Thursday, April 23, 2015

A-to-Z Challenge: T

Time and tide wait for no man.

Time. I’m trying to say that today’s word is time.


Time comes from the Old English tima, which meant, no fooling, limited space of time. It wasn’t until later that it meant a continuous amount of time, can you believe it? It comes from the Proto Germanic timon, time, and Proto Indo European di-mon-, a form of the word da, which is also the ancestor of tide.

Wait, WHAT?

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

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. See that will teach me to read the bit above the letter as well as the bit below :) I will never be able to guess where words come from - they are too changeable!

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  3. Didn't they use the tides to determine time? I could be wrong about that, but it sort of makes sense to me.

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  4. How interesting that it first was limited, then a continuous amount. I just need to find more of it on a daily basis :)

    betty

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  5. Every time I read your blog posts I feel like I learn something new. I love this etymology of the word time.

    Good luck with the A to Z Challenge!
    A to Z Co-Host S. L. Hennessy
    http://pensuasion.blogspot.com/

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  6. Time, one of my favorite things that I don't have enough of.

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  7. And of course there's that expression about time and tide waiting for no man.

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  8. How limited an amount of time? A minute? An hour?

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Please validate me.