Language of Confusion: -Tain-ted Love, Reborn

Remember way back when I etymologized a bunch of words that ended with -tain? And I said there were a bunch that weren’t etymologically related to the others and I’d do them later? Well here. I finally got around to it.

Attain showed up in the early fourteenth century from ataign-, part of the Old French word ataindre, which has pretty much the same meaning ours does. Further back, it’s the Vulgar Latin attangere or classical Latin attingere, which means touch or reach. The at- part is from ad-, to, but the second part comes from the word tangere, touch, and the origin word for tangent. Apparently, it comes from the idea of “meeting at a point without intersecting”. Tangere can be traced even further back to the Proto Indo European tag, which is also touch. So basically, when you attain something, you’re touching it.

Certain showed up in the early fourteenth century, coming from the Old French certain, which meant pretty much the same thing. Before that, it was the Vulgar Latin certanus and classical Latin certus, also certain. This certus came from cretus, the past participle of cernere, separate or distinguish. Which is the origin word for discern, appropriately enough. And crisis. Which is a bit weirder.

Next, we’re going to look at fountain, which showed up in the early fifteenth century. It comes from the Old French fontaine and before that, the Medieval Latin fontana and classical Latin fontanus/fons, and yeah, all of those words just mean fountain. It comes from the Proto Indo European dhen, to flow. So yeah, it switched from a d to an f. I can’t even begin to fathom that one.

There are a few other -tain words, but the last one we’re going to look at today is curtain. It showed up in the early fourteenth century, from the Old French cortine, curtain. Before that, it was the Late Latin cortina. Which—and I’m not making this up—in classical Latin means cauldron or tripod and cortem, which means yard or enclosure. Apparently, for some reason, common Latin speakers used cortina as a replacement for the Greek word aulaia, curtain. The Greek word aule means courtyard, so I guess this made sense to the Romans. I don’t know. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: words are weird.

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

University of Texas at Arlington

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

Orbis Latinus

Encyclopaedia Britannica