Shu is in the hospital and was to have some blood drawn. He wondered how the word "draw" as in, "draw blood" or "draw a bath" or "draw a crowd" also came to mean to "sketch" or "create" a picture. I know that words evolve and all, but the definitions do seem rather different. Any ideas?

According to this, 'draw' is a c.1200 spelling alteration of 'drag' (OE 'dragan', OHG 'tragen'), and included 'draw', as dragging a writing implement across paper). I suppose 'drawing blood' doesn't infer siphoning it out (as I had thought), but rather dragging/carrying it from one place to another, as one once had to do with the water for a bath.

Oh, dear! I hope he's doing well.

Bethree5 makes me wonder if tractor or trajectory are related to the German that she notes.

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Originally posted by Geoff:
Bethree5 makes me wonder if tractor or trajectory are related to the German that she notes.

Maybe. Proto-Indo-European *tragh- (> Latin trahere tractus) and Proto-Indo-European *dhragh- (> Old English dragan, Old Norse draga) might have been rhyming variants.

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Draw is also slang for marijuana. You sure he's getting blood?

He's giving it, not getting it, Proof! Saaaayyyy, how do you know so much about drug slang?

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Saaaayyyy, how do you know so much about drug slang?

Hanging around here.

Draw is an interesting word since you can "draw blood", "draw a bowstring," "draw a picture,"and, in my brother's case (even though he's not an artist) has been known to "draw flies."

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Yes, I was thinking that "draw" is one of those words, much like "set." It has lots of definitions!

Rhyming variants, Goofy?

Jules Feiffer was drawn to cartooning.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Rhyming variants, Goofy?

Since Germanic words beginning with t and Latin words beginning with d are not thought to be cognate, there is some difficulty in taking into account the phonological and semantic similarities between Old English dragan and Latin tractus. I guess one proposed solution is that the two PIE words were related in an unsystematic way. Like how we have rhyming phrases like hustle and bustle.

I like that way of thinking...that words are related in an "unsystematic" way. Often when I read about etymologies, the relationships look unsystematic, and I am thinking they should be more linear.

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Often when I read about etymologies, the relationships look unsystematic, and I am thinking they should be more linear.

That might be because a step (or steps) in the word's evolution has been left out or glossed over.

For instance, apron comes from the Latin mappa "napkin" via Old French naperon "small table-cloth", which was a diminuitive of nappe, "cloth". We then get the movement from "a napron" to an "apron". To someone confronted by the sole fact, without details of the intervening steps, that apron comes from mappa, the changes might appear to be non-linear.

So how did French end up with serviette?

Should I assume that when one is hanged, drawn, and quartered, one is not does not hire a cartoonist or rent a hotel room for his corpse?

Probably from their word servir, "to serve".

English over here has both napkin and serviette as well; although usage of the latter is considered rather "lower class".

How funny that the French word is considered lower-class. Do you think that's because it's old-fashioned? or perhaps because it derived from immigrant usage?

They are both words that passed into English via French. Napkin is the older and so is likely to have been used by the older and richer families. Don't forget that the lower classes wouldn't have used such niceties - they'd probably have used their sleeves.

When the middle and lower classes started to use napkins/serviettes they probably used the then-current French word to add a little cachet - it's more obviously French, home of gourmet cooking.

Yet a British napkin (nappy) might cover a baby's bottom. How high class is that? Annnnd, the French don't necessarily stick tampons where American or British women do.