Language of Confusion: -Tain-ted Love, Part I

Yes, another ridiculous title and another two-parter. You wouldn’t believe how many words have -tain them.

Contain showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French contein/contenir and classical Latin continere, which is just contain in Latin. It’s a mix of the prefix com-, together, and tenere, hold. So, hold together. And if that’s not enough for you, tenere is also the origin word for tenet. Tenet literally means hold in Latin and means tenet in English because it was used to introduce doctrines (I could not make this stuff up). Anyway, it comes from the Proto Indo European ten, stretch and yes, that is totally a weird change, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says it’s because stretch and hold are connected by the notion of “cause to maintain”. Make of that what you will.

Obtain comes from the same line as contain. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Middle French obtenir, obtain, and classical Latin obtinere…obtain. Shocking, I know. The ob- prefix means to, so the word is “to hold”. I guess when you obtain something, you’re holding it.

Detain showed up in the early fifteenth century as deteynen (we totally need more Ys as vowels) before it changed to match up with the boring spellings of the other -tain words. It comes from the Old French detenir and classical Latin detinere, which both meant hold off or withhold, somewhat similar to what our detain is. The de- provides the away part and our friend tenere, making it literally holding away from.

The last word we’re looking at today is retain, which showed up in the late fourteenth century as hold back or restrain before morphing into what we know it as. It comes from the Old French retenir and classical Latin retinere, which just means retain. The re- means back in this case, so with tenere it’s hold back.

Whew! That’s part one, and there’s plenty more where this came from. Who knew tenet had such a family?

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

Google Translate

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

University of Ottawa, Canada