia glauben darf (und das darf man im Allgemeinen), dann gibt

“es weder im Hebräischen noch im Jiddischen eine Grußformel […], die dieses „Rosch“ beinhaltet (etwa „Guten Rosch ha-Schana“ o.ä.); die gängige Formel lautet: „Schana tova“ (=Hebr.) oder „a gut yor“ (=Jidd.).” [de.wikipedia.org]

Lautliche und semantische Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Wörtern unterschiedlicher Sprachen kann man beliebig viele finden, aber solange man den konkreten Entlehnungsprozess nicht nachweisen kann, gibt es auch keinen Grund, von einer Entlehnung auszugehen.

I write this although Mark Liberman at Language Log once said it was his New Year’s resolution to take a positive attitude towards treatments of linguistic matters in the popular press. That was in July 2006. I wonder how well he has kept it.

While I’m on the subject of popular beliefs about language, a word about stainless. On British shopping TV, I heard it said that stainless steel isn’t stain-free, it just stains less. That was said to be the etymology of the word. I gather from Google that stainless steel indeed isn’t completely stainproof, but I can’t accept that that’s the derivation, from less as opposed to more. Here at least the OED seems to agree (but Wikipedia doesn’t).

The OE. léas, like its equivalents in the other Teut. langs. (see lease a., loose a.), was used in the sense ‘devoid (of)’, ‘free (from)’, both as a separate adj., governing the genitive, as in firena léas free from crimes, and (more frequently) as the second element of compounds, the first element being a n., as in fácnléas guileless, wífléas without a wife. The adj., as a separate word in the relevant sense, did not survive in ME., and the ending -léas became a mere suffix, which was, and still is, very freely attached to ns. to form adjs. with privative sense.

Here’s a random example from the Web:

Lastly, contrary to popular belief, stainless steel is NOT stain-proof, but is stain-LESS, as it is spelled.