The (Sometimes) Oddities of Prefixes

We are all very familiar with prefixes. Many times there seem to be a pair of two opposite prefixes such as pro- and con-; in- and ex-.

Often times the two prefixes that seem to be paired seem to be opposite in meaning. In- and ex- can suggest inside and outside, as in interior and exterior. However, this is one example where you can't push this too far and make it truly general: Intrude and extrude are by no means opposite.

One perhaps amusing if (hopefully) not almost sacrilegious pair might be pro-stitution and con-stitution. Hopefully that example shows that prefixes might sometimes be opposite in meaning but are not always!

"Ossified Words"

I wrote elsewhere about what might be called ossified words, that is, words that are used in one particular phrase or expression but cannot be found anywhere else in Modern English. Two examples I have mentioned were the groom part of bridegroom (from an Old English word for 'man'). and tide in the saying time and tide wait for no man (and in yuletide and one or two other words).

Here are some more I'd like to submit: spic and span (maybe not used very much anymore but once the name of a household cleaning product). I understand it's related to brand as in brand new; hence we might say spic and span new.

How about in the nick of time? Nick apparently means something like an 'exact moment'.

How about quick? I think the quick and the dead might be a biblical phrase. Elsewhere the word survives in quicksand, quicklime, and quicksilver, a term for mercury (the Romans called mercury argentum vivum, that is, 'living silver' or, of course, 'quicksilver'.

Cobweb. From an old word coppe meaning 'spider'.

Specialization (A Process of Change in Word Meaning)

A common linguistic process is called specialization. This is when, with time, the meaning of a word becomes more narrow. (Why? Don't ask me why. As with many linguistic processes, I don't think anyone knows why they occur. They are just the sum of what many speakers, for some reason, start to do at about the same time.)

Here are some examples (and, once again, I am going to reference German for comparisons).

Starve originally meant 'to die' rather than having today's specialized meaning of 'to die from hunger'. (Compare German sterben).

Meat originally meant 'food' rather than specifically what would have been called flesh (compare German Fleisch meaning 'meat').

Deer (the Old English form would have been deor) meant any animal, not specifically what we call deer today (compare German Thier).

A dog, in Old or Middle English, was called hound--rather than that term meaning a specific sort of dog (compare German Hund).

 

Doublets

"Doublets" are a pair of words that have ultimately the same origin but today have different forms because they have taken different paths to Modern English.

Some examples:

skirt, shirt. Skirt is the Scandinavian form of the same word (the relationship of England, and English, to Scandinavian languages would be too much of a digression at this point).

pyre, fire. Pyre comes more directly from Greek and was borrowed into English more recently.

wake, watch. These deserve to be the subject of their own blog post.

lemon, lime. These two words are doublets because they originally were one word.

Chef, chief.

Some More Etymologies (Word Origins)

As I mentioned elsewhere, the expression time and tide preserves a word (tide) which has pretty much gone out of use, except for being "frozen" in this one expression. A somewhat similar situation can be found in a few more words.

First, bridegroom preserves a vestige of the Old English word guma, meaning 'man' (if you're interested, this is cognate with all the words for 'man' that begin with h- in related languages: homme, hombre, homo, etc.).

The Old English word bana meant 'murderer', We still have this word in a couple plant names, henbane and wolfsbane, plus of course in the expression--no longer meaning something as drastic as 'murderer'--the bane of my existence.

Now another interesting etymology not quite of the same sort. Nickname comes from eke, meaning 'also' plus of course name. Thus, a nickname is an also name. Isn't that cute?

A Couple Interesting English Word Origins (More to Come)

Nostril

The first syllable descends from the word for 'nose' (not too surprisingly), and then the second syllable comes from Old English þril (the þ character, which came ultimately from the Norse runic alphabet, had a th sound), meaning 'hole'. Hence, 'nose hole'. Eminently sensible!

Wilderness

This comes from wild (then just as now) plus deor, meaning 'animal' (cognate with the German Thier, for anyone who knows German). Hence 'wild-animal-place'.

The word deor originally meant 'animal' and then became specialized to mean only one kind of animal. We see this "specialization" also with some other words like the word for meat, which originally meant 'food' (think of the phrase "meat and drink").

 Neighbor

This is from Old English words nehe meaning 'near' and burg or burgh meaning something like 'house', 'castle', 'fortress' (if  you know German, think of the hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God). Thus, your neighbor is the near house (or castle).

First, a Little Background

This may, to some extent, be my view of this and not necessarily in agreement with anyone else's take, or even the mainstream.

Many people may be aware that English has many words that were in some way derived or borrowed from Latin or Greek. I'd like to explain why that is.

