Oldest word in the English language

Fri May 2 20:38:13 UTC 2003

Right you are, Vicki!  Maybe the radio linguist meant to say "OW!,"
the nonverbal utterance assumed to be spoken by Grendel after
Beowulf tore his arm off.  Of course, it wouldn't have become an
ENGLISH nonverbal utterance until some piqued Briton who was
actually capable of defending himself (perhaps the historical
Arthur?) began landing blows on an attacking Germanic invader --
or, more precisely, on the English-born SON of a Germanic
invader, since the latter would, presumably, have been exclaiming
in a foreign Germanic tongue. (We should be careful to keep
foreignisms separate from fully naturalized English, of course.)

Anyway, "ow!" gets my vote as "most original word of the first
millennium."

Joanne

Joanne

Joanne

On 2 May 2003, at 12:45, Victoria Neufeldt wrote:

> How could there possibly be a single "oldest word"?  Even if they mean
> the one with the oldest known record of use, it doesn't make sense to
> me -- there couldn't be just one.  For another thing, there's no
> specific date that's the beginning of the English language . . .  Very
> odd idea!
>
> Victoria
>
> Victoria Neufeldt
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>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society
> > [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> > Of AAllan at AOL.COM
> > Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 12:01 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Oldest word in the English language
> >
> >
> > That great source of information, WGN-TV news from Chicago,
> > had a trivia
> > question during their noon report today: What is the oldest
> > word in the
> > English language?
> > Their answer was: town.
> > They didn't have any explanation.
> > I know that "town" goes back to Old English, but is there
> > any reason to call
> > it the oldest word in the language?
> > - Allan Metcalf
> >
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