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

And now you have that song in your heads again. You’re welcome.

Pertain showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Old French partenir, to belong to, and classical Latin pertinere, concern [https://translate.google.com/#la/en/pertinere], reach/stretch, or belong. If you’ll recall from last week, tenere means to hold (and gave us tenet), and per- is through. So, to hold through. Not sure I get that one…Anyway, appertain and pertinent also have the same origin as pertain. The a- on appertain comes from ad-, which means to or completely…which actually makes more sense than pertain. And pertinent comes from pertinentem, the present participle of pertinere that means relates, which also makes more sense in some way.

Entertain is also rated to tenet, although its origin is French with some Latin influence rather than Latin by way of French. It showed up in the late fifteenth century meaning, get this, keep up or maintain. It also meant to keep a person in a certain frame of mind, like how you might say someone wants to betray you is entertaining treasonous thoughts, and since performers would try to make you feel a certain thing…entertain. Anyway, entertain comes from the Middle/Old French entretenir, hold together or support. Which makes even less sense. See, the enter- comes from inter- and means among, so while “hold among” might make sense for the French sense of the world, I have no idea how it got from there to the English definition. I guess if you’re trying to hold someone’s attention…

Maintain showed up fairly early, in the mid thirteenth century, coming from the Anglo French meintenir, sustain, perservere, or keep a wife (really). It comes from a Latin phrase, manu tenere, which literally means “hand hold”. Hm, that wife thing seems a lot more insulting. But if you’re maintaining something, you’re figuratively holding its hand to keep it going, right?

Next is abstain, which really surprised me as being related to the -tain words. It showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French abstenir/astenir, with basically the same meaning we have for it today. It comes from the classical Latin abstinere, which also just means abstain. Ab- means away from, so abstain is to hold away from, which fits it perfectly. See? There had to be at least one that made sense!

Sustain showed up in the early fourteenth century from the Old French sostenir (hold up or endure) and classical Latin sustinere, support or hold up. So we know where the hold comes from, but the sus- comes from sub-, which means under from below. Sustain is to hold something up from below, which makes sense for something that you’re holding up/sustaining.

Well, that’s it for tain- words that are related to tenet/hold. Other words, like certain and attain, aren’t related. Like most words, their spelling is only a coincidence. Perhaps I’ll do all the other not -tain words in another post.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

Google Translate

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Ottawa, Canada

Fordham University