The way some words are connected is mind boggling. Retrieve for example. I’m sure you’re aware that you can retrieve something, but never trieve it. However, I’m sure you’ve all heard of a trove. Like a treasure trove. Of useless, boring information about etymology.
Yes, they are connected. Retrieve first showed up in the fifteenth century by way of the Old French retrouver, which means “find again”. Retrouver is a combination of the prefix re- (as in again) and the word trouver, to find, making it “to find again”. However, when it was taken into English, it lost the “again” part.
Trove wasn’t recorded as a singular word until 1888, but treasure trove showed up in the mid sixteenth century. It is actually from Anglo-French, the twelfth century phrase tresor trové. As anyone who regularly reads this blog can guess, it can be traced to Latin. Tresor trové is a translation of thesaurus inventus, which can be literally translated as “treasure was found” or “found treasure.”
tl;dr: French translated a Latin saying and used it as a word, which then morphed into unique words in English. The mystery of why what we call a book of synonyms literally means treasure will have to wait until next time.
Sources
The Urban Dictionary, although that was more for me than the explanation.
