Thursday, April 14, 2016

A-to-Z Challenge: L

What a load.

The word is load. Yeah, I’m getting kind of tired.


Load showed up as a verb in the late fifteenth century but a noun in the early thirteenth century. It comes from the Old English lad, which means way or course. No, I don’t know how it got from one to the other. Maybe from the idea of carrying a load along a path to a destination? But that’s just a guess on my part.

Before that, it comes from the Proto Germanic laitho and Proto Indo European leit, go forth, the origin word for lead. Um, not the metal, the other one. And the word lode actually comes from the same place.

Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

13 comments:

  1. Interesting… Do you think maybe lad became load because of the material needing to be carried to build paths or roads?

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  2. I think your guess is correct since it was a world without machinery or vehicles to do that carrying for them.

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  3. That makes ... well a little bit of sense, maybe :) Sometimes word changes are just a bit baffling. Good choice for L though!
    Tasha
    Tasha's Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)

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  4. I think that's a pretty good guess on your part. :)

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  5. Interesting that load and lode have common links.

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  6. I get this image of you writing all these posts in a marathon session one day. And each day the explanation for why that word gets harder and harder to come up with.

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  7. So was load like the past tense of lead at one point?

    ~Ninja Minion Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
    Story Dam
    Patricia Lynne, Indie Author

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  8. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. https://mhsusannematthews.wordpress.com/

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  9. Interesting. I often say, 'Sit down. Take a load off'. So now I know the possible origin of that phrase. Thanks for sharing.

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  10. And how did we get that from that? Language is so weird.

    Susan Says

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  11. Interesting that it was a noun first. Not sure how it became a verb.

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  12. I plan on eating a load of ice cream this weekend :)

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Please validate me.