WELL, WEALTH, WILL

All these words, whole or just a part of them, ultimately derive from the Indo-European (IE) root *WEL- meaning “To wish” or “will”, according to the Indo-European Roots Index of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. www.bartleby.com/61/. [12/11/08].

In the case of well, the root *WEL-, continued being *WEL- in Germanic (GMC), and WEL in Old English (OE).
The transition of meaning is the following: firstly it refered to "Favourably circumstanced; having things as one wishes them to be" > "in comfortable and affluent circumstances" > "In a state of prosperity or affluence; more explicitly well in goods or cash, well in the world".

In the case of wealth, the root *WEL-, became *WELON- in GMC, and WELA, WEOLA in OE. The transition of meaning is the following: firstly it refered to "Things in which material riches consist; rich and costly goods or possessions; luxuries" > "with reference to more than one possessor." > "Condition with regard to riches or poverty; degree of wealthiness." > "said of a specific commodity as the chief source of a country's riches. Also with defining word, indicating a particular source" > "Abundance of possessions or of valuable products, as characteristic of a people, country, or region; the collective riches of a people or country." > "Prosperity consisting in abundance of possessions; ‘worldly goods’, valuable possessions, esp. in great abundance: riches, affluence".

In the case of will, the root *WEL-, became *WILJON- in GMC, and WILLA in OE.
The transition of meaning is the following: firstly it refered to "Chiefly used in the names (often hyphenated) of supposed natural instincts or drives, as will to art, be, believe, live " > "Intention, intent, purpose, determination" > "The action of willing or choosing to do something; the movement or attitude of the mind which is directed with conscious intention to (and, normally, issues immediately in) some action, physical or mental; volition".

while, whilom, tranquility, requiem

According to the Indo-European Roots Index of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, these four words ultimately come from the Indo-European root *kwei-, or also *kwye-, which means “to rest” or “to be quiet”. The root became *hwilo- in Germanic, and it later produced the Old English words *hwil and *hwilum, where the words while and whilom respectively come from. The change in the root, formerly a /k/ sound and later a voiceless fricative /h/ is explained by Grimm’s Law.

On the other hand, the same Indo-European root survived into the Latin language, where it shaped the word tranquillus, meaning something like “accros the rest”. In Middle English, it transformed again into tranquill, and ultimately into Modern English tranquillity. Again in Latin and by means of the same Indo-European root, the word quies appeared with the same meaning of rest and quietness. And this is where the word requiem (an hymn to those that are already resting forever) comes from.

Lord, lady, doughnut

As we shall see, the words lord, lady and loaf are intimately related through the word hlāf, which originally meant “bread” and was related to Gothic hlaifs and Old Norse hleifr. In Middle English (ME) it evolved into lof, the initial cluster /xl/ becoming /l/ and the vocalic sound becoming first /ɔ:/ and later the diphthong /əu/,as loaf shows. No Indo-European (IE) etymology is given in the Indo-European Roots Index, which says that the root *HL- is found only in Germanic (Gmc) languages.

The original OE form of lord was hlāford (fromhlāfweard = hlāf “bread” + weard “keeper, guardian”, so that lord literally meant “the keeper or guardian of the bread”. The first noun in this compound, weard, can be traced back to the IE root *WER-, which meant “to perceive, watch out for” (Indo-European Roots Index of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. www.bartleby.com/61/. [12/11/08]). Certainly, the lord was the one supposed to care about and sustain his household. The counterpart of this word is lady, from OE form hlfādige. This is also a compound made up of hlāf “bread” and dige “kneader”. The second part of the compound derives from dæge, which in turn came from the Germanic (Gmc) *-dig. The reconstructed IE root is *DEIGH-, which, according to the Indo-European Roots Index, meant “to form, build”. Hence, lady literally meant “the kneader or maker of the bread”.

But what does doughnut have to do with lord and lady? Doughnut is certainly a recent creation, which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, was coined circa 1809 to refer to "a small cake in the shape of a ring." What is surprising is that the same IE root -*DEIGH that we found in hlfādige (now lady) is also found in dough. Dough comes from OE dāg through ME dogh in ME. It originally meant (and still means) “a mixture of flour, water, etc. that is made into bread and pastry” (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary - OALD). We have also traced back the origin of nut, which presented the form hnut(u) in OE and nute in ME. However, we have attested that it has always made reference to some kind of hard-shelled fruit (see peanut, hazelnut, and cashewnut) and so it does not make much sense to apply this meaning in the word doughnut. All I can think of to account for this is that this nuance of “hardness” might have been lost in the course of time, so that speakers might be analyzing nut as a mere suffix to express some kind of food.

