LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

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From: Hugo Zweep <hugo.zweep at valuersillawarra.com.au>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.09.16 (02) [E]

Gabriele and Peter
Another memory chord is struck. When my  Grunniger mother used to preserve
fruit she would say that she was "wekken" them. And, Peter, in Australia she
did that in Fowler's Vacola jars and these are as Gabriele describes - the
glass lid is wired onto the body of the jar so that it hinges and the rubber
ring forms the seal.

Hugo Zweep

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From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Lexicon

Peter wrote: >I wonder if [can]is originally from the Greek canastron or
from OE canne. ... Why do we have so many words in English that are spelt
the same such as can (the tinned variety) and can (the permission variety)?
If there is a phonetic difference it is certainly minimal. <

"Canister" seems to be from Gr as you suggest. The origins of this "can" are
unclear. It is prob cognate with OE "canne" but not descended from it.

The usual explanation given for homomorphs (which I prefer to "homonyms",
which different people seem to define in different ways) is that the
multiple roots of English have often contributed words which are similar to
existing words with completely different meanings, and if the words were not
identical to start with the usual processes of change have caused them to
become so. Added to this, there has never been any major attempt to "clean
up" English by eliminating foreign words. A further possibility is that the
ease with which parts of speech can change their function in Eng may lead to
a word acquiring a new meaning without acquiring a new form.

I think "canny" is likely to be from the verb "can" in the senses related to
"able to do" but that is cognate with roots meaning "know" so does "ken"
come in? This "can" seems to have arisen from the idea "I know how to so I
am able to". I don't know how common this kind of development of meaning is
but in Classical Greek one of the verbs for "know" is "gignosko", a
reduplicated form from the root "-gn-" as in "can" and "know" and G "kennen"
and "koennen", etc, and the other is "oida", a perfect which originally
meant "I have seen". We say "seeing is believing": the Greeks said "having
seen is knowing".

Come to think of it I think we need a new word "homomorphone" which would
make it (dodgy orthography apart) absolutely clear that we are talking about
words with the same sound _and_ appearance.

BTW I looked up Ger "Koenig" to see if there were a connexion with the above
"kn" but there isn't. But I noted that in MHG the vowel was "ue" (so very
like OE "cyning") and the modern "oe" is from Mitteldeutsch. In Austria I
was "told off" for saying "huebsch" with the pronunciation shown in my
dictionary, ie [Y], and told that it should be pronounced as if spelt
"hoepsch". "Hoebsch" is Luther's spelling so I wondered if, in contrast to
"Koenig" which changed its pronunciation to match its spelling "huebsch" has
its old spelling but an "imported" pronunciation. Or is this just an
Austrian Besonderheit? Do these sorts of things happen with HG words
imported into LS (or vice versa)?

BTW2, just in case there's anybody out there who doesn't know it, the "two
little dots" over German vowels are simply an "e" written as in the old
style of German handwriting.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.15 (05) [E/F]

Beste Henno

Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.14 (06) [D/E]

> re "skate":

> > "I rather think the term goes back to the ancestor of all these tongues.
I
> > wager it was a skill practiced long before Teutons came to Britain, &
they
> > brought it & the word (& the pronunciation) for it with them."

> > "Nu is er een eng. _skate_, dat uit het fri. [fries?] kan zijn
> overgenomen.

> > So De Vries thinks E "skate" is from Frisian (unfortunately "fri." is
one
> > of the abbreviations used but not elucidated) and also that the basic
> > meaning is "long thin thing" and the flatfish is so-called because it
has
> > a long, thin tail. It looks as though De Vries has simply confused
> > "skate" with "stake", because there is a Nor word "stake" meaning
> > "pole/stake/pale" which fits his definition reasonably well. But then
...

> It liket my net sa wierskynlik dat it út it Frysk komme soe, om't it Frysk
> dit wurd net brûkt! "skates" yn it Westerlauwersk Frysk is "redens"
(iental
> "reed", soe'k seze, mar dit komt net faak foar).
> Faaks komt dit út in âlder stadium fan it Frysk ? Tsjintwurdich soe
*skaats
> as in ôfgryslik hollannisme sjoen wurde (ik hew it wol sezen heard,  mar
de
> grize giet jin dan oer de grauwe...).

Ek hoop, Henno, ek snap u mening , en dat u my Taal volg so goed oftwel
beter as ek uwe. Het ek dit reg dat julle die woord 'skaats' as 'n
'Hollandisme ' ervaar? En dat in die Frysk die woord 'redens' = 'skaats' in
Afrikaans?

Groetnis,
Mark

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From: Andrys Onsman <Andrys.Onsman at CeLTS.monash.edu.au>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.09.16 (02) [E]

From: Andrys Onsman
To: John Feather
Subject: Lexicon.

<Well, Andrys, since you ask, you're wrong about "wrought iron".><>

Happy to accept that (it isn’t the first time!) but I’d still maintain
that, in Australia at least, if you were to mention wrought iron, the
majority of people would think of beds and verandahs, rather than
puddled iron. Perhaps it’s just a semantic shift, with the original
meaning becoming jargonised.<>

I had tended towards Kevin Caldwell’s notion in thinking it to be the
same thing misspelt along pronunciation lines, until I saw it written in
both forms in the one sentence from an iron products website (as cited
in previous posting). That made me look for a different explanation –
but I’m happy to accept the error of my ways<>.

Best,
Andrys

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