Thursday, June 11, 2015

Language of Confusion: -Tain-ted Love, Part I

Yes, another ridiculous title and another two-parter. You wouldn’t believe how many words have -tain them.

Contain showed up in the late thirteenth century from the Old French contein/contenir and classical Latin continere, which is just contain in Latin. It’s a mix of the prefix com-, together, and tenere, hold. So, hold together. And if that’s not enough for you, tenere is also the origin word for tenet. Tenet literally means hold in Latin and means tenet in English because it was used to introduce doctrines (I could not make this stuff up). Anyway, it comes from the Proto Indo European ten, stretch and yes, that is totally a weird change, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says it’s because stretch and hold are connected by the notion of “cause to maintain”. Make of that what you will.

Obtain comes from the same line as contain. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Middle French obtenir, obtain, and classical Latin obtinereobtain. Shocking, I know. The ob- prefix means to, so the word is “to hold”. I guess when you obtain something, you’re holding it.

Detain showed up in the early fifteenth century as deteynen (we totally need more Ys as vowels) before it changed to match up with the boring spellings of the other -tain words. It comes from the Old French detenir and classical Latin detinere, which both meant hold off or withhold, somewhat similar to what our detain is. The de- provides the away part and our friend tenere, making it literally holding away from.

The last word we’re looking at today is retain, which showed up in the late fourteenth century as hold back or restrain before morphing into what we know it as. It comes from the Old French retenir and classical Latin retinere, which just means retain. The re- means back in this case, so with tenere it’s hold back.

Whew! That’s part one, and there’s plenty more where this came from. Who knew tenet had such a family?

Sources

5 comments:

  1. There are a lot of tain words.

    Now I will have Soft Cell's Tainted Love in my head all day.

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  2. Your mention of y as a vowel reminds me of the Dutch language, where the two letters ij are sometimes used as a single letter.

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  3. Yeah, now I'm stuck with that stupid song in my head, too. There's got to be something else I can hum...

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  4. Interesting. I love finding out the origins of words.

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  5. If you listen to people from the South talk, you'll find there are many more words that you didn't know about.

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