LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.07 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 07 November 2009- Volume 01
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2009.11.06 (06) [EN]

from Heather Rendall   heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

Ron/Reinhard wrote: "Incidentally, as I mentioned quite some time ago, few
Low Saxon dialects in Northern Germany retain *folgen *in the sense of 'to
follow'. In most dialects *folgen* has been specialized to mean 'to attend a
funeral', 'to bury (someone)', as in 'to follow a casket'. You need to use
different expressions to render the idea of 'to follow', such as
*nagahn*("to go nigh/after"),
*nakamen* ("to come nigh/after") and *achterrangahn* ("to go after on(to)").
So this is an example of the ramifications of semantic specialization."

When discussions such as this are on the forum, I always like to refer to an
1818 dictionary I was given as a present 2 Christmases ago as it often
throws up a previous words or meanings now lost.

Sadly no *'forfollow' was there

But  'follow'  as well as the expected 'to go after' , has what I would have
thought was a fairly modern meaning, namely 'to imitate'  i.e. to follow a
fashion

Although there are verbs given that clearly use 'fore-' with its meaning of
'before', there are others that are no longer in use where the origin of the
prefix is not so clear i.e.

foreclose      to shut up

foredo           to ruin

forelay           to intrap

Germanic 'ver-' is represented by forbear, forbid, forgive & forget   but we
seem in English to have lost the mass of the verbs with this prefix.

Heather

•

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