Language Of Confusion: Verse, Part II

More on all the words related to verse, which is from the Proto Indo European wer-, to turn or bend. Once again, this week’s words have been etymologized before, but it’s not like anyone can stop me.
 
Versus we kind of looked at last week since it’s the Latin version of verse. In English, it showed up in the mid fifteenth century, as legal terminology—hence why it stayed in its Latin form. It’s from the classical Latin versus, obviously, meaning turned towards or against. Its verb form is vertere, to turn, and that’s from the PIE wer-, turn or bend. If legalese wasn’t so entwined with Latin, it would probably just be verse.
 
Next, version, which looks like it’s related to verse  though I have a hard time imagining how. Well, might as well see why. It showed up in the late sixteenth century from the French version (same meaning), which is from the Medieval Latin versionem, a translation or a turning. It also comes from vertere, so because a translation was a different “turn” of something, we have version. I guess that makes sense, but still…
 
Versatile showed up in the seventeenth century, originally meaning something not being constant before it changed to “able to do many things well” in the mid eighteenth century. It comes from the classical Latin versatilis, versatile, and it is from the verb versare, to turn or to engage. It is indeed related to vertere. It’s what’s known as a frequentative version of the word—a verb of continuing action, like to wrestle is a frequentative of to wrest. I guess being versatile requires a lot of turns.
 
Now for more words that end in verse. Universe showed up in the mid sixteenth century, coming from the Old French univers and before that the classical Latin universum, the universe. The uni- is from unus, one, and the rest is versus. That means the universe is… one turn??? Funnily enough, university is actually an older word, having shown up in the fourteenth century. It’s from the Anglo French université/Old French universite, from the Medieval Latin universitatem, from universus, whole or entire (hence universe). It might still seem weird for university to come from that, but as it turns out, it’s from a Latin phrase, universitas magistrorum et scholarium: community of masters and scholars. A university is a “community”.

Diverse is kind of weird since it used to be spelled divers, but no, it is not the plural of diver. With the e at the end, it showed up in the late fourteenth century while divers showed up in the late thirteenth century [https://www.etymonline.com/word/divers] from the classical Latin diversus, different [https://translate.google.com/?sl=la&tl=en&text=diversus&op=translate]. It’s a mix of the prefix dis-, meaning aside [https://www.etymonline.com/word/dis-] here, and versus, so diverse is to turn aside. Somehow. 

 
Finally, controversy. It showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning a debate of “contrary opinions”. It’s from the Old French controversie and classical Latin controversia, controversy. The verb form is controversus, a mix of contra, against, and versus. A controversy is a turning against. How sensible.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Fordham University

Language of Confusion: Advertisement

With all the subliminal advertising going on, I’m surprised it took me this long to do this one. I guess because it’s subliminal, I don’t notice it as much.

  

Advertisement and advertise first showed up in the early fifteenth century, basically with the same meaning: a public notice. It came from the Middle Frenchavertissement, which in turn came from avertir—advertise. Avertir can be tracedto the Late Latin advertere, which means “turn toward” rather than having anything to do with advertising. See, over the centuries it shifted in meaning from literal turning towards to figuratively turning attention by giving notice to others. It wasn’t until the end of the eighteenth century that the definition of “Notice of goods for sale” was firmly in place.

And of course the shift of the definition gives advertise some interesting relatives. Advert (remark or turn attention to) isn’t that common these days, but avert is, and both are descended from avertir, as is averse. If you pull the Latin advertere apart, you get ad-, a prefix meaning toward, and vertere, to turn, which is the parent of versus, a word I've actually talked about before as being related to worth. And believe me when I say that vertere has a lot more than thosetwo children.

TL;DR: Pretty much any word with “vert” or “verse” in it is from vertere, advertise included.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

Orbis Latinus

Language of Confusion: Worth

Oh, I just love the etymology on this one. See, worth comes from the Old English weorð (that funny symbol is a now unused letter for the “th” sound), meaning “equal in value”, about the same as we have. Weorð in turn comes from the Proto Germanicwerthaz, which actually means toward or opposite. It might seem weird, but if you think of it in the sense of opposite and equivalent to, it makes more sense.

What you might not know is that there’s another worth, a homophone/graph that has quite a different meaning. Instead of value, this worth means “to come to be” and is now rarely if ever used. It has a slightly different etymological line, coming from the Old English weorðan instead of weorð (so, something like “worthan”) and the Proto Germanic werthan, which means “to become” and which itself came from the above werthaz.

It gets interesting when you look at the history of werthaz. That word is thought to come from the Proto Indo European wert, turn or wind, which comes from wer, meaning bend. And that’s also the distant ancestor of versus, of all words, and with quite a different ancestry.

Versus showed up in the mid fourteen hundreds and instead of Germanic origins, came from the same word in classical Latin, where it means “turned against”. And the Latin versus, which comes from vertere, or “to turn”, can be traced to the Proto Indo European wert as well.

TL;DR: worth and versus are thought to come from the same word, through Germanic and Latin lineages, respectively.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

University of Texas at San Antonio

Tony Jebson’s page on The Origins of Old English