Oldest words in English?

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:01 PM -0500 3/1/09, Baker, John wrote:
>         AHD suggests that "The origins of the word tin may date to a
>time before Europe had been settled by speakers of Indo-European
>languages, such as the Germanic and Celtic languages."  This is, of
>course, entirely possible.  However, I understood the claim to be
>that "tin" is not just of non-Indo-European origin, but actually
>older than Proto-Indo-European,...

...and then cleverly borrowed to make the first PIE tin.

LH

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