Language Of Confusion: Flats, Part III

The next part of what is sure to be a ridiculously long series because just SO MANY words come from the Proto Indo European plat-, spread, and its root pele-, flat or to spread. This week: all sorts of plains. And planes.
 
First, plain showed up in the fourteenth century, coming from the Old French plain, and before that the classical Latin planus, flat, which is from pele-. In English, plain originally only meant flat, but it also started to mean “free from obstruction”, like flatland is, and it came to mean simple or unembellished. And that’s why we have plain. Also explain, which showed up in the fifteenth century. It’s from the classical Latin explanare, which means to comment on or, you know, explain, and is planus with ex-, out. To explain is to flatten out. Um, metaphorically, I have to assume. And now I’m sure you’re expecting me to go over complain. Nope. It’s not related to plain or explain. Seriously.

 
As for the other plane, it showed up in the seventeenth century, when it was decided they needed to differentiate the geometric sense of plane (which then also got used as part of airplane). It’s from the classical Latin planum, plane, which is from planus. Plan showed up in the late seventeenth century, first meaning a drawing, then a scheme, as it’s more commonly used today. It’s from the French plan, plan obviously, and that’s from planum. Because drawings were done on flat surfaces. Well, it makes more sense than explain does.
 
You know what looks like plane? Planet. You know what’s in all likelihood not related to plane? Also planet. So no, we won’t be looking at it. Instead, we’re looking at place. It’s the oldest word here, having shown up in the thirteenth century, coming from the Old French place and Medieval Latin placea. That’s from the classical Latin platea, which meant street or courtyard or an open space. It’s from the Greek plateia, a square or plaza, which is from platys, wide or broad. A word we covered extensively last week.
 
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
Dictionary of Medieval Latin

Language of Confusion: Plane

Plane actually has a lot of definitions that seem different but are all related. It’s a flat surface, it’s short for airplane, and a bunch of definitions that I didn’t know of like a tool for making things smooth, a verb form that means to make smooth, and a tree of the Platanus genus (yes, it really is related to the others). And also there’s one that means to glide, which, I’m calling it right now, is where airplane comes from.

The plane we still use, a flat surface, showed up in the early seventeenth century, although the verb form to make smooth is from the early fourteenth century. It comes from the classical Latin planum, which means, you know, plane. Not trying to be original here. Anyway, before that it was the Proto Indo European pla-no-, which is a form of the word pele-, flat or to spread out. Funny how the only one we really still use is the one that’s most recent. Only three hundred more years and it will be as old as the others before they fell out of use.

Most of the other planes are related to planus in some way. The tool one and the make smooth one are pretty obvious, although they actually came to us via the Old French plane/planer. Airplane of course is just air + plane (told ya), and it’s the same story for aeroplane. But there are plenty of other words that are related to plane.

Planet comes from the Old English planet. Which means planet. It comes from the Old French planete and Late Latin planeta, and earlier the Greek planetes, which of course just happens to be from pe-le-. Maybe planet comes from flat because they used to think planet was flat.

Plan is also related. And also surprisingly recent as it showed up in the late seventeenth century as a noun and not a verb until 1728. It comes from the Modern French plan, you all know what this means, it’s plan. Look, there’s just no originality here. It comes from the classical Latin planum, which I assume you remember from a few paragraphs ago. As for why it went from a flat surface to a plan, well… what do you make your plans on? I’m not kidding here. Think about it. Have you ever tried making a plan on a jagged surface? It’s impossible!

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

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

Orbis Latinus