0

Why has my question What is the etymology of "baca" and "baja", which seem to be antonyms with a single letter of difference? been marked as off-topic? I have to discuss something about the two words "baca" and "baja". I tried searching on Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=spanish+%22baca%22+%2B+%22baja%22&oq=S&aqs=chrome.1.69i60j69i59j69i57j69i59j69i60l3j69i65.1968j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 But, I did not get any good results. When I do not find any good results on Google regarding a topic, I decide to post a discussion on StackExchange. Currently, I do not know any other sites to post discussions.

1
  • Note that StackExchange is not a site to post discussions, just concrete questions that can be answered with objective answers. If you really want to start a debate about something related to the Spanish language we suggest you to use our official chat room.
    – Charlie Mod
    Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 7:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

Questions about etymology are, of course, welcome on the site. As I am sure you have found out as a long time user of the site the source most people use is the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy https://dle.rae.es/?w=diccionario. This gives the etymology of each word, where it is known. So with a few clicks you could have discovered the etymology of both words. I cannot speak for the close voters but it seems to me that the view was that it showed lack of research effort.

2

Your Google search of

spanish "baca" + "baja"

is of course not going to bring any results about etymology.

The question is not a good fit for the site for several reasons. First, the etymologies of "baca" and "baja" are easy enough to find by Googling, hence the close reason "lack of research effort".

Second, the words "baca" and "baja" are completely unrelated, so your question asks two questions in one, which is also frowned upon on Stack Exchange. True, the two words differ in only one letter, but there are tens of words that differ in only one letter from "baca", such as "bata", "bala", "baba", "caca", "daca", "faca", "haca", "laca", "jaca", "maca", "paca", "saca", "vaca", "beca", "boca". So you could also ask why "baca" and "boca" have different meanings. Or why "baca" and "saca" have different meanings. But the answer would always be "because they are different words". As flooding the site with such questions would not bring any useful knowledge, it makes sense to close them as off-topic. But the good news is that the question already has an answer that is correct, so hopefully your problem has been solved.

3
  • 1
    But, this is a special case of something at the top and something at the bottom that has just one letter difference. translate.google.com/…
    – Arunabh
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 21:54
  • 3
    @ArunabhBhattacharya it has already been stated that "baca" is just a noun for the top part of a car, while "baja" is an adjective. You could use it to say "la parte baja del coche", but still it is not the opposite of "baca", as we understand "baca" to be just a part of the car. You could also say "los bajos del coche" but not "la baja del coche". And still we do not consider those two word to be antonyms, just words referring to different parts of the car.
    – Charlie Mod
    Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 7:20
  • 2
    @ArunabhBhattacharya you could also say that "baba" comes from the head (top), which is the "opposite" of "baja" (bottom). Or that a "bala" has high speed, which is the "opposite" of "baja" (low). Or that a "saca" is a closed container used to carry things, and a "baca" is used to carry things in the open, which is the "opposite". If you define "opposites" so broadly, most pairs of words will be "opposites" by your definition. So then, "baca" and "baja" would not be a special case. But that is not how "opposites" are defined.
    – wimi
    Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 8:08

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .