The Russian word for "airplane"
When airplanes were invented, Russians didn't have
to create a new word for them.
They already had the phrase ковёр-самолёт (pronounced kavyór-samalyót),
literally, "carpet self-flight" for the legendary flying carpet,
and they simply took the second half, самолёт, "self-flight",
as their term for airplane.
(I don't know whether that word was immediately taken
as the term for airplane, or whether, before becoming standard,
it competed with other suggested terms.)
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