How about a bunch of little words
that we use all the time?
This comes from the Old English þis, which is just this
where the th has its own letter. It’s
thought to be from the North Sea Germanic pronoun tha-si-, which is a mix of
the base word þa with an
-s at the end. Once upon a time, this had tons
of different forms, Masculine, Feminine, Neutral, and Plural, and of course in
all the different tenses. I am just so glad we pared it down to one. How
annoying would it be to have to conjugate twenty different forms for this???
That is from the Old English þaet,
which is that much like we
use it. It comes from the Proto
Germanic that, from the Proto Indo European tod-, which is from the root word -to-.
That also had masculine and feminine forms—the masculine form was actually se and the feminine seo, with an S! That with
the th is actually the neutral form. And we should now all take a moment to
thank Middle
English for getting rid of gendered articles, because that is a stupid idea that makes things overcomplicated.
Next, we’re looking at the, which was þe in Old English.
At least, that was one of its forms. In fact, þe was a later form, and earlier it was se—yes, the same se
that came from. It’s from the Proto Indo European root so-, which you know is the origin of this and that. I guess that’s where all these words come from.
Now let’s look at some non-th words.
At comes from the Old English aet, which is just at.
It’s from the Proto Indo European ad-,
to, near, or at, which is part of just
so many words that start with a- or ad-. Anyway, that’s at. Fairly sensible
origin, and almost completely unchanged in thousands of years. Impressive.
From comes from (ha!) the Old English fram, which is
just from with a different vowel. It can be
traced to the Proto Germanic fra,
forward or away from (kind of contradictory there) and Proto Indo European pro-mo-… Seriously??? It’s actually from
pro-, forward, and get this, frame is
from the same place. Well, technically, frame is from the already mentioned Old English
fram. As in, this is where the frame you use for pictures comes from. I am one
hundred percent not making that up. The frame thing is something I’m going to
have to get into another time because holy crap is that a journey.
Okay, let’s end with something more
sensible. For comes from the Old English for, meaning… well, for. What were you expecting? It’s from the Proto Germanic fur and
Proto Indo European per-, forward.
Which is also where pro comes from.
Nothing much else to stay here. My
mind is still reeling from the from/frame thing.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s
page on the Origins of
Old English
Interesting how words sometimes evolve to mean the opposite than they did originally.
ReplyDeleteThe return of thorn! I'm rather fond of thorn.
ReplyDeleteSo, fra was a contranym. Makes a certain sort of sense.
Very interesting to read about these different patterns of evolution of words.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why English is a Germanic language.
ReplyDelete