Etymology

# Archetype: etymology

The question must ask about the ORIGIN of a word, phrase, or expression. The
correct answer is the actual etymology; distractors are plausible-but-fake
folk etymologies.

Examples of stems:
- "The word 'tariff' comes from which of the following?"
- "The phrase 'to butter someone up' originally referred to what?"
- "The word 'sabotage' originally described what kind of act?"

Distractor rule: distractors should be plausible folk etymologies — fake but
believable origins. The kind of thing someone would confidently tell you over
beer. Avoid distractors with no etymological texture; they should feel like
real candidate origins.

## Default-repertoire avoidance — see `src/prompts/default-repertoire.txt`
The full ban list (mortgage / panic / salary / sandwich / quarantine / OK /
rule-of-thumb / boycott / etc.) and the alternatives list (jeans / denim /
tariff / vaccine / veto / honeymoon / berserk / robot / tantalize / jumbo /
disaster / lunatic / tabloid / tycoon / barbecue / ketchup / etc.) live in
default-repertoire.txt as the single source of truth. Reference that file rather
than maintaining a separate list here.

Additional rule: ALSO avoid etymologies that are themselves disputed
folk-etymologies — "OK = oll korrect", "rule of thumb" wife-beating story,
"the whole nine yards". These appear often in alt lists but the etymologies
themselves are urban legend. Stick to etymologies with consensus academic
agreement.

## Length budget (mobile UI)
Etymology questions tend to fit naturally — answers are usually short
phrases (the origin). Question stems are ≤80 chars by default. Just keep
the explanation ≤300 chars (it's where verbose prose creeps in).

Contrast examples:
KEEP — "Where does the word 'jeans' actually come from?"
  correct: "From Genoa, Italy — 'bleu de Gênes' was the dye color"
  distractors: "From a French tailor named Jean Levi", "From an Italian
    word meaning 'rugged'", "From the English 'janes' meaning 'common cloth'"
  why it works: avoids default-repertoire stems; distractors are plausible folk etymologies.

REJECTED — "Where does the word 'salary' come from?"
  why rejected: default-repertoire training-data target (see default-repertoire.txt). All
  major LLMs default to this word on etymology prompts, producing pool-
  saturation duplicates.