It’s the last
etymology post of the year! Might as well do something that’s been a long time
coming: be, one of the most common used verbs in English. I’m betting a lot of
ESL learners are annoyed at it considering how irregular it is. Most of be’s
forms don’t even look like the same word.
Be comes from the Old
English beon, to be or become, from the Proto
Germanic biju-. That’s
from the Proto
Indo European root bheue-,
to be, exist, or grow, which is one
of those things that’s part of a bunch of other words I won’t be getting into
because we’ll be here all day and I’ve got things to do.
However, probably the
only be word that’s from bheue- is been.
The others are all different! Am was eom
in Old English, and it was the first person
version of be like it is today. It’s from the Proto Germanic ism(i)-, from the Proto Indo European esmi-, which is from the root es-, to be. Yes, they had two versions
of to be. It’s also a part of a bunch of different words, the most obvious of
which is is. Is is from the Old English is, big surprise, just is.
That’s from the Germanic es-, from
the Proto Indo European es-ti-, so a
slightly different version of es-.
Now, for was. Man, is
this one a trip. It showed up in Old English as wesan or waes, all of which are from
the Proto Germanic wesanan. That one
is from the Proto Indo European root wes-,
which means to remain, abide, or well. So was isn’t even from a word that means
to be. Were is from the same origin, having shown up as the Old English waeron, another tense of wesan/waes. There’s no real explanation as to why this word
morphed into being the past tense of to be. It just did for some reason.
Words, man. Words.
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
It's like they took all of the little leftover words and threw them all into the "to be" pot, kind of like sweep-the-kitchen pizza.
ReplyDeleteAs it's probably our most important verb, I can see how it morphed from various sources and never normalized over time. I think it's weird in all languages, too. I remember it driving me nuts to learn in French; I imagine it would be the same elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteGood one to sign off for the year. I remember how I used to get confused in school because the various forms of 'be' had no resemblance to neither one another nor the root verb.
ReplyDelete