Language of Confusion: Whatever the Case May Be, Part I

Case has a few different meanings, one of which is like the title of this post, a situation, and the other is something you put other things in, like a briefcase. Are they related?

Of course not. Haven’t you been paying attention during these posts?

Situation case showed up in the early thirteenth century, coming from the Old French cas and classical Latin casus, an event. It’s from the verb cadere, which actually means “to fall” and that’s from the Proto Indo European kad-, to fall, the origin of a bunch of interesting words. Anyway, think of something that falls—or befalls—and you can understand how case means what it does.

Other words related to the above case include casual and casualty. The former showed up in the late fourteenth century, however back then it meant “subject to or produced by chance”, and it didn’t mean what we know it as until 1883! The word is from the Middle French casuel and Late Latin casualis, by chance, which comes from casus. Casualty showed up a little later than casual, in the early fifteenth century, where it also had a very different meaning: chance or accident. It was generally used to mean bad things that happened, and then in the late fifteenth century started to mean military losses. By the mid nineteenth century, it firmly meant someone who was killed/wounded in battle.

Now for the other case. The container case showed up a century after the other one, in the early fourteenth century, from the Anglo French/Old North French casse. It’s from the classical Latin capsa, box, from the verb capere, to catch or hold, and this word is traced back to the Proto Indo European kap-, to grasp, the origin for soooooo many words, for instance the -cept words. Some of these histories are looking pretty interesting. I’ll have to start going over them.

Right after I finish all the words related to the first case…

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

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

Fordham University

Orbis Latinus