As for the meaning of lord, it is obvious that the reference to bread is no longer recognisable. Lord now refers to "a man of high rank in the nobility" (OALD - semantic extension). This change of meaning has been largely influenced by the adoption of the word as the English counterpart for Latin dominus. In the case of lady, it was especially influenced by the French dame, so that it has come to refer to "a highly polite and courteous woman" (alteration of contexts). Finally, loaf is a clear example of semantic reduction, since it now refers to "a shaped mass of bread baked in one piece" (American Heritage Dictionary).

Other words containing the IE root -*WER are wary, reward, guard and panorama (pan + Greek horāma “sight”, from the verb horān “to see”, which goes back to our IE root). Words surviving from the IE root *DEIGH- include dairy and paradise (its original meaning was “an enclosured park”: pairi “around (*-PER) and daēzō (“wall”, evolving from *deigh-).

BEAR, BURDEN, BAIRN, FERTILE, SUFFER

All these words, whole or just a part of them, ultimately derive from the Indo-European (IE) root *BHER-, meaning “to carry” or “to bear children”, according to the Indo-European Roots Index of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. www.bartleby.com/61/. [05/11/08]. This root became *BER- in Germanic (Gmc). The change in the initial consonant was explained by Grimm: the IE voiced aspirate */bh/ > Gmc voiced fricative*/ß/ > Old English (OE) voiced plosive*/b/. This is the reason why bear, burden and bairn have an initial /b/ = . However, IE */bh/ became /f/ in Latin (Lat), that is, we find FER- in Lat, whence the words fertile or suffer, which are not of Gmc stock, but from Lat. The verb suffer was borrowed from Anglo-Norman (AN), the French dialect of Normandy as was spoken in England after the Norman Conquest. The AN verb suffrir, of course, descends from Lat sufferre, which is made up of the prefix sub- and the verb ferre “to carry”, that is, the meaning was “to bear from underneath”. The verb suffer today keeps the original meaning with which it was employed in 1225 in the important medieval work Ancrene Wisse, or Guide of Anchoresses in Modern English (ModE): “to endure, to undergo”. The second Lat word, the adjective fertile, was borrowed two centuries later from Old French (OFr) fertile and ultimately comes from Lat fertilis, which in turn derives from the verb ferre “to carry”. According to the Oxford English Dicationary Online, 2008. http//dictionary.oed.com [o5.11/2008], the adjective fertile was first used in English in 1460, with the meaning it still has today, "bearing or producing in abundance; fruitful, prolific", and it was Sir John Fortescue, a lawyer appointed chancellor of England, who first employed it in a book about the English monarchy (see Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, s.v. John Fortescue). As for the semantic relationship holding between the three Germanic words, bear, burden and bairn, they all denote “carrying”: the verb bear (from OE beran) means “to carry”, the noun burden (from OE burþen) means “that which is carried or borne”, and the noun bairn (from OE bearn “child”) at bottom means “the baby borne in the womb”. However, bairn is not used in standard Present Day English (PDE) anymore. It has survived, though, in the Englishes spoken in Scotland and northern England. Other surviving words from the same IE root *BHER- are birth, barrow, bier and bring, from Gmc, and afferent, circumference, confer, defer, differ, efferent, infer, offer, prefer, proffer, refer, suffer, transfer, vociferate, from Lat.

Indo-European Languages and Historical Linguistics

If you want to know more about Indo-European languages and Historical Linguistics, you can download through iTunes a couple fo lectures from the course GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD CULTURES (and follow the accompanying PowerPoint slides).

The course was given in 2007 by Martin W. Lewis.

In particular, you can listen to Units 2 and 3.

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A new book on the history of English

Review in The Economist (18.09.2008) of  Henry Hitchings' The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English. 

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Grimm's and Verner's Laws

Links to YouTube videos on Grimm's and Verner's Laws:

1. Video 1
2. Video 2
3. Video 3

And links to the Wikipedia entries for Grimm's and Verner's Law.

Enjoy!

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Welcome to HEL

New academic year

Welcome to the new academic year 2008-09!

The student who contributes the most interesting posting will win a prize!

Interest will be decided by majority vote in class.

That's a promise.

Again English Spelling.

English spelling worries The Economist (14-08-2008)

Click here.