First, many scientific words, including medical terms, were coined from Latin and Greek roots. These terms are going to be very similar across many languages (an exception is German, which stubbornly insisted on coining new technical and scientific terms from native roots. For example, hydrogen may be that or something quite similar in many languages, but in German 'hydrogen' is Wasserstoff (the "stuff" water is made of) and 'television' is Fernseh ("far seeing").

Medical terms tend to be Latin. This may be because at one time Latin was the international language of learning, scholarship, and science. (If you want to be a bit paranoid, then you may believe that doctors use Latin terms to keep the patient from understanding, particularly when one doctor talks to another doctor.)

But here's the scoop on why we have so many Latin and Greek words outside of the scientific, medical, and technical vocabulary. In England, particularly around the 17th century, writers and scholars complained that the vocabulary of English was impoverished, that it did not have words for many intellectual concepts. So they were coining new words at a great pace. Usually any leaned person who knew Greek and particularly Latin could understand those new words because he could see and understood the classical roots they were formed from. (Latin was part of any person's advanced education and was, and still is, used in the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge.)

Now: Were these 17th century men correct in believing English needed to have its vocabulary improved and enriched with new word coinages? Here is what happened:

First, some terminology: The English language, historically, is classified into three periods: Old English, or Anglo-Saxon (and just to clarify, since many people do not have sound knowledge of this: Old English does not mean "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe," but is a nearly completely foreign and unintelligible language to Modern English speakers), spoken from about 450 AD to about 1100 (the Normal Conquest of 1066 was a factor, but not the sole cause, of the evolution of English from Old English to Middle English); Middle English, going up to maybe 1550 or so; and Modern English. (Shakespeare would be--no, not Old English but Early Modern English.)

 

Here is a specimen of Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. This is "Caedmon's Hymn," considered the earliest Old English text.

 

Nū scylun hergan     hefaenrīcaes Uard,
metudæs maecti     end his mōdgidanc,
uerc Uuldurfadur,     suē hē uundra gihuaes,
ēci dryctin     ōr āstelidæ
hē ǣrist scōp     aelda barnum
heben til hrōfe,     hāleg scepen.
Thā middungeard     moncynnæs Uard,
eci Dryctin,     æfter tīadæ
fīrum foldu,     Frēa allmectig.

Now: For some time after the Normal Conquest--maybe about 300 years--the English language had sort of gone underground. The rulers and nobles--all the people of power, position, wealth, etc.--were French-speaking Normans or their descendants. It was the language of government, and, believe it or not, some Norman French is still used in the British Parliament:

Acts of Parliment [sic] are confirmed in Norman French. A literal translation of La Reyne le veult is ‘The Queen wishes it’.

The House of Lords has been an English speaking chamber since the 1400s; [punctuation emended] however, Norman French is still used on formal occasions.

When a bill has passed its third reading in the House of Commons, it goes to the House of Lords for their approval. Written at the start of the bill are the words: ‘Soit baillé aux Seigneurs’, meaning ‘Let it be sent to the Lords’.

When the bill is returned to the Commons, it reads ‘A ceste bille [avecque des amendmens] les Seigneurs sont assentus’ meaning ‘To this bill [with amendments] the Lords have assented.’

When amendments are accepted, the bill reads ‘A ces amendmens [avecque une amendment] les Communes sont assentus’ meaning ‘To these amendments [with an amendment] the Commons have assented.’

Whereas La Reyne le veult is used on most occasions when bills are passed, occasionally a much longer portion of Norman French is used.

When approving finance bills for Royal Assent, the Clerk says: “La Reyne, remerciant Ses bons Subjects, accepte leur Benevolence, et ainsi le veult.”

This means: “The Queen, thanking her good subjects, accepts their benevolence, and so wills it.”

                                    --htpps//royalcentral.co.uk/interests/state/la-reyne-le-veult-why-are-acts-of-parliament-confirmed-in-norman-french-rather-than-english-81184/

[The seemingly haphazard use of italics is in the original. I have, however, regularized the use the single quotation marks.]

So, getting back to my main point, French was used in government and by the nobles and those in power (for a depiction of the relative power between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, see Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe). And, the other side of the coin, English was the language of those on the periphery, both geographically and socially--the rustics, peasants, and those living far from London, the seat of power.

Thus, whereas Old English had words for intellectual and theological concepts, those words had fallen out of use and out of the language. A couple of examples: Old English used the word thrinness (actually, a special character, no longer used in English, was used for the th), meaning 'trinity'. Inwit meant 'conscience'. So, those words dropped out and, once their lack was appreciated, new words for those meanings were coined from Latin.

A number of writers were quite diligent in coining new words to add to the English vocabulary. I believe Shakespeare gets credit for a number of new words. A 17th century writer and physician named Sir Thomas Browne coined many, many words, some of which did not "catch on," so to speak, but many of which successfully entered English usage.