Word Histories and Mysteries doc

[...]... exact date as A.D 446, and from around this time we can begin to trace the history of English separately from its Indo-European and Germanic cousins Word Histories and Mysteries xi Many of the most common words in English today are inherited from Old English and are the direct descendants of ancient ProtoIndo-European terms as well Such basic words as fire and water, or heart and tooth, have been used... “about,” and ¯ re, ¯ ı “to go.” Ambı re could mean “to canvass, solicit for ¯ political support,” as well as “to canvass for an office, T 8 Word Histories and Mysteries prize, etc.” Corresponding senses of ambitio were “a ¯ standing for public office” and “rivalry for honors.” Related to these senses of ambitio were “currying ¯ favor” and “desire for advancement.” The word, borrowed directly from Latin and. .. Renaissance, Greek and Latin achieved a lofty status among the educated As a result, etymologists and spelling reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to give English a classical look by Latinizing or Hellenizing the spelling of words that had Latin or Greek ancestry (and even some that didn’t) For example, Medieval Latin had a word sparagus, T 12 Word Histories and Mysteries from Classical... naugers, avoided nadders, and turned to noumperes to settle their disputes By the end of the century, apron, auger, adder, and umpire (or at least early forms of A 10 Word Histories and Mysteries them) had emerged as new words due to a trick of the ear When preceded by the indefinite article a, the article attracted the initial n in all of these words, so that a became an and the noun that followed... between the word arena and the notion of gladiatorial combat This word is from Latin hare na (also spelled are na), “sand.” ¯ ¯ Hare na then came to mean the part of a Roman ¯ amphitheater that was covered with sand to absorb the blood spilled by the combatants Arena is first recorded in English during the seventeenth century, denoting this area of a Roman amphitheater F Word Histories and Mysteries. .. twelfth-century Sicily, a naval commander was designated by words going back to the Arabic word L Word Histories and Mysteries 3 åamı r in the phrase åamı r-al- “commander of the.” The ¯ ¯ al in admiral is actually the definite article of the noun that designated what was being commanded The d in admiral appeared first in the Medieval Latin and Old French forms, from which admiral came into English... this sense of a “mean” figure A Word Histories and Mysteries 15 avocado The history of avocado takes us back to the Aztecs and their language, Nahuatl, which contained the word ahuacatl, meaning both “fruit of the avocado tree” and “testicle.” The word ahuacatl was compounded with others, as in ahuacamolli, meaning “avocado soup or sauce,” from which the Spanish-Mexican word guacamole derives In trying... vocabulary of English Words of Arabic origin include alcohol, average, racket, and zero Many other languages began to add to the wealth of English words as British mercantile interests stretched around the world and the British Empire began to emerge Borrowings from Dutch are especially numerous and include such words as bumpkin, pickle, walrus, and yacht British ships brought ketchup, tea, and typhoon back... article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected the word also First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa (N) Second, the n was lost before consonants This loss of n affected some other words as well and created such pairs as my and mine, thy and thine... like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson’s famous line “Drink to me only with thine eyes.” By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in “This book is mine”), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels (“a apple”) T Word Histories and Mysteries . h0" alt="" From Abracadabra to Zeus Word Histories and Mysteries From Abracadabra to Zeus Word Histories and Mysteries From the Editors of the American. meaning “commander.” In twelfth-century Sicily, a naval commander was designated by words going back to the Arabic word Word Histories and Mysteries 3