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The English words fiction, figure, dough, and paradise go back to the same Proto-Indo-European root (word-base), reconstructed as *dheigh- (if you don’t know how to read this transcription, view the PIE sound system). Other possible forms of this root were *dhoigh-, *dhigh-, *dhingh- (representing typical PIE alternations); its meaning centred round the idea of shaping, moulding or kneading something, for example, a clay pot, a lump of clay, an earthen wall or rampart (the Indo-Europeans did not build with bricks), etc. Dough is a good Germanic word, still close semantically to its PIE ancestor; fiction and figure are borrowings from Latin, which had the verb fingere ‘shape’ with various abstract derivatives. Can you see how Latin fictio and figura may be connected with fingere? (No relation of English finger, by the way. Words which seem very similar usually prove unrelated, and real connections may be quite surprising.) What about paradise? English took it from Latin, Latin from Greek, and Greek from Old Persian (an Iranian, and therefore also Indo-European language), where the word meant ‘garden’ or more literally ‘an enclosed place’, as in Avestan (also Iranian): pairi ‘around’ + daeza ‘wall’. Of course it is the ‘wall’ part that has to do with ‘dough’, QED. Note how different chains of borrowing yield forms which at fist sight do not even resemble the direct descendant of the PIE base. It is essential to trace the individual history of each word to see if and how they may be related. What is especially nice about etymology is that it can always take you by surprise, no matter how much you already know.
Here are some other unexpected etymological connections within English, involving both words inherited by Modern English from PIE via Proto-Germanic and Anglo-Saxon, and loanwords (borrowings) from other IE languages: yoke (a native word); yoga(from Sanskrit); zygote (from Greek); junction, conjugation, subjunctive (from Latin); join (from French, and don’t forget that French descends from Latin!). All of them continue the PIE verbal root *ieug-/*iug-/*iung- ‘unite, connect’ or the related noun *iugom ‘yoke’. Do the semantic correspondences make sense to you? The range of meaning you find here is quite typical of ‘decent’ cognates (etymologically related words).
And, talking of connections, have you ever wondered why Tuesday is called Tuesday? I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you what the -day part means, but Tues- is worth explaining. It reflects Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Tiwes, the genetive of Tiw (Old Norse Tyr) ‘the god of war and the sky’. This in turn descends from the name of the Indo-European Sky or Daylight God *Die:us, gen. *Diuos. Does it ring a bell? Of course the word is roughly the same as Latin deus ‘god’, adj. diuinus. These have found their way into English by various routes, often filtered through different Romance languages, producing a host of loanwords: deus (ex machina), divine, divinity, deity, diva, adieu, adios, etc. Less obviously, other Latin cognates include the divine name Iuppiter (from the vocative *Dieu Pater ‘O Father Sky!’) with its irregular gen. Iouis – hence English by Jove!, Jupiter, and even jovial (with a shifted meaning, from ‘blessed by Jupiter’); the Greek counterpart is Zeus, genuinely akin to all of the above, while the phonetic similarity of theos ‘god’ (as in theology) is purely accidental; nor does English day have anything to do with them, despite its superficially matching sound and meaning. The ancient Indians (of India, not native Americans) had their sky god Dyaus, with lots of cousins throughout the Indo-European family. We Slavs (I’m Polish, you know) have lost the god’s name, but retained a few derivatives, for example Polish dziwo ‘miracle, something strange’. Most dziwnie ‘strangely’ of all, the Polish word deszcz ‘rain’ probably derives from *dus-dius ‘angry Sky God’ or maybe just ‘bad day’. So if you’re down in the dumps because it’s Tuesday and the weekend seems so hopelessly far away, just reflect that Tuesday is a really divine day – and cheer up, by Jove!
You might think the story ends here, but no, etymological stories are never-ending. The PIE word *die:us was also a common noun meaning ‘clear sky, daylight’. Latin dies ‘day’ and the adjective diurnus ‘daily, lasting a day’ descend from the same root. English has absorbed several derivatives of these by courtesy of Mediaeval Latin as well as various Romance Languages, especially French. Hence diurnal, diary, journal, journey, sojourn, etc., not to mention such internationally current expressions as bonjour. Here, again, the meaning has often shifted. Sojourn no longer means ‘one day’s visit’, a journal is no longer a daily, and a journey may last many days (once upon a time the English word could also mean ‘a day’s work’). All right, this is enough. What’s the moral? Detecting genuine genetic connections between words is a hell of a task. The etymologist must always distrust the obvious and expect the unexpected!
