Grimm’s Law was highly successful at predicting the forms of Germanic words but there were many exceptions. However, the discovery of Verner’s Law showed that exceptions might just be apparent; sound change is still ‘regular and exceptionless’, you just have to look a bit closer for the regularities.

An example of one such ‘exception’ is father, from above.

Note how Latin pater (which retains the /p/ and /t/ from PIE) shows up as father in English. IE /p/ > Gmc /f/ as predicted by Grimm’s Law, but IE /t/ has not come out as /θ/ instead we find /ð/. More telling are examples of related words which have the predicted sound in some cases but not in others! For example, English birthandburden are both related but show different outcomes of what was historically the same consonant.

Karl Verner noticed, however, that the unpredictable instances correlated with the position of accent in PIE. Sanskrit retains much of the earlier accent system which Germanic has subsequently changed. Sanskrit pater retains the accent following the /t/. Verner noticed that Germanic results from Law A were voiced unless they were immediately preceded by an accented syllable (in which case they would be voiceless) – this is Verner’s Law. Subsequently many of these Germanic voiced fricatives became voiced stops (thus leading to birthandburden). Germanic also underwent an Accent Shift whereby the position of accent changed. This annihilated the conditions for Verner’s Law but left the results of it unchanged, i.e. the results went from being conditioned and predictable (phonetic) to unconditioned and unpredictable (phonemic).

Verner’s Law also helped to explain cases of /s/-/r/ alternations, so called rhotacism. That is /s/ was pronounced as [z] by Verner’s Law unless preceded by accent. This [z] sound then underwent rhotacism to become /r/. Old Latin shows flos-floris‘flower’, English shows was-were etc. Many of the results of Verner’s Law have, however, been lost through analogical levelling. Latin underwent levelling to yield flor-floris‘flower’ and many English dialects have levelled the was-wereparadigm (as has Modern German), i.e. you might hear people saying ‘we was, you was, they was’.

Verner’s Law was and is a fantastic example of how powerful the comparative method is when applied carefully and rigorously. It also gave a great confidence boost to the Neogrammarian Hypothesis which says that sound change is regular and exceptionless. But that is not the end of Verner’s Law…it’s still around in places. When you next come across execute and executor/executive, think carefully about where the stress falls and how you are pronouncing the <x> in those cases – you might just see Verner’s Law in action!

Grimm’s Law (also called the First Germanic Sound Shift) refers to changes which affected the stop consonants in what became the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European language family (Proto-Germanic being the ancestor of all Germanic languages, i.e. Gothic, German, Yiddish, Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch, Afrikaans, Old English, English etc.). There are in fact three series of changes which changed some aspect of the articulation of the IE stop consonants whilst retaining the same number of distinctions (number of phonemes).

Law A:             IE /p t k/          >          Gmc /f θ x/

Law B:             IE /b d g/         >          Gmc /p t k/

Law C:             IE /bh dh gh/   >          Gmc /β ð γ/ (which later became /b d g/)

Exactly when this happened is not known but we can at least work when the Laws may have taken effect relative to each other, e.g. Law A cannot have happened after Law B because otherwise we would expect IE /b d g/ to show up as /f θ x/ in Germanic.

For example:

Latinpater > Englishfather, German Vater(German orthographic <v> is pronounced /f/)

Greektri > English three

Latincord- > English heart (English /h/ descends from earlier /x/)

Sanskritbhratar > English brother, German Bruder

These are standard but selective examples. Standard in the sense that you’ll find them in text books; selective in that we cannot simply look at one language and expect it to faithfully represent changes which happened hundreds of years ago. Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have undergone changes since Proto-Indo-European and English and German have undergone changes since Proto-Germanic. Modern German shows evidence of a Second Germanic Sound Shift which changed the Germanic stop consonants again! English did not undergo this change as it had already separated from the language that was to become German (compare threeanddrei,daughterandTochteretc.).

The word we use today for ‘bear’ comes from Old English. It literally means 'the brown one’. The interesting bit shows up when, looking back, we used to call bear something different. The exact word has been lost to time (though some people have tried to reconstruct it from Proto-Indo-European roots, which brings forth results like *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), but what we do know is why it was replaced by what is, by all accounts, a euphemism. 

We actually have a word for what happened, it’s called Taboo Deformation. It happens a lot in language, as you’ll see if you follow this blog for any period of time, especially if I ever get around to doing that series on words for genitalia.

Anyway, what happened was, superstition arose that saying the name of a bear was bad luck, would bring it forth or make it more difficult to hunt, and over time, people began to use a nickname instead of the word. This became so widespread that no one called the bear by its original name anymore, and now the new name has so completely superseded the original word that no one knows what that word is anymore.

This actually happens with a lot of animals, presumably due to the same superstitions. All deer were originally called 'hart’; their name now comes from the Proto-Germanic word for 'wild animal’. In French, 'goupil’ was the common word for fox, but 'reynard’– the name of a fox character from popular medieval fables– was used as a euphemism to the point where it’s now commonplace.

Hilariously, the old word for 'rabbit’– coney– was replaced because 'coney’ was beginning to be used as slang for another word, and thus deemed no longer respectable. This happened around the 1900s. If you’re confused, 'coney’ used to be pronounced rhyming with 'money’. We have reverse-engineered it completely inorganically so now we pronounce it as rhyming with 'phony’.

kiss

Though Middle English had the meaning of a reciprocal kiss, the Old English wordcyssanwas defined as a “touch of the lips, in reverence or respect.” The English likely comes from the Proto-Germanic *kussijanaor*kussjan, a word compiled of*kussaz, meaning “kiss,” and the suffix *jana. Cognates include the Swedishkyssa, the German küssen and the Gothickukjan. 

Although beyond this there is not an agreed upon root for Indo-European languages, there is typically a supposedly onomatopoeic *ku sound, which exists in Greek and Sanskrit as well. This is not always the case though, as in the instance of Latin suāviārī (meaning “to kiss,” but related to suāvis meaning “sweet, pleasant, delicious,”) and bāsium, (ancestor of Spanishbesar, and meaning “kiss, particularly of the hand”). 

Pike (the weapon) and pick (the tool) come from the Middle English pik/pyk andpic, respectively, all via the Old English piic, “pointed object, pickaxe.”

The verbs pickandpeck also come from Middle English, in this case pikenandpicken, respectively, all via the Old English pician “to prick,” and perhaps from the Old Norse pikka. 

Pickaxe is often thought to be a compound word of “pick” and “axe,” but is actually from the Middle English (13c) picas,ultimately from the Medieval Latin picosa. In 15c it was altered via folk etymology to include axe. Axe itself is from the Old English æces/æx, via the Proto-Germanic akusjo, via the Proto-Indo-European agw(e)si-. 

In some Middle English and Early Modern English dialects, pickandpitch were synonymous. Because of this, we also have pitchfork and piggyback. Pitchfork was originally pic-forken in Middle English (13c), and piggyback was originally pick pack (1560), from the act of pitching a bag over one’s shoulder. 

Pickle (15c) is unrelated, and of uncertain origin. 

Toothpick is Early Modern English, but Old English had toðsticca, “tooth-stick.”

Golf is not an acronym for “gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.” That false etymology can be traced back to 1997, while the Scottish gouf and golf are traced back to the 15th century. While the exact etymology is uncertain, golf is probably a variation of the Middle Dutch colf/colve, meaning “stick, club, bat” from the Proto-Germanic kulth-.