Seriously, I was chilly so that’s
what inspired this. I’ve done cold words before, but not these ones!
Frost
Frost comes from the Old English frost, which could also be spelled forst (and both meant frost), because… I don’t know. Because. Both words were common
until the late fifteenth century, where frost won the battle, I guess. The
words are from the Proto
Germanic frustaz, frost, which is
from the verb form freusanan, to
freeze. That word comes from the Proto Indo European preus-, to freeze or to burn. Speaking of freeze…
Freeze
Freeze wasn’t actually how the word used to be spelled. It used to be freese or friese, coming from the Middle
English fresen and Old English freosan, to freeze.
That word was taken from the Proto Germanic freusan,
to freeze, from the verb freus-, which
is also related to the abovementioned preus-. As for why its past tense is frozen…
there’s no good explanation for that. Sorry, that’s an unsatisfying answer, isn’t
it?
Frigid
A lot of these words start with “fr”,
don’t they? Frost and freeze are related, so that makes sense, but frigid?
Nope. Frigid showed up in the early seventeenth century from the classical Latin frigidus, which is just cold.
It’s actually from the Proto Italic word
srigos-, yes, an S! and that’s from
the Proto Indo European srig-, cold. Come
on! How do you get from an S to an F???
Refrigeration
I’m going with this tense because it’s
actually the first to show up in English, back in the late fifteenth century—refrigerate
was in the early sixteenth century and refrigerator not until the early seventeenth century.
Refrigeration is from the classical Latin regrigerationem,
which means cooling,
as the re- means again and the rest is
from the verb frigerare, to make
cool. That word happens to be from frigidus, which means refrigeration is from
the same place as frigid. At least that one makes sense.
And I think that’ll be it for this
week. I’m cold and tired.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s
page on the Origins of
Old English
So winter is the time of refrigeration...?
ReplyDeleteInteresting that there is no relationship between frigid and freeze.
ReplyDeleteFriese - that would be a neat way to spell it.
ReplyDeleteEnglish has so many words which are not related yet comes across as related words like freeze and frigid.
ReplyDeleteOkay... (I'm trying to think up something clever or pithy to say, and I've got nothing. Too bad we don't say frrr instead of brrrr.)
ReplyDeleteSrig sounds like the sort of word a cat would cough up as a hairball.
ReplyDelete