Language Of Confusion: Knot

Inspired by last week, with knot somehow not being related to the Proto Indo European word for bind or tie. Knot actually comes from the Old English cnotta, intertwining of ropes or cords, and at its earliest is from the Proto Germanic knuttan-. You’d think that be related to last week’s ned-, especially since that’s where net is from, but there’s no evidence of that, and as we all know, words are stupid.
 
There actually aren’t any other words related to knot. It’s a total stand alone! But we can still find stuff to talk about. First of all, knot as a nautical measure of speed. That showed up in the mid seventeenth century, and is because of the log line of a sailing ship. A log is a measure of a ship’s progress, because a log, as in a piece of wood, was used on the log line. The log line was let out behind the ship, and it would pull out the rope at regular knotted intervals, and the faster it went, the more knots were pulled out—hence, knots per hour.
 
Still awfully short. How about we look at the Kn combination. Isn’t it weird? There’s just a K there, and we don’t even pronounce it. It showed up in Middle English as the spelling for a common Germanic sound combination—they actually say the K sound there, so in other Germanic languages, it’s k-nife and k-night, and in fact we used to say it, too, but stopped around the mid eighteenth century. In Old English, they used a C in place of the K (which is why it’s cnotta up there), but it was the same sound. Just another reason why the letter C is redundant.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary