[Lexicog] News time

[John Roberts]

David,

An interesting observation. When I checked, 9 out of 10 of the top 10 most common nouns in English have an OE origin. But as you can see from the listing they all have a change in their form from OE to modern English and for most of them the meaning has changed - some significantly. So, the question comes to my mind: What has persisted over the past 2000 years?

TOP 10 NOUNS

1 Time              OE: tīma ‘time, good time, prosperity’

2 Person           OF: persona, L: persōna ‘actor’s mask, character in a play’ later ‘human being’

3 Year              OE: ġē(a)r ‘pl. period, times’

4 Way              OE: weġ / weder from ‘move, carry’

5 Day               OE: dæġ ‘12 hours’

6 Thing             OE: žing ‘affair, business, deed act’

7 Man               OE: man(n) ‘vassal, manservant’

8 World            OE: werold ‘age, life of man’

9 Life               OE: lif ‘life, person’

10 Hand            OE: hand, hond ‘hand’


I am sending this as unicode. So apologies to any who can't read some of the characters.

John Roberts
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