LL-L "Etymology" 2007.07.22 (02) [A/E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  22 July 2007 - Volume 01

=========================================================================

From: Elsie Zinsser <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.07.21 (01) [E/V]

Haai almal,

Mark, ek is bly jy het die allematjiesfontein geniet!

My pa sou dit sê as 'n lui kind 'n A in Wiskunde sou kry;
vir 'n kind se nuwe kar; as hy lekker aan die skaapboud en
poeding gesmul het of as 'n moerkoffetjie lekker smaak.

Opvattenderwys, vir alles wat bakgat is!

Groete,
Elsie Zinsser
----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Dear Lowlanders,

I'm kind of surprised we haven't discussed this one yet.  Or have we?

I rather suspect that after the withdrawal of Norman power from Britain
English held on to the Old French loan "touch" (< touche < touchi < OF *
tochier* ~ *tuchier*)* because it was a convenient, one-syllable form of a
frequently needed verb as opposed to more cumbersome native equivalents,
none of which is semantically dedicated to 'touch'.

Old English:
grœ́tan, gegrœ́tan: touch, hold, attack, visit, affix, play
getillan, tillan: touch, reach, arrive at
grāpian: touch, grab, grope, feel
hrepian: touch, attack
hrīnan: touch, beat, hit, seize, reach
þaccian: touch, beat, hit, pet, stroke, caress

Cf.
Old Frisian: anslā, gisla, bigunga, onfā, ontasta, ontiā
Old Saxon: andhrīnan, bihrīnan, hrīnan, grīpan

"Inconvenience" remains in modern descendants other than English and Scots
in that words for 'to touch' tend to be "split" verbs; cf.

Low Saxon:
anfaten 'to touch'
anrögen 'to touch'
Faat dat nich an!
Röög' dat nich an!
Don't touch it/that!

As you can probably tell in the Old English lineup above, there is an
apparently native cognate of Old French *tochier* ~ *tuchier* (> toucher)
and its Romance relatives, such as Occitan *toquar*, *tocar*, *tochar*,
Spanish tocar, Portuguese tocar, and Italian toccare (also Romanian tocà 'to
knock'):

þaccian: touch, beat, hit, pet, stroke, caress

Cf.:
Old Saxon thakolōn pet, stroke, caress

The Romance words have been suspected of originating in a Germanic loan (OED
):

The passage of the sense 'knock, strike' into that of 'touch' (in Fr.,
etc.), is like that of Eng. 'thrust, push' into 'put': a stroke at its
lightest is a mere touch. The Romanic *toccare* has been held, after Diez,
to be from an OLG. **tokkôn*, **tukken*, MLG. *tocken*, *tucken*, = OHG. *
zocchôn*, *zucchen*, 'to draw or pull with force, pluck'; but a change of
sense from 'pull' to 'knock' is inexplicable, and it is a more probable view
that *toccare* was not from German, but an onomatoṕœic formation of the
Romanic langs. from the syllable *toc* imitating a knock. *Tocken*, in its
own sense 'draw', is still in use in LG. and in parts of Holland on the
German frontier, but not in Dutch itself. But the South Netherlands
(Flanders, Antwerp, etc.) use now, as in Kilian's time, a vb. *tokken* in
the same sense as the *toquer*, *touker* of Old Northern French and its
modern dialects, whence this has prob. been taken over. There is thus a gap
in local continuity, as well as in sense, between the German and Romanic
words. (Cf. Diez s.v. *Toccare*, Scheler s.v. *Toucher*, Körting 9802 *
Tukkôn*; Gaston Paris in *Romania* XXVII. 626.)

I share the skepticism and suggest that, if we are dealing with a Germanic
loan, it would be *þak- 'to caress' instead (i.e., Old Saxon thakolōn, Old
English þaccian), a verb that is related to "thatch", "deck", etc., namely
in the sense of 'to cover (with one's hand)', which however goes back to
Indo-European *dag- 'to touch', 'to hit upon', 'to attack'.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

* Anglo-Norman: tucher, tuchier; tocher, tochier, toucher, tuscher; thoucher;
Modern Jersey Norman touchi
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20070722/7c097369/attachment.htm>