Have you ever wondered where the word muscle comes from? It's from Latin. In Latin mūs means mouse. The suffix -culus is a diminutive suffix. Thus mūsculus means “little mouse,” which kind of makes sense since if you look at a muscle moving on your body, it kind of looks like some critter is scurrying under your skin. In Russian the root мыш- means mouse. The suffix -ца is a diminutive suffix. One of the words for muscle in Russian is мышца. When you take the roots and suffixes of a word in one language, and you substitute the roots and suffixes of another language to make a new word in that language, we call that word a calque. Мышца is a Russian calque from a Latin word. Interestingly enough, something similar happens in Polish. The Polish root for mouse is myš-, and -ca is a diminutive suffix. The Polish word myšca is also a calque from Latin and means muscle. Here are some sample sentences:
| Дельтовидная мышца — поверхностная мышца плеча. (adapted from source) |
The deltoid muscle is a superfical muscle of the shoulder. |
| Полузащитник "Ростова" Хон Ён Чо надорвал икроножную мышцу. (source) |
Rostov midfielder Hong Yong-Jo tore his calf muscle. |
| Желание накачать мышцы у мужчин, недовольных своей физической формой, возникает чаще, чем это можно себе представить. (source) |
Men who are dissatisfied with the physical form have the desire to pump up their muscles pop up more often than you can imagine. |
| Переварачиваю различные предметы мышцами живота. (dopey video) |
I flip various objects over with the muscles of my belly. |
| bg | мускул |
| de | der Muskel |
| es | músculo |
| fr | muscle (masc) |
| pl | myšca |